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1. Introduction

There will be no readings for the first week, but buy the books and reading pack at the co-op and bring them to class if you're not still shopping around for modules.

We'll spend the initial part of our meeting doing introductions and reviewing the web site, so that the outline of the module is clear, and so that you can plan ahead in terms of reading and writing.

We'll then move to some preliminary discussions that may help us map out a conceptual framework. I've chosen to organize the module around modernity because the concept has come to carry such weight in the contemporary humanities and social sciences as both a "native category"--in the sense that social actors themselves use the term-- and as an analytical category. Modernity seems useful in bringing together theoretical and historical perspectives on literary texts while at the same time allowing the texts themselves some kind of autonomy. Yet modernity is also a slippery term: any apparently definitive statement about it is likely to provoke disagreement from another party. The challenge for us will thus be to engage with the concept without closing off options or further areas of inquiry.

We'll start thus start our discussion with modernity as a native category in our own lives. Before you come to class, think of the most recent context outside of a university classroom where you have come across the word "modern" or associated vocabulary such as "modernization." In addition, mull over the following questions.

• How would you distinguish between the concepts modernity, modernization, and modernism?
• When does modernity begin? Are you modern? Were your parents? Your grandparents?
• In Singapore or in the country you come from, are modernization and Westernization the same thing?
• Check out the Modern Dog, Modern Home web sites and the section on the "Founding of Modern Singapore" in the Wikipedia Singapore History website. What do they tell you anything useful about popular conceptions of the modern? Do you disagree with any element of the implied definitions of modernity in these web sites?

We'll then move to think about modernity as a analytical category, and the reasons for its popularity in the humanities and social sciences in the last decade or so.

Last updated: 12 July, 2009