Robert Brain traces the origins of artistic modernism to specific technologies of perception developed in late-nineteenth-century laboratories. Brain argues that the thriving fin-de-siècle field of "physiological aesthetics," which sought physiological explanations for the capacity to appreciate beauty and art, changed the way poets, artists, and musicians worked and brought a dramatic transformation to the idea of art itself.

Robert Brain traces the origins of artistic modernism to specific technologies of perception developed in late-nineteenth-century laboratories. Brain argues that the thriving fin-de-siècle field of “physiological aesthetics,” which sought physiological explanations for the capacity to appreciate beauty and art, changed the way poets, artists, and musicians worked and brought a dramatic transformation to the idea of art itself.

Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism brings into dialogue Maurice Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology with modernist art, literature, music, film and neurophysiological discoveries, opening up the complexities of the philosopher's phenomenology of perception to a broader audience across the arts. An important resource for anyone interested in the links between modernism and philosophy, Understanding Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism offers close readings of Merleau-Ponty's key texts, explores modernist works in light of his thought, and provides an extended glossary of Merleau-Ponty's central terms and concepts.

The term “modernism” serves as a label for a variety of tendencies, attitudes, convictions, and for works of art disparate in quality and meaning, but alike in spirit and, sometimes, conception. Critics have been at pains to define modernism; some even wonder whether it should be defined at all. This introduction aims at presenting a number of critical attitudes to modernism in the hope of offering readers both a critical landscape and the necessary coordinates for the discovery of the literary and cultural patchwork of which modernism is composed. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies “modernism” as the portmanteau term for “[a]ny of various movements in art, architecture, literature, etc., generally characterized by a deliberate break with classical and traditional forms or methods of expression;” moreover, ‘modernism’ refers to “the work or ideas of the adherents of such a movement”. The definition is sufficiently informative, but it offers no chronological coordinates and is rather general. Every new artistic movement is characterized by “a deliberate break with classical and traditional forms or methods of expression”; in this respect, the Elizabethans were modernists, as were the Romantics; moreover, the definition not only considers “modernism” as referring to “various movements”, but also mentions such disparate fields as “art, architecture, literature, etc.”. In pointing out the limits of the OED definition, I do not intend to question the lexicographers’ ability; on the contrary, I intend to set forth a hypothesis: when attempting to define modernism, every effort, even the most accurate and refined, falls short of the mark, because modernism simply defies definition, as would any artistic movement which counts relative chronological indeterminateness and inherent diversity among its more interesting peculiarities. Furthermore, the idea of modernism is perhaps more enticing and familiar than the reality of it, it is thus hard to step away from prejudices and commonplaces to look at the object of study itself. “Modernism,” Lawrence Rainey writes, “is preceded by its reputation, or even by several reputations: it is endowed with authority so monumental that a reader is tempted to overlook the very experience of encountering modernist works; or it is attended with such opprobrium (the modernists were all fascists or anti-Semites, or if not that, “elitists”) that one might wonder why anyone had bothered to read them at all. It is easy, too easy, to slight the grisly comedy or miss the mordant wit, to skim the surface of dazzling surprises, to neglect the sheer wildness and irredeemable opacity at the heart of modernist work”. Tratto dall'Introduzione dell'Autrice

This volume combines a clear overview for those with no prior knowledge or experience of modernism with a subtle argument that will appeal to higher level undergraduates and scholars.

Drawing on a variety of interdisciplinary debates in cultural studies and contemporary theory, Modernism, Inc. provides a new look at the relationship between modernism and postmodernism within the critical frame of twentieth-century American culture. Organized around the idea of "incorporation"--embodiment, repressed memory, and advanced capitalism--Modernism, Inc. covers a wide range of topics: Josephine Baker's "hot house style"; the president's penis in American political life; myth-making and the Hoover Dam; trauma, poetics, and the Armenian genocide; feminist kitsch and the recuperation of North America's "Great Lady painters"; Gertrude Stein and Jewish Social Science; the Reno Divorce Factory and the production of gender; Andy Razaf and Black Bolshevism. Collectively, the essays suggest that the relationship between the modern and the postmodern is not one of rupture, belatedness, dilution, or extremity, but of haunting. Modernism, Inc. looks at our ghosts, and at the unspeakable secrets of modernity from which they're derived. Contributors: Maria Damon, Walter Kalidjian, Walter Lew, Janet Lyon, William J. Maxwell, Cary Nelson, John Timberman Newcombe, David G. Nicholls, Thomas Pepper, Paula Rabinowitz, Daniel Rosenberg, Marlon Ross, Jani Scandura, Kathleen Stewart, Julia Walker.

The two-volume work Modernism has been awarded the prestigious 2008 MSA Book Prize! Modernism has constituted one of the most prominent fields of literary studies for decades. While it was perhaps temporarily overshadowed by postmodernism, recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in modernism on both sides of the Atlantic. These volumes respond to a need for a collective and multifarious view of literary modernism in various genres, locations, and languages. Asking and responding to a wealth of theoretical, aesthetic, and historical questions, 65 scholars from several countries test the usefulness of the concept of modernism as they probe a variety of contexts, from individual texts to national literatures, from specific critical issues to broad cross-cultural concerns. While the chief emphasis of these volumes is on literary modernism, literature is seen as entering into diverse cultural and social contexts. These range from inter-art conjunctions to philosophical, environmental, urban, and political domains, including issues of race and space, gender and fashion, popular culture and trauma, science and exile, all of which have an urgent bearing on the poetics of modernity.