Posts tagged Modernism

From Intermodernism to Science Fiction

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Wednesday 14th April, 1.15-2.30pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, W1T 3UW

Nick Hubble (Brunel University)
‘Naomi Mitchison: From Intermodernism to Science Fiction (via Mass-Observation)’

From her 1920s novels, influenced by Lawrence but aimed at the audience of Wells, to her subsequent deployment of modernist techniques for political ends, Naomi Mitchison may be considered a key intermodern writer. Her literary output during the 1930s – The Corn King and the Spring Queen (1931), Beyond This Limit (1934; a feminist fantasy illustrated by Wyndham Lewis), We Have Been Warned (1935), The Moral Basis of Politics (1938) and The Blood of the Martyrs (1939) – is comparable with Orwell’s. Her relentless pursuit of the ‘just society’, free from gender-based and sexual repression, made her a controversial figure even in that controversial decade. And her close literary associates of that decade – including Auden, Aldous Huxley, Olaf Stapledon, Stevie Smith, Wyndham Lewis and Walter Greenwood – suggest different ways of thinking about literary networks and cultural history in general. She was also a friend and supporter of Tom Harrisson and Mass-Observation, for whom she kept a wartime diary. Nick Hubble’s paper analyses this intermodern work and investigates how it relates to Memoirs of a Spacewoman (1962), a forerunner of the 1970s feminist utopian science fiction of writers such as Ursula Le Guin, Marge Piercy and Joanna Russ.

Free to all.

Literary haunted houses

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Wednesday 10th March, 1.15-2.30pm
Room 106, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, W1T 3UW

Andrew Smith (University of Glamorgan)
‘Haunted Houses and History: Locating the Anglo-American in Henry James’

Free to all.

Pound at the Poly: A Chronology

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A very successful one-day colloquium at 309 Regent Street celebrating the centenary of Ezra Pound’s lectures at the Regent Street Polytechnic on Friday 4th, with presentations from Massimo Bacigalupo, Walter Baumann, Becky Beasley, Helen Carr, Nick Selby and biographer David Moody, in front of an audience also including Ian Bell and Peter Brooker, among many others.

As an addendum to the day’s events, here’s a chronology of Pound’s involvement with the old Polytechnic: Continue reading Pound at the Poly: A Chronology

Ezra Pound programme announced

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Ezra Pound and Modern Criticism: 100 Years in London
Friday 4 December 2009, 9.30-5.00
Cayley Room (room 152), University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street

The programme is now available for the day’s anniversary celebration of Pound’s lectures at the Poly:

9.30                            Coffee/Tea

10.00                         Introduction

10.15-11.30            Session One
Massimo Bacigalupo, University of Genoa, ‘The Didactic Muse’
Walter Baumann, Ulster, ‘“Swinburne My Only Miss” (82/543): Snapshots from Pound’s London Years’

11.45-1.15             Session Two
Helen Carr, Goldsmiths, ‘Pound and “World-Poetry”’
Nick Selby, UEA, ‘“Found Full of Nomads”: Pound as American Critic in Patria Mia and Cathay

1.15-2.30             Lunch

2.30-4.00             Session Three
Rebecca Beasley, University of Oxford, ‘Pound’s New Criticism’
David Moody, University of York, ‘This is Not A Philological Work’

4.15-5.15             Round Table and Final Discussion

Global Art in Barcelona

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For our Catalan friends: David Cunningham will be representing the IMCC in Barcelona this week at the Catalan Association of Art Critics’ Fifth International Symposium on Art Criticism in a Global World. His opening address to the conference, entitled ‘Global Art/Global Modernities’, will be at 4.30pm on Friday 20 November at the MACBA Auditorium.

Further details here.

Ezra Pound at the Polytechnic

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Ezra Pound and Modern Criticism: 100 Years in London
Friday 4 December 2009, 9.30-5.00
Cayley Room (room 152), University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street

Celebrating the centenary of Ezra Pound’s lectures on Romance literature at the Polytechnic Institute in Regent Street, this one-day symposium, co-organised by the IMCC, brings together a range of speakers to discuss both Pound’s time in London and his contribution to modern literary criticism.

Speakers include: Massimo Bacigalupo (Genoa), Walter Bauman (Ulster), Rebecca Beasley (Oxford), Helen Carr (Goldsmiths), David Moody (York), Nick Selby (UEA)
Introduced by: David Cunningham and Leigh Wilson

FREE ADMISSION!