Modernism: Evolution of an Idea

Sean Latham is Pauline Walter Endowed Chair of English and Comparative Literature and director of the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. He is editor of the James Joyce Quarterly, co-founder of the Modernist Journals Project. His teaching and research focuses on modernist studies, James Joyce, periodicals, media theory, and the digital humanities. He is the author or editor of nine books including “Am I a Snob?”: Modernism and the Novel (Cornell University Press, 2003), The Art of Scandal: Modernism, Libel Law, and the Roman à Clef (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), and The Little Review Ulysses (New York: Yale University Press, 2015).Gayle Rogers is Professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh, USA. He works primarily on global modernisms, literary history, translation, comparative literature, and periodicals. His publications include Incomparable Empires: Modernism and the Translation of Spanish and American Literature (2016), Modernism and the New Spain: Britain, Cosmopolitan Europe, and Literary History (2012), and a number of works in PMLA, Modernism/Modernity, Comparative Literature, NOVEL, Journal of Modern Literature, James Joyce Quarterly, The Oxford Handbook of Global Modernisms, Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, Modern Fiction Studies, Revista de Estudios Orteguianos, and 100 Escritores del siglo XX.

The field of modernist studies consists in large part of debates over how the field should be defined…[This book] is an elegant, lucid, and helpful introduction to the field of modernist studies. Yet— and to its very great credit—it does not shy away from the definitional problems I have described but weaves them into a clear articulation of the difficulties and contradictions at the heart of modernism as a project and as a field.

• Introduction: Is there a there there?Chapter 1: The Emergence of “Modernism”Chapter 2: ConsolidationChapter 3: Iron FilingsChapter 4: NetworksGlossaryCritical BibliographyWorks Cited