Clusters

Literary Neo-Avant-Gardes – Politics of Form Revisited

This cluster of essays approaches the controversial question of the political intentions, implications, and effects of the literary neo-avant-gardes by scrutinizing the topos of a “politics of form,” which is so often foregrounded in and associated with neo-avant-garde practices. Following the assumption that the reconceptualization of this familiar explanatory figure calls for a...

Aug 14, 2023

The Whiteness Problem

White South African Pauline Smith’s The Little Karoo , Pākehā Katherine Mansfield’s Urewera notebooks from Aotearoa New Zealand, and Anglo-Canadian Flora Denison’s The Tree of Poverty all emerged in early- to mid-twentieth century anglophone modernism. In the same period, US American and British use of “s****” and “n*****” also appeared in the letters of Wallace Stevens, and...

Jun 12, 2023

Blogs

“Improbable Life”: Bain, the Baroness, and Public Photography

I first encountered Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927) at a conference on modernism and comedy. While her performance style is not exactly comical, the Baroness is most notable for her eccentric writing and elaborate costumes, despite the fact that her title brought her no monetary stability. Born in Germany, she immigrated to the US with a husband who soon abandoned her, she...

Sep 21, 2023

Injurious Recipes: A Few Ingredients for a “Dangerous” Modernist Studies

Recently, while sifting through a long and detailed academic book contract, I found a list of items the publisher required me to exclude. A wonderful bullet point mandated that there be “no recipes or formulae or instructions” that “if followed accurately” would be “injurious to the user.” [1] I have enjoyed hearing friends’ reactions to this mandate, several of whom have asked: but, seriously...

Sep 13, 2023

Responses

Responses to the Responses to the Special Issue on Weak Theory

It’s been nearly a year now since the publication of M/m’s special issue on Weak Theory, a year of conversations both here on Print Plus—and, as Aarthi Vadde and Melanie Micir point out, across a range of other professional and para-professional spaces of engagement. Many thanks to all who have taken part! As we bring this Year of Weak Theory to a close with responses from the original...

Aug 15, 2019

Responses to the Special Issue on Weak Theory, Part V

This late entry in our responses to the Weak Theory issue began as the keynote address for this summer’s conference of The Space Between Society, “Staging the Space Between,” at South Dakota State University.

Aug 5, 2019

What Are You Reading?

The Little Reviews

A Forum for capsule review of recent books of interest to our readers.

If you would like to write a capsule review (250-300 words) of one of the books featured in the Books of Interest section of our more recent print issues, we would welcome your submission at mmlittlereviews@gmail.com . Please include the issue number in which the book is listed in your correspondence.

Oct 19, 2021

Recent Scholarship

A forum for reviews of recent publications and important books we may have missed the first time around. It also includes "Race in the Modernism/modernity Archives: The Harlem Renaissance and Beyond."

Feb 17, 2021