Παρουσίαση/Προβολή

(ENL561) -  Σταματίνα Δημακοπούλου

Περιγραφή Μαθήματος

The ‘name and nature of modernism’ (Malcom Bradbury and James MacFarlane, 1976) as well as the radicalism of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes, have been variously rethought and their boundaries are still being reconfigured. The feminist re-envisionings of various anglo and/or euro-centric modernist canons since the 1980s; the archival turn within modernist studies; the genealogical turn to ‘peripheral,’ transnational modernities and modernisms and to what Simon Gikandi has called ‘modernism in the world’ (2006); and more recently, queer epistemologies and disability theory; all these shifts have brought out blind spots and omissions and put on the map hitherto illegible and/or neglected voices and experiences. Through a focus on marginal, marginalised and/or dissident experiences and discourses, we will explore works that although may no longer occupy the margins of the modernist canon, sat for a long time uneasily in modernist and avant-garde contexts and legacies. 

We will examine various contexts and affiliations from New York Dada (Duchamp and Else von Freytag Loringhoven) to Harlem (Richard Bruce Nugent and Wallace Thurman), to expatriate, diasporic voices from the early 1910s to the late 1930s (Mina Loy, Djuna Barnes and Claude MacKay). Through the texts under examination, we will reflect on the politics and the aesthetics of a Euro-American modernism in relation to various revisionisms that necessitated renewed perspectives on texts and contexts: transatlanticism, transnationalism, feminist and postcolonial, and more recently de-colonial, disability studies, and queer thought. Through a focus on marginality, our aim will also be to think about the relevance of continuing reading modernist texts in our current moment and whether and how modernist and avant-garde writing and practices put our critical habits to the test and may offer ways of appraising and reflecting on more contemporary cultural forms.

Ημερομηνία δημιουργίας

Παρασκευή 17 Σεπτεμβρίου 2021