"City of the Big Shoulders": Chicago Poetry in the Twentieth Century

The centrality of Chicago and the mobility of its inhabitants generated an aesthetic of openness and experiment that was particularly hospitable to the major writers and artists of the era.  This seminar will focus primarily on poetry in Chicago by contextualizing it within larger cultural movements here and further abroad.  Seminar participants will read and discuss writings by Carl Sandberg, Vachel Lindsay, Willa Cather, Edgar Lee Masters, Harriet Monroe, Fanny Butcher and H.L. Mencken.

Seminar led by Liesl Olson, Independent Scholar