The Bohemian Spirit: Literature, Culture, and Social Movements Greenwich Village 1912-1923

During the 1910s an extraordinary gathering radicals and reformers, artists and writers from across the United States and Europe converged in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village neighborhood. In this course we will immerse ourselves in this transformative cultural landscape. Through the study of literature (Whitman, Dreiser, Edna St. Vincent Millay, the “little magazines”, James Joyce) visual art (John Sloan, Marcel Duchamps, Man Ray); theatre (Eugene O’Neil, Susan Glaspell), and social and cultural movements like feminism, suffrage, and labor rights, we will explore how the bohemian ethos of the time fostered a creative and social revolution. We will finish with a Reacting to the Past game, Greenwich Village, 1912-13 and consider the long-term influence of Greenwich Village's impact on American and global cultural history.