This course explores the way Modernist writers theorized interracial encounter and intimacies. Considering both the direct and indirect conversations taking place between writers across the color line during the early 20th century, we will examine the shared and divergent concerns, styles, and forms emerging from writers grappling with the desires, failures and fantasies of interracial encounter. Potential authors include Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Nella Larsen, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston, and Claude McKay.