Modernist Magazines Conference

July 12-14th 2007, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Keynote Speaker: Michael North (UCLA)

'The Modernist Atlantic' is the first of two international conferences organised by the Modernist Magazines Project, directed by Peter Brooker (University of Sussex) and Andrew Thacker (De Montfort University), and funded by the AHRC. Although the study of modernism has been revolutionised over the last decade it is only recently been recognised that periodical publications made a distinctive contribution to the modernist movement. This conference addressed the role of magazines in the construction of modernism, focussing upon magazines in Britain, Ireland and North America. Papers were about the following themes:

• studies of individual magazines;
• studies of individual writers and artists in magazines;
• archives;
• serialisation;
• the short story in magazines;
• metropolitan and regional cultures;
• coteries and salons;
• advertising;
• visual culture;
• gender and publishing;
• race/nationalism/identities;
• technologies, typists, typefaces;
• circulation, censorship and readership;
• patronage; editors;
• manifestoes and movements;
• the avant-garde;
• tradition and the new;
• 'little' and 'large' magazines;
• popular and mainstream;
• transnationalism and geomodernisms;
• small presses and printers.

Programme

• Thursday 12 July

  • 12.00-2.00   Registration and Lunch
  • 2.00-2.30   Conference Introduction - Peter Brooker and Andrew Thacker
  • 2.30   Panel 1: The New Age
    • Henry Mead, Max Stirner, T. E. Hulme and A. R. Orage: radical individualism at The New Age
    • Jeff Wallace, "A Deserted Potato Field I sing": David Eder, The New Age and Modernist Science
    • John Wood, "Bacchanalia; or, The New Age" - The Social Modernism of Orage and The New Age
  •     Panel 2: The 1890s
    • Imogen Hart, Arts and Crafts: The Acorn, The Evergreen, and The Hobby Horse
    • David Peters Corbett, Symbolism in The Dome, The Dial, and The Pagent
    • Giles Bergel, Modernist Magazines and the Reinvention of the Chapbook in Britain and America
  • 4:30   Keynote - Michael North, "Transatlantic Transfer: Little Magazines and Euro-American Modernism"
  • 6:00   Reception - Viewing of exhibition on The New Age and Other Modernist Magazines

• Friday, 13th July

  • 9.30   Panel 3: Transatlantic Exchanges
    • Stephen Rogers, 'Barnum of Bohemia': Guido Bruno, Greenwich Village and Transatlantic Cultural Exchange
    • Andreas Kramer, The Regionalist Atlantic: Eugene Jolas and Transition
    • Richard Price, The Exchange: Migrant's Transatlantic Dialogue
  •     Panel 4: Art, Design and Letters
    • Rebecca Beasley, Frank Rutter and Art and Letters
    • Emma Watts, The Comic Critic: The Satirical Representation of Fine Art
    • Elizabeth Darling, "What gives our dreams their daring is that they can be realised": Focus and the Progression of British Architectural Modernism, 1938-1939
  •     Panel 5: 1940s Poetry
    • Tim Woods, The Role of University Little Magazines in Modernist Poetry
    • James Keery, Poetry (London) and Apocalyptic Modernism
    • Collett Tracey, Preview, First Statement, and Modernism in Montreal 1940-1975
  • 11:00   Refreshment Break
  • 11:30   Panel 6: Women/Magazines
    • Lori Beavis, The Canadian Magazine, 1893-1924
    • Catherine Clay, Re-viewing Modernism in Feminist Periodical Culture: The Story of Time and Tide
    • Fiona Hackney, 'Women are News': Feminist Modernity and British Women's Magazines 1919-1939
  •     Panel 7: 20s/30s Critical Reviews
    • Michael Whitworth, The Refracted Reader of The Athenaeum and The Adelphi
    • Jane Goldman, Idiotic Admonitions and Unwanted Counsels: Virginia Woolf's Spat with Life and Letters
    • Jason Harding, The Criterion: T.S. Eliot and 'The Idea of a Literary Review'
  • 1:00   Lunch
  • 2:30   Panel 8: The Avant-Garde in Britain
    • Andrzej Gasiorek, The 'Little Magazine' as Weapon: Blast
    • Anne Fernihough, Freewomen, Supermen and ...Vegetarians: food-reform and early Modernism
    • Eric White, Location, Location, Location: Place and Languages of Advertising in Blast, New York Dada, and Contact
  •     Panel 9: Race, Celebrity, and Economics in the U.S.
    • Benôit Tadié, From The Smart Set to Black Mask: Economic Interdependence and Cultural Dialogism in American Periodicals Between the Wars
    • Rachel Farebrother, W. E. B. Du Bois and Boasian Anthropology in The Crisis
    • Faye Hamill, Mainstream Magazines and Modernist Celebrity
  • 4:00   Tea
  • 4:30   Keynote Laurel Brake, 'Journalism and Modernism: Culture Wars or Intimate Relations?'
  • 7:00   Poetry Reading: Rod Mengham, Ian Patterson, Ulli Freer, Carol Watts
  • 8:00   Dinner

• Saturday 14th July

  • 9:30   Panel 10: Revolution and Reaction
    • Scott McCracken, 'Nor are we at pains to be littered with the Illustrious Dead and Dying': Cambridge Little Magazines 1928-1934
    • Peter Marks, Poetry and the People: A Job of Work and the Limelight of Print.
    • Matt Huculak, The London Mercury and the Other Moderns
  •     Panel 11: Presses and Bookshops
    • Mark Jacobs, The Seizin Press
    • Jane Dowson, The Bermondsey Book
    • Trevor Tolley, John Lehmann and the Acclimatisation of Modernism in Britain
  •     Panel 12: The Dial
    • Victoria Bazin, Sexual Politics and Marianne Moore's Editorship of The Dial
    • Tara Stubbs, "Irish Magic" in America: Marianne Moore at The Dial Magazine, 1925-1929
    • Margery Palmer McCulloch, Journals for a New Age - Little Magazines and Literary Revival in Interwar Scotland
  • 11:00   Refreshment Break
  • 11:30   Round Table: Cliff Wulfman (Brown), Laurel Brake (Birkbeck), Peter White (ProQuest), Peter Brooker (Chair), Andrew Thacker
  • 1:00   Lunch and Conference Close

Download the Conference Registration leaflet.