The rationale for this event is to explore some of the key concepts outlined in what has come to be called the New Modernism Studies: to test their viability, the scope of their application, and their utility as critical coordinates for present and future research.
Some of these concepts include: widening the historical and geographical scope of Modernism from its paradigmatic focus on Transatlantic aesthetic production in the period c. 1890-1950; theories of belatedness, whether applied to a national or regional tradition when compared with the centres of Modernist production, or comparing the evolution of genres within those traditions; and dismantling assumptions of high, middle and popular culture as they have been applied to particular genres (avant-garde poetry vs. music hall entertainment, for example, or literary novels vs. detective fiction) or to aesthetic production in particular places and times. This schema is a starting point for further questions such as: how can the Modernist artwork be distinguished from that which is not Modernist? Is there a productive difference between not Modernism and not-Modernism? How and when do such terms as Late Modernism apply, and to what kinds of aesthetic productions?
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