What is 20th century modernity and what does it mean to be modern? This course studies 20th century anglophone literature together with the cultures that produced its textuality, in order to concentrate on the relation between the literary text and history. The themes of the class will include modernization and technology, war and its aftermath, urban experience, gender and identity, colonialism and primitivism, 1950s youth cultures, British national identity at the time of the Cold War (James Bond as national icon), the end of empire, postocolonialism and immigration, modernism and postmodernism. Readings by Conrad, Yeats, Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Stevie Smith, Seamus Heaney, Eavan Boland, J.M. Coetzee, Hanif Kureishi among others.