Tag Archives: literature

The Modernist World Edited by Stephen Ross and Allana Lindgren

Each year UVic faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees produce an incredible amount of intellectual content reflecting their breadth and diversity of research, teaching, personal, and professional interests. A list of these works is available here.

The Modernist World, edited by Stephen Ross and Allana Lindgren, is essential reading for those new to the subject as well as more advanced scholars in the area – offering clear introductions alongside new and refreshing insights.

About the Book

The Modernist World is an accessible yet cutting edge volume which redraws the boundaries and connections among interdisciplinary and transnational modernisms. The 61 new essays address literature, visual arts, theatre, dance, architecture, music, film, and intellectual currents. The book also examines modernist histories and practices around the globe, including East and Southeast Asia, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Australia and Oceania, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and the Arab World, as well as the United States and Canada. A detailed introduction provides an overview of the scholarly terrain, and highlights different themes and concerns that emerge in the volume.

This book is part of the Routledge Worlds Series.

About the Editors

Dr. Stephen Ross is an associate professor of English as well as Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at UVic. His specialties are twentieth-century literature, global modernism, and critical theory. His research concentrates on international literary modernism and critical theory. Another of his recent publications is Pointed Roofs, which we highlighted previously.

Dr. Allana Lindgren is an associate professor and Chair of the Theatre department at UVic. Dr. Lindgren was a member of the Executive of the Board of Directors for the Society of Dance History Scholars (a constituent member of the American Council of Learned Societies) from 2007 to 2010. She is the Dance Subject Editor for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism.

As part of her community outreach activities, Dr. Lindgren is the creator and principal researcher for the digital Oral History Dance Project. She has hosted post-show chats for the Canada Dance Festival at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. For Dance Victoria, she has hosted pre-show chats and dance salons, and served on the organization’s Board of Directors.

Praise for the Book

“The Modernist World is the latest effort in the ongoing and collaborative project of mapping modernisms around the world. Spanning eight geographical regions and covering film, theater, literature, the visual arts, dance, music, and architecture in each region, Ross and Lindgren establish vital convergences and divergences among interdisciplinary modernisms. What emerges is less a singular understanding of modernism than an appreciation of the provisional, strategic and situation-specific nature of the many modernisms. Encompassing a huge swathe of artistic activity, The Modernist World presents modernisms’ many permutations: their different goals, formal strategies, and periodization. This volume makes a truly magnificent contribution to global modernist studies.” – Laura Winkiel, University of Colorado Boulder, USA

“The Modernist World is a remarkable and timely volume. Unique in its multidisciplinary and geographical range, this collection of over fifty essays offers a truly global account of modernist cultural production. More than that, it investigates the shifting signification of the term ‘modernism’ itself as it moves across continents and art forms. It will certainly become an indispensable resource for students and scholars working in the ‘new modernist studies’.” – Anna Snaith, Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature, King’s College London, UK

“Over the course of the last decade, scholars have repeatedly urged that modernism should be approached as a global phenomenon rather than just a European or North American accomplishment. And yet incredibly, there has never been a synoptic reference work to which students might have turned to broaden their horizons. The present compilation is thus long overdue: geographically and thematically comprehensive, it will make its mark on the field for many years to come!” – Tobias Boes, University of Notre Dame, USA

“Because of its excellent breadth and variety, this important collection does more to show the reorientation in modernist studies since the turn of the century than any other volume currently available.” – Peter Childs, Newman University, UK

Pointed Roofs Co-Edited by Stephen Ross

Each year UVic faculty, staff, students, alumni, and retirees produce an incredible amount of intellectual content reflecting their breadth and diversity of research, teaching, personal, and professional interests. A list of these works is available here.

Pointed Roofs is the first chapter-volume of Dorothy Richardson’s thirteen-volume novel series Pilgrimage and is co-edited by UVic English Professor Stephen Ross along with Tara Thomson.

About the Book

Pointed Roofs is a coming of age story. The protagonist is Miriam Henderson, seventeen years old. It tells the tale of Miriam’s first adventure as an adult, teaching English at a finishing school in Hanover, Germany. Though the tale is simple, it is not simply told; to capture the intensity of Miriam’s seemingly mundane experiences, Richardson developed a new narrative technique labelled “stream of consciousness” by the author May Sinclair. Pointed Roofs is a compelling account of a young woman’s dawning consciousness of what it means to be independent, an individual, and a woman in the early twentieth century.

This Broadview Edition places Richardson’s inventive narrative technique in the context of early twentieth-century literary modernism, showing the “startling newness,” in May Sinclair’s words, of Richardson’s writing. Letters from Richardson to friends, publishers, and critics show the complex relationships between her work and life.

About the Author

Dr. Stephen Ross is an associate professor of English as well as Cultural, Social, and Political Thought at UVic. His specialties are twentieth-century literature, global modernism, and critical theory.

His research concentrates on international literary modernism and critical theory. Most recently, Dr. Ross is General Editor of the Routledge Encyclopedia of Modernism: a comprehensive scholarly and educational resource with entries on all aspects of modernism across the arts, a wide temporal period, and around the world. He is co-founder and past director of the $2.2 million Modernist Versions Project, a digital humanities research project with activities devoted to generating data from modernist literary texts, devising novel methodologies for versioning texts that exist in multiple witnesses, developing tools for such work, and producing digital editions of modernist novels.

Visit Dr. Ross’ personal website, ghostprof.

Praise for the Book

“At last! An accessible, affordable, expertly edited and annotated version of Pointed Roofs. Stephen Ross and Tara Thomson guide readers through the most beloved volume of Pilgrimage, which takes us from the girlish intimacies of heroine Miriam Henderson’s late Victorian home, through her experience of familial bankruptcy and disgrace, to her self-imposed exile and employment as an English teacher among Germany’s pointed roofs. Thanks to Broadview Press, all students of modernism can now discover England’s answer to James Joyce: Richardson’s first chapter-volume in her ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Woman.’” – Kristin Bluemel, Monmouth University

“This Broadview edition of Dorothy Richardson’s Pointed Roofs is something of a landmark in contemporary modernist studies. It offers an attentively edited text, with the explanatory notes that one would expect of a Broadview Edition, opening up to students an understanding of Richardson’s writing without taking away from its seductive ambiguity. The appendix material is extremely well judged, and is particularly successful in demonstrating what an important figure Richardson was, and from just what heights her reputation had fallen. Now a new generation of Richardson readers will have access to a readable, affordable, and well-contextualized edition of this first chapter-volume of Pilgrimage. I have no doubt that this edition will inspire many of its readers to seek out more of this extraordinary modernist innovator’s work.” – Bryony Randall, University of Glasgow