Center for Cultural Analysis

Modernism and Globalization

Details: Category: Affiliated Groups

modernism globalism

Since its inception in 2007, the Modernism and Globalization Seminar Series has explored the effects of globalization on the production, circulation, and study of twentieth- and twenty-first century literature and culture. With public lectures, full-day symposia, informal roundtables, and discussion groups, the series brings together scholars and students working in the fields of modernism, transnational and comparative literary studies, and globalization.

Over the past five years, the MGSS has hosted several major symposia: “Modernism’s Transnational Futures” in Fall 2007, “Modernism and Postcolonialism” in Spring 2009, “Does the British Novel Have a Future? Transnational Methodologies and the New Literary History” in Spring 2010, and “After Interiority? Minds, Mammals, Modernism” in Fall 2011. Visiting faculty and Rutgers colleagues and graduate students gathered on these occasions for short presentations and long, searching conversations about new directions in such fields as modernist studies, world literature, postcolonial studies, translation studies, the history and theory of the novel, comparative cultural studies, South Asian and Caribbean studies, animal studies, and philosophies of mind.

The MGSS has also sponsored two graduate-student conferences, 2010’s conference on “Globalization and Aesthetics” and 2012’s conference on “Modernism and the Folk”, which featured a keynote lecture by Christopher Reed, professor of English and visual culture at Penn State University.

In Fall 2011, the MGSS launched a new collaboration with Columbia University, the New York-New Jersey Modernism Seminar (NYNJMS). The NYNJMS brings together faculty and graduate students in modernist studies from campuses across the region. The inaugural event, a seminar with Rita Felski (University of Virginia), was held at Rutgers in November 2011 and was attended by more than 40 faculty and graduate students from Rutgers, Columbia, NYU, Princeton, Drew, SUNY, CUNY, and Fordham. A spring event, featuring Jesse Matz (Kenyon College), drew the group to Columbia’s campus in New York. The NYNJMS meets twice a year, once at Rutgers and once at Columbia, for intensive two-hour seminars devoted to advanced work-in-progress by leaders in the field.

MGSS events at Rutgers in 2012–2013 include an October 26 NYNJMS colloquium with Heather Love (University of Pennsylvania) and a lecture by James F. English (University of Pennsylvania) on March 28. Later in the year, the MGSS will co-sponsor an NYNJMS colloquium with Simon Gikandi (Princeton University), to be hosted at Columbia.