Clusters
In 1994, when I was an undergraduate English major in California, I had the opportunity to interview Adrienne Rich, whose poetry was the subject of my senior thesis. I was nervous. I wanted to know about the influence of T. S. Eliot upon her poetry. Ever courteous, looking me in the eye, Rich was definite. Eliot’s anti-Semitism, his New Critical impersonality, and his declared self-definition...
Sep 28, 2020
In Tense Future (2015), Paul Saint-Amour advances the concept of “weak theory”—not only for thinking about the expanding field of modernism, but for finding a response to “[t]hat exemplary strong theory”: total war. [1] The idea of “weak theory” has since taken on critical momentum of its own, with a Modernism/modernity special issue in 2018 putting a name to an array of...
Jul 22, 2020
Blogs
A River Unaligned: The Danube in Film and Cold War
From its contested origins in Germany’s Black Forest to the Black Sea, Europe’s second longest river connects ten countries and its watershed four more. Navigable along the entire route, the Danube river serves as the artery and border of a diverse geographic region, and frustrates attempts to divide Europe from non-Europe even as it facilitates the flow of transnational environmental,...
Oct 22, 2020
Handiwork: Mina Loy, Collage, and the En Dehors Garde
Although Mina Loy consorted with nearly every historical avant-garde movement, she was contained by none and is rarely mentioned in their histories. She’s not alone in this regard. Canonical histories and theories of the avant-garde typically marginalize the work of women, people of color, queer, and disabled artists. Despite significant efforts to articulate the importance of gender,...
Oct 21, 2020
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