MSA 2002 University of Wisconsin-Madison: Paper call
"Utopias of Compromise: Modernism and the British Welfare State"
I'm seeking paper proposals that attempt to forge connections between
British modernist texts and the turn towards the welfare state that Harold
Perkin identified in the inter-war period. If high modern authors, and
critics, reveal a certain distrust of utopian progressivism, relying
instead on the knowing irony that comes from present awareness of a
"better," more idyllic past, can we consider ways in which the welfare
state's "compromised" utopian solutions share an affinity with high
modernism? Are there ways in which Perkin's "corporate society" maintained
by professional trouble-shooters bears a resemblance to what David Trotter
recently termed the "paranoid" professionalism of high modern British
novelists? How does the welfare state's role in enabling social mobility
relate to the high modern bildungsroman? Are there ways in which generic
and governmental experimentation can be linked?
Abstracts and brief CVs by April 20. Email attachments only.
lfluet@holycross.edu
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