New Ways of Thinking About Modernism and the Left

Scholars have explored modernism’s relationship both with the political right, broadly construed (fascism, nationalism, etc.) and the political left (feminism, pacifism, and Marxism in its time, how it anticipates disability studies in our time, etc.). In the spirit of MSA 2020’s stream topics on crip modernisms, activism, and environmentalism, this panel explores new paths for scholarship on modernism and the left.

In support of “new” conceptual models, I leave open the meaning of “the left.” Papers on pre-WWII modernism are encouraged, and subsequent modernisms are also welcome topics. Papers can address individual writers or modernism as a movement, and describe modernisms as expressing or repudiating leftist values. They might discuss modernism and anarchism (including anarchism’s distinctions from other leftist ideologies), modernism and environmentalism (and how environmentalist agendas have or have not changed over the last century), modernism and post-Enlightenment faith in historical progress, etc.

Submit 150-word abstracts and 50-word scholarly biographies to Jesse Wolfe at jwolfe1@csustan.edu by Sunday, March 15.