"Suble Modernist Revolutions: 1925 as Annus Mirablis" invites abstract submissions for our panel at NeMLA 2025 (March 6-9, Philadelphia). A centennial has passed since 1925, a watershed year of subtle Modernist revolution. If we look to 1925 as a year of subtle Modernist revolution, where Modernist literature found its footing as a revolutionary art movement, what symbols, patterns, or commentaries emerge through the exercise of Modernist techniques? Moreover, where has this revolutionary movement engendered revolutions–the cycling and recycling of certain formal interventions? What writing practices still echo through contemporary literature today and what are their implications? For this panel, we invite papers which engage with practices of subtle Modernist revolution, whether scholarly or pedagogical, within the resonances of 1925 for Modernist literature.

In 1925 a number of landmark Modernist texts appeared in print for the first time. While numerous texts associated with the movement were published for some two decades prior, we identify 1925 as a watershed year of subtle Modernist revolution. Multiple works published within this timeframe pose a series of elusive and inconspicuous formal experiments that quietly shape the texts’ plots and wider social critiques in dramatic ways. Among these were Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs. Dalloway, notable for her use of free-indirect speech, Ernest Hemingway's story collection, In Our Time, articulating his “iceberg” style, John Dos Passos' cinematic novel Manhattan Transfer, and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s pastiche of the nouveau riche, The Great Gatsby. Additionally, 1925 also saw the publication of Thomas Mann’s novella “Disorder and Early Sorrow,” which depicts the effects of Germany’s economic downturn in the 1920s. Subtle as they may be, these formal innovations define the legacy of early literary modernism, serving as techniques to be revisited, refracted, or rejected by writers working across a range of genres and geographies throughout the 20th century and beyond.

If we look to 1925 as a year of subtle Modernist revolution, where Modernist literature found its footing as a revolutionary art movement, what symbols, patterns, or commentaries emerge through the exercise of Modernist techniques? Moreover, where has this revolutionary movement engendered revolutions–the cycling and recycling of certain formal interventions? What writing practices still echo through contemporary literature today and what are their implications? For this panel, we invite papers which engage with practices of subtle Modernist revolution, whether scholarly or pedagogical, within the resonances of 1925 for Modernist literature.

Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words here: https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21063