Clusters
In 1954, Maya Angelou performed in a production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess that toured through Italy. This United States-sponsored initiative brought African American performance to European stages in an effort to combat Soviet propaganda about American racism. As Melanie Masterton Sherazi shows in her contribution to this cluster, Angelou’s own memoirs of the trip recall not...
Oct 15, 2019
Reading the Modern Magazine in an Interdisciplinary Humanities Lab
This essay cluster begins with an ending. Specifically, it began with the ending of Patrick Collier’s “What Is Modern Periodical Studies?,” which concludes with a provocation to find a new way to read and study modern periodicals. In order to develop coherent methodological approaches to modern periodicals, Collier argues, we need to resist the urge to “decid[e] in advance where [a] periodical...
Jul 3, 2019
Blogs
Modernism, Eco-anxiety, and the Climate Crisis
Fig. 1. Hannah Rothstein, National Parks 2050: Great Smoky Mountains , 2017. Limited edition print. https://www.hrothstein.com/#/national-parks-2050/ . Reproduction of original WPA poster by Ranger Doug’s Enterprises .Our task is to make trouble, to stir up potent response to devastating events, as well as to settle troubled waters and rebuild quiet places. . . . [S]taying with the...
Nov 21, 2019
Dear Nella,
I was terribly disappointed that you didn’t get here last week. And I was furious with myself for mentioning the damned wedding to you because it turned out that I didn’t go. People kept coming in and then deciding not to go on to the wedding, so we were here until eight o’clock. Then we went out to dinner. It was very amusing too because the sandwiches kept getting fewer...
Nov 13, 2019
Discussions
A venue for brief articles that intervene in debates in modernist studies.
Nov 22, 2017
What Are You Reading?
A forum for reviewing handbooks, companions, pedagogical volumes, introductions, etc.
Aug 14, 2018