W.B. Yeats’ 1919 paradigmatic claim that “things fall apart, the centre cannot hold” encapsulates the twentieth-century fascination with figuring and conceptualizing the inevitability of instability and the certainty of entropy. For this panel, we are seeking papers on modernisms or modernist studies that dwell in the crumbling center. Approaches may include an investigation of:

            Decay

            Decline 

Decomposition

            Ephemerality

            Exhaustion

            Fragmentation

            Half-lives

            Ruins

While The Waste Landmay attempt to “shore” the world’s “fragments,” we are instead interested in the places where decay, exhaustion, or fragmentation itself are central to a work.

Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief bio to Christopher Walker (Christopher.Walker@Colby.edu) and Nissa Cannon (ncannon@bu.edu) by 3/2