Background Information
Urbanization, industrialization, and immigration had altered national demographics of the 1920s. Harsh conditions in cities was often blamed on new immigrants, and in 1924 Congress enacted the Exclusion Act, barring immigration from certain parts of the world, notably Asia, as a way to control the racial and ethnic composition of the United States.
Background Information
Literature of the period struggled to understand the new and diverse responses to the advent of modernity.
Background Information
Background Information
Europe saw the rise of fascist dictators and in the United States, politics and economics became central concerns overriding questions of individual freedom.
Background Information
Art to some writers, such as Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and William Carlos Williams, offered an alternative way of understanding the world, eventually giving rise to the idea of “two cultures”—science vs. letters