American modernism

"An Art That Won't Behave": Film and the Seven Arts, 1907-1921

by Michael Devine

American Literature 84.1 (March 2012): 89-117

In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to... more In the first two decades of the twentieth century, American artists connected to the journal the Seven Arts sought to transform the cinema into an indigenous art free from European influence. Precisely because the cinema was “an art that won't behave,” as the journal's first essay on film put it, it depended on the arts as tutor texts in the effort to restrain sensory disorder and reinvigorate communal life. Wholly absent from critical treatments that see film as a model for the most kinetic modernist practices, the journal provides entry to a richly interdisciplinary history of American cinema: in the critical writings and poetry of the journal's contributors, including James Oppenheim, Waldo Frank, Vachel Lindsay, Stephen Vincent Benét, and Babette Deutsch, and in the works of artists close to the journal—John Sloan's painting Movies, Five Cents (1907) and Paul Strand and Charles Sheeler's abstract film Manhatta (1921). Imagined as a shelter from the most dispiriting forces of urban-industrial modernity, the cinema was at once embraced, challenged, and idealized by these artists who practiced what Wanda Corn has called a “transcendent modernism.”

Lovechild: Stieglitz, O'Keeffe, and the Birth of American Modernism

by Camara Holloway

"These Were the Things That Bounded Me": A New Examination of Millay's Dramatic Works

by Kathryn Anderson

Master of Arts thesis, Case Western Reserve University (2008)

The Anguish of Complacency: An Essay on William R. Hutchison's The Modernist Impulse in American Protestantism

by Robert Pierce Forbes

Although Hutchison makes a convincing case for the serioiusness, intelligence, and conviction of American liberal... more Although Hutchison makes a convincing case for the serioiusness, intelligence, and conviction of American liberal theologians of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he underestimates and misunderstands--just as they did--the challenge and appeal of Fundamentism.

Por uma Historiografia do Modernismo: O Caso da Competitividade nas Literaturas Anglófonas

by Gustavo Vargas Cohen

The present text brings and comments on a series of dichotomies and conflicts that ravaged the English language... more The present text brings and comments on a series of dichotomies and conflicts that ravaged the English language modernists. The context of creation of their works is introduced
and external conflicts are highlighted, such as the world wars and their social, cultural and artistic implications, so as to reach the internal conflicts, those motivated by the anxiety and the disorientation that stemmed from that turbulent era and that generated a number of injurious observations among writers, i.e., the invectives which are the focus of this investigation. Based on oral and printed documents, this sagacious, oftentimes unhealthy, competition explored by Anglophone Modernists the likes of Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, T. S. Eliot and William Carlos Williams, among others, is presented through the search of a balance between historical-scientific rigor and good humor.

From quest to inquest: narrations of the self

by Yiru Lim

Corporate America And The New Luminous Environment: Kelly’s work with Johnson, Mies, and Noyes

by Margaret Maile Petty

chapter published in 'The Structure of Light: Richard Kelly and the Art of Architectural Illumination', edited by Dietrich Neumann (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), pp. 63-80.

This study examines the career and contributions of Richard Kelly, a central figure in the field of architectural... more This study examines the career and contributions of Richard Kelly, a central figure in the field of architectural lighting design in the USA in the postwar era. Kelly persistently argued for lighting design as a distinct and essential element of every architectural program and as the key mode through which we understand and experience the designed environment. Collaborating with many of the mid-century's most prominent architects, this chapter argues that Kelly played a formative role in the creation of a new visual language of corporate modernity, which was eagerly embraced by a number of significant firms as an important element in the articulation of a modern corporate identity.

Artificial lighting and the dialectics of domestic occupation in Philip Johnson's Glass and Guest Houses

by Margaret Maile Petty

published as conference proceedings, in 'Occupation: Negotiations with Constructed Space', University of Brighton (Brighton, UK: 2010).

As a space of escalating technological control, the modern domestic interior offered new potential to re-define the... more As a space of escalating technological control, the modern domestic interior offered new potential to re-define the meaning and means of habitation. This shift is clearly expressed in the transformation of electric lighting technology and applications for the modern interior in the mid-twentieth century. Addressing these issues, this paper examines the critical role of electric lighting in regulating and framing both the public and private occupation of Philip Johnson’s New Canaan estate. Exploring the dialectically paired transparent Glass House and opaque Guest House (both 1949), this study illustrates how Johnson employed artificial light to control the visual environment of the estate as well as to aestheticize the performance of domestic space. Looking closely at the use of artificial light to create emotive effects as well as to intensify the experience of occupation, this revisiting of the iconic Glass House and lesser-known Guest House provides a more complex understanding of Johnson’s work and the means with which he inhabited his own architecture. Calling attention to the importance of Johnson serving as both architect and client, and his particular interest in exploring the new potential of architectural lighting in this
period, this paper investigates Johnson’s use of electric light to support architectural narratives, maintain visual order and control, and to suit the nuanced desires of domestic
occupation.

Illuminating the Glass Box: Architectural lighting design and the performance of modern architecture in post-war America

by Margaret Maile Petty

published in the 'Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians' vol. 66, no. 2 (June, 2007), pp. 194-21.

This paper considers the relationship between the emerging profession of lighting design and the experience and... more This paper considers the relationship between the emerging profession of lighting design and the experience and promotion of modern architecture in the United States during the post-war era. Forming the core of this study is the collaborative design process developed between Philip Johnson, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Richard Kelly, a prominent mid-century lighting designer. The case studies examined in this paper include the Glass House, 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments, and the Seagram Building. Challenging architect-centric histories, this paper considers the role of lighting design in the realization of several modernist ideals, including transparency of the glass curtain wall, articulation of structure, and luminous architecture. The influence of illuminated advertising and modern stagecraft on the theory and practice of architectural lighting design also are addressed. This paper argues for an expanded history of modern architecture, one that includes the significant contributions of lighting design.

Perpetual Noon: Fluorescent Lighting and the Modern Office

by Margaret Maile Petty

published in 'Scapes' 7 (Fall 2008): pp. 9-15.

The modern corporate office is frequently portrayed in popular media as a soulless landscape of beige cubicles and... more The modern corporate office is frequently portrayed in popular media as a soulless landscape of beige cubicles and fluorescent lighting—a regularized, homogenous collection of boxes suspended in a field of ambient, artificial light. The abundant, shadowless illumination of fluorescent lighting that represented the triumph of modern technology over the circadian and spatial limitations of daylighting in the mid-twentieth century had become semiotic shorthand for the depersonalization of the individual office worker by the end of the twentieth century.This paper investigates the co-development of the modern office and technologies of environmental control that together contributed to the experience of white-collar work in the twentieth century.

American Language Poetry and the Definition of the Avant-Garde

by Jacob Edmond

Avant-Garde / Neo-Avant-Garde. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2005. 173-194.

"Myths and Contexts in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath" In Americana E-Journal of American Studies Vol. 6. No. 1. - Americas

by Gabriella Tóth

Ethnic Modernisms: Anzia Yezierska, Zora Neale Hurston, Jean Rhys, and the Aesthetics of Dislocation

by delia konzett

The Belated Tradition of Asian‐American Modernism

by delia konzett

SACRIFICING THE SIMPLE LIFE: The Specter of Networked Culture in Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House and the Limits of Ecocritical Methodology

by Leila C. Nadir

Coming Soon. Currently under review.

This article argues for a new ecocritical methodology to study the pervasive role of sacrifice and simplicity in... more This article argues for a new ecocritical methodology to study the pervasive role of sacrifice and simplicity in environmental literature. These tropes are two of the most widespread tropes of environmental ethics, and perhaps the most understudied. Reading Willa Cather's 1925 novel, The Professor's House, as my case study, I argue that these tropes figure a crisis in the ethical imagination of environmental thought and ecocritical methodology. However, ecocritical methodology is ill-equipped to deal with sacrifice's challenge to referentiality and the alternative modes of environmental ethics it suggests. Ostensibly a retreat to the past to rehabilitate a more sustainable way of life, sacrifice and simplicity fragment and fail in Cather's work, inchoately suggesting new theories of modernity and environment and providing the opportunity to rethink the limits of the ascetic ideal in a thoroughly modern industrialized, urbanized, networked culture.

“Discovery, Not Salvage": Marianne Moore’s Curatorial Methods.

by Catherine Paul

“‘Discovery, Not Salvage’:  Marianne Moore’s Curatorial Methods.”  Studies in the Literary Imagination 32:1 (Spring 1999):  91-114.  Reprinted in The Critical Response to Marianne Moore.  Ed. Elizabeth Gregory.  Westport, CT and London:  Praeger, 2003.  159-73.