Gendering Modernism: A Historical Reappraisal of the Canon

Description

Gendering Modernism offers a critical reappraisal of the modernist movement, asking how gender norms of the time shaped the rebellion of the self-avowed modernists and examining the impact of radical gender reformers on modernism. Focusing primarily on the connections between North American and European modernists, Maria Bucur explains why it is imperative that we consider the gender angles of modernism as a way to understand the legacies of the movement. She provides an overview of the scholarship on modernism and an analysis of how definitions of modernism have evolved with that scholarship. Interweaving vivid case studies from before the Great War to the interwar period - looking at individual modernists from Ibsen to Picasso, Hannah H�ch to Josephine Baker - she covers various fields such as art, literature, theatre and film, whilst also demonstrating how modernism manifested itself in the major social-political and cultural shifts of the 20th century, including feminism, psychology, sexology, eugenics, nudism, anarchism, communism and fascism This is a fresh and wide-ranging investigation of modernism which expands our definition of the movement, integrating gender analysis and thereby opening up new lines of enquiry. Written in a lively and accessible style, Gendering Modernism is a crucial intervention into the literature which should be read by all students and scholars of the modernist movement as well 20th-century history and gender studies more broadly. Copyright Page Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Prologue Introduction: What Sort of Rebellion? Modernism: A Definition Scholarship on Modernism and Gender Organization of the Book Chapter 1 Modernism before the Great War Awakenings: Early Modernist Experiments Fin-de-Siècle: Ends and Beginnings Chapter 2 Modernism Flourishes The Great War Dada Surrealism Expressionism The Modernist Novel after 1918 The Tramp: Masculinity Reimagined Cabaret: Gender Transgressions Chapter 3 The Modernist Canon: How Did it Come About? Schools, Academies, Guilds, and Journals Collecting Shaping the Canon: Art Critics, Historians, Curators, and Feminist Scholars Chapter 4 A New Set of Criteria: Rebellion, Rejection, and Reimagining Gender The Suffragists Psychology Sexology Eugenics Nudism Anarchism Communism Fascism Conclusion Notes Prologue Introduction: What Sort of Rebellion? Chapter 1 Modernism before the Great War Chapter 2 Modernism Flourishes Chapter 3 The Modernist Canon:How Did it Come About? Chapter 4 A New Set of Criteria: Rebellion, Rejection, and Reimagining Gender Conclusion Selected Bibliography of Secondary Sources Index