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From ‘city symphonies’ to the German querschnitt or ‘cross-section’ films of the 1920s and 1930s, cinema and the modernist city are tightly bound in a catalytic dialogic.
Back Talk: Women’s Writing, Modernism and Resistance
The Third Modernist Network Cymru Conference
Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK
17-18 June 2020
Keynote speakers: Prof. Kirsti Bohata (CREW, Swansea University), Prof. Diana Wallace (University of South Wales)
Co-organised by Josie Cray, Elizabeth English and Siriol McAvoy
The word boredom has been in circulation since Ancient times, in the shape of a variety of synonyms --acedia, taedium vitae, horror loci, melancholy, ennui, spleen-- and bearing a theological stamp, since it was believed to be a demonic sin in the Christian tradition. In modernity, however, for the “enlightened subject” (Goodstein, 4), as a response to social and economic transformations, boredom has become a secular experience concerned with temporality, signifying loss of meaning and feeling of emptiness in the pace of modern life. In critical circles, boredom remains a hybrid phenomenon that brings together a variety of contradictory definitions.
The Politics of Escapism
Panel at the 2021 MLA Convention
TOronto, DC, January 7-10, 2021
Co-Organizers:
Greg Sharzer, University of Toronto (gsharzer@gmail.com); Keith O'Regan, York
University (keith.oregan@gmail.com)
Escapism, the desire to abandon a difficult present for an ideal alternative,
The International Harold Pinter Society welcomes papers that explore Harold Pinter and laughter. What is significant about laughter in Pinter's work and how might it concern or complicate the reception of his creative output. Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and a CV to mjrii@illinois.edu
Midway through New Grub Street (1891), Reardon reunites with his wife Amy. In preparation, he leaves behind his overcoat. This attire, once “fairly good,” is now long past its prime, “the edges of the sleeves were frayed, two buttons were missing, and the original hue of the cloth was indeterminable.” Reardon knows Amy well, but not well enough: her attention at the meeting is quickly directed to “his muddy and shapeless boots,” and her desire for “a renewal of amity” conflicts with her shock over her husband’s appearance: “[S]uch attire degraded him in her eyes; it symbolised the melancholy decline which he had suffered intellectually.
Modernist Studies Association Conference
Brooklyn NY, October 22-25, 2020
This panel explores forms of dissent adopted by twentieth-century transatlantic avant-gardes as a means of challenging traditional genres and social codes. Since the inception of European experimentalism during the first decades of the twentieth century, a series of art movements engaged in radical production that questioned the established state of affairs. From the Cubist adoption of multiple viewpoints, through the Futurist celebration of technology and speed, the Expressionist distortion of form, to the Dadaist sense of provocation and the irrational juxtaposition of images in Surrealism, avant-garde art and literature has set precedents on an international level of exchanges.
Call for Proposals
Millay, Lowell, Teasdale, and the ‘Sentimental’ Modern Poet
Modernist Studies Association
Brooklyn, NY
22-25 October 2020
Organized by Sarah Parker (Loughborough University) and Francisco E. Robles (University of Notre Dame)
We invite submissions to an interdisciplinary conference on working -class fiction, to be held at the University of Birmingham in June.
In a recent Guardian article Tim Lott laments the death of the English working-class novel and likewise that of the English working-class literary novelist. He qualifies his pronouncement, by remarking the delineation ‘English’ is used advisedly, for ‘the same is not true of Scotland’. Nevertheless, he may have also appended the modifiers ‘White’ and ‘Male’ before ‘English’ so as to complete the chain of associations traditionally linked to working-class writing.