American Modernism (Re)Considered

Jeff Birkenstein is Assistant Professor of English at Centralia College, USA. His publications include The Cinema of Terry Gilliam: It's a Mad World (2013) and Reframing 9/11: Film, Popular Culture and the "War on Terror" (Bloomsbury, 2010).Robert C. Hauhart, Ph.D., J.D. is Professor in the Department of Society and Social Justice at Saint Martin’s University, USA. He is the author or editor of ten books, including Food and the American Dream in American Literature (forthcoming), The Lonely Quest: Constructing the Self in 21st Century American Life (2019), and Social Justice in American Literature (2017).

This book is a useful and fresh assessment of American modernism. It reconsiders familiar works, themes, and forms in comparison with unfamiliar ones, and in so doing, introduces lesser-known writers and works into the archive. The composite effect is a reminder to readers of the stunning breadth as well as the broad inter-artistic scope of American modernism, and of modernism more generally.

• List of FiguresAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Modernism/Not ModernismRobert C. Hauhart, Saint Martin’s University, USAPart I: A Preoccupation with Language and Interiority1. Was Hemingway a Modernist? Disenchantment, Interiority, and Stream of Consciousness in His 1920s European NovelsRobert C. Hauhart, Saint Martin’s University, USA2. Nella Larson and the Interior Lives of African American Women in Passing and QuicksandKimberly Smith, Elizabeth City State University, USA3. Loss and Mourning in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and Tender Is the NightRossie Artemis, University of Nicosia, CyprusPart II: Collisions of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality 4. “You've found that out too”: Modernism in Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum BunAndrea Tinnemeyer, The College Preparatory School, USA5. The Strange Career of Coleman Silk: The Human Stain as Jim Crow NarrativeDurthy Washington, LitUnlocked LLC, USA6. Mexican-American Generation Authors on the U.S. Color LineMelanie Hernandez, California State University, Fresno, USA7. 400 Years of Apocalyptic Rage: New Modernist Depictions of Racial Justice in the Last Novels of Richard Wright and Chester HimesKimberly Drake, Scripps College, USAPart III: Forms of Performance, Artistic Expression, and Literary Images8. Revisiting Langston Hughes’ Modernist PoetryAsma Dhouioui, University of Carthage, Tunisia9. “The still point of the turning world” in T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets as a Key to Modernist Literature Inspired by the String QuartetKiyoko Magome, University of Tsukuba, Japan10. “The image of one fatal word”: Verbal-Visual Crisscrossings in e.e. cummings’ Experimental ModernismBowen Wang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China11. Images Reimagined: Modernist Photography, and the Short StoryJeff Birkenstein, Centralia College, USA and Ericka Birkenstein, Independent Scholar, USA Part IV: Transitioning: Expectations, Explorations, and Genders 12. The Betrayals of PassingLuis Alberto Cortés, Texas A&M University-Kingsville, USA13. Modernism’s Ghostly MenDavid Magill, Longwood University, USA14. Reconstructed Citizen Ladies: Celia Madden and Edna Pontellier as Precursors to Modernism and ModernityRichmond Adams, Independent Scholar, USA15. Modernism and the Quantified Self in Edith Wharton’s Twilight SleepMolly Mann, State University of New York, Stony Brook, USA16. “Makings of the Sun”: Phenomenal Perception in Stevens, Merleau-Ponty, and Anne Carson’s Ancient Greek PoetsAngus Cleghorn, Seneca Polytechnic, CanadaNotes on ContributorsIndex