Twentieth-century literature and culture is characterized by extraordinary innovation, vibrancy, and diversity. In this momentous period, many lived by the maxim "make it new," while others reconnected with tradition in the face of unprecedented changes in technology, politics, and popular culture. Students explore central ideas and historical pressures underlying twentieth-century cultural production by studying responses of modernist and postmodernist artists, writers, and filmmakers to the chaotic upheavals and opportunities that defined their world.