The topic for this semester is about Modernist fiction, modernity, and urban experiences. Modernity has been regarded as a kind of overwhelming force that threatens to "melt" all that is solid: body, space, time, beliefs, and more generally, our conception of the world. It has led to the celebration of a plethora of "modern" values, such as progress, rationality, science, linear temporality, etc., which in turn was criticzed or subverted by a bunch of Modernist writers. In this semester we're going to take two of the prominent modernist fiction writers, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, respectively, to probe into the issue of modernity and urban experiences.