CALL FOR PAPERS
for a panel proposal for the Modernist Studies Association Conference, "New
Modernisms II" (12-15 October 2000, The University of Pennsylvania):
RETAILING IMPERIAL SPACE:
MODERNISM, PERIODICAL CULTURE, AND BRITISH IMPERIALISM, 1880-1930
Recent scholarship has successfully demonstrated the importance of empire
for modernist aesthetics. In addition, modernism, although once seen as a
reaction-formation to the products of mass culture, especially print
publications, now appears to us as saturated with the latter's language,
organizing structures, and ideological impulses.
Not only were periodicals widely read by modernist writers, they even served
as venues for the dissemination of modernist texts (the Daily Mail's
boosting of Marinetti, for instance). And yet much remains unclear about the
precise
relation during these years between literary modernism and the burgeoning
market for daily, weekly and monthly publications, publications which played
an important role in popularizing and commenting upon colonial affairs for a
mass readership.
How was modernism influenced by the dissemination of imperial ideology in
the field of periodical publication? What kinds of pressures did such mass
cultural representations of imperial space exert upon modernist texts? How
did modernist authors complicate, negotiate, contest, or concede to the
cultural and political weight of imperialism?
What, for example, was the impact of the representations of empire in W. T.
Stead's 'Review of Reviews' or by the 'empire before politics' Daily
Express, founded by Scouting-promoter Arthur Pearson? Why in 'Ulysses' does
Leopold Bloom dwell at such length upon a newspaper advertisement for a
colonization scheme? Why does Conrad portray Mr. Kurtz as 'writing for the
papers' and Marlow's aunt as having been 'carried off her feet' by a flood
of 'rot let loose in print'?
The panel invites original contributions to the rethinking of this key
intersection between modernist aesthetics, mass culture and imperialism.
Papers focusing upon specific modernist literary works, publications, or
theories of modernism are equally welcome.
Please send 1-2 page abstracts (preferably by email) by 25 March to Scott
Cohen, sac2n@virginia.edu.
--- S. A. Cohen sac2n@virginia.edu University of Virginia Department of English 219 Bryan Hall PO Box 400121 Charlottesville, VA 22903-4121=============================================== From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List CFP@english.upenn.edu Full Information at http://www.english.upenn.edu/CFP/ or write Erika Lin: elin@english.upenn.edu ===============================================
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