Maureen G. Shanahan is Professor of Art History at James Madison University. She has published some twenty articles on gender, trauma, Léger, and other modernist themes. She is coeditor of Simón Bolívar: Travels and Transformations of a Cultural Icon.

“Maureen Shanahan’s compelling study examines a fundamental but understudied dimension of the art of Fernand Léger, a First World War veteran widely celebrated as the most optimistic progenitor of machine aesthetics in Europe. Léger’s oeuvre is skillfully reevaluated in light of his experience of wartime trauma and the broader fear of emasculation that haunted French society throughout his lifetime. The book makes an important contribution to Cubism studies and to the history of French culture.”—Mark Antliff, author of Sculptors Against the State: Anarchism and the Anglo-European Avant-Garde

Maureen G. Shanahan is Professor of Art History at James Madison University. She has published some twenty articles on gender, trauma, Léger, and other modernist themes. She is coeditor of Simón Bolívar: Travels and Transformations of a Cultural Icon.

“Maureen Shanahan’s compelling study examines a fundamental but understudied dimension of the art of Fernand Léger, a First World War veteran widely celebrated as the most optimistic progenitor of machine aesthetics in Europe. Léger’s oeuvre is skillfully reevaluated in light of his experience of wartime trauma and the broader fear of emasculation that haunted French society throughout his lifetime. The book makes an important contribution to Cubism studies and to the history of French culture.”—Mark Antliff, author of Sculptors Against the State: Anarchism and the Anglo-European Avant-Garde

Maureen G. Shanahan is Professor of Art History at James Madison University. She has published some twenty articles on gender, trauma, Léger, and other modernist themes. She is coeditor of Simón Bolívar: Travels and Transformations of a Cultural Icon.

“Maureen Shanahan’s compelling study examines a fundamental but understudied dimension of the art of Fernand Léger, a First World War veteran widely celebrated as the most optimistic progenitor of machine aesthetics in Europe. Léger’s oeuvre is skillfully reevaluated in light of his experience of wartime trauma and the broader fear of emasculation that haunted French society throughout his lifetime. The book makes an important contribution to Cubism studies and to the history of French culture.”—Mark Antliff, author of Sculptors Against the State: Anarchism and the Anglo-European Avant-Garde