Modernisms

Engaging and enlarging current scholarship in the field, we define literary modernism as a plural formation. And while we emphasize a range of cultural sites and historical times in a comprehensive sense, we also offer the coherence of concentrations in some of the major locations and moments in the history of this movement: London in the early twentieth century (looking to Dublin on one side and Paris on the other), New York and especially Harlem in the early-mid century, and an Anglophone modernism in a global context extending into the present.  To these specific locales and micro-periods, moreover, we bring some of the most urgent interests in the new modernist criticism.  We consider the ongoing and changing life of literature in a multiplicity of genres, new genres, and composite genres, following the evolving forms of drama as well as prose fiction and poetry; we come back to the recurring concerns of imperial, national, racial, and sexual politics; and we are interested in the ways in which literary texts are responding to the new media of cinema, phonography as well as photography, and radio. The result is a vibrant culture of conversation and inquiry into some of the most compelling and provocative work of literary history.

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