English 53: The American Novel from World War I to the Present examines modern and postmodern novels of the twentieth century. Using T. S. Eliot's epic work The Wasteland as a metaphor for the sterility, futility, and devastation that resulted from The Great War, this course examines the literary depictions of waste land worlds by Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, Bernard Malamud, Ken Kesey, Alice Walker, and Amy Tan. Students will consider whether these authors suggest a possibility for a transformation of the waste land.