Literary Infrastructure and the Precarity of Modernist Writers 

This proposed panel invites papers on the working conditions of modernist writers, the context within which they became writers, and the material conditions therein. What can be said about feminist, LGBTQ+, working class, non-Western, and other marginalized modernist figures and their literary careers? What are the modernist afterlives of a literary infrastructure designed to sustain only a select few? Papers may address challenges in the publishing industry; publishing under pseudonyms; working class writers; literary magazines; en dehors garde configurations of writers and similar theories about literary infrastructure and prestige; mutual aid networks and solidarity; mentorship and friendship; life writing; author biographies; family responsibilities and family pressures.

Questions about this proposed panel may be sent to Angela Acosta (University of South Carolina), organizer (aa108@mailbox.sc.edu); please email abstracts (200-250 words) and brief (2-3 sentences) bios by March 20. Conference information is available here.