Modernism in a Global Context: (New Modernisms)

Exploring the transnational dimension of literary modernism and its increasing centrality to our understanding of 20th-century literary culture, Modernism in a Global Context surveys the key issues and debates central to the 'global turn' in contemporary Modernist Studies. Topics covered include: - Transnational exchanges between Western and non-Western literary cultures - Imperialism and the Modernism - Cosmopolitanism and postcolonial literatures - Global literary institutions - from the Little Magazine to the Nobel Prize - Mass media - photography, cinema, and radio broadcasting in the modernist age Exploring the work of writers such as T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys, Wole Soyinka, Salman Rushdie and critics such as Edward Said, Pascale Casanova, Paul Gilroy, and Gayatri Spivak amongst many others, the book also includes a comprehensive annotated guide to further reading and online resources.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments 1. An Aesthetics of Motion 2. Imperialism 3. Cosmopolitanism 4. Cultural Institutions 5. Media 6. Conclusion 7 Bibliography

About the Author :
Peter Kalliney is William J. Tuggle Professor of English at the University of Kentucky, USA. His previous publications include Commonwealth of Letters: British Literary Culture and the Emergence of Postcolonial Aesthetics (2013) and Cities of Affluence and Anger: A Literary Geography of Modern Englishness (2006).

Review :
The book, and the series as a whole, is useful for both beginning students and advanced scholars of modernism. It approaches its topic through the critical theories of modernism, grounding it in academia, and provides an extended bibliography of the major critical works. The broad rather than deep approach makes Modernism in a Global Context an excellent beginner’s guide to the movement. In range and scope, this is an ambitious and comprehensive book ... One of its most laudable achievements is achieving such breadth without sacrificing depth, nuance of argument, or readability ... The book is accessible to undergraduates without flattening out complicated questions that will challenge all scholars of modernism ... Modernism in a Global Context provides a thoughtful and compelling view of global modernism at a key moment in this developing field. [T]he ambitious re-mapping of Modernism, especially in the cosmopolitan and postcolonial contexts, provides a fascinating arena for further thought and discussion. In this hearty work, Kalliney (Univ. of Kentucky) examines modernism in the context of 20th- and 21st-century globalism. Taking modernism beyond the shores of Europe and North American, Kalliney offers chapters on media (Marshall McLuhan et al.), cosmopolitanism, cultural Institutions (UNESCO), and imperialism. Of these the last makes the most significant contribution. Here the author tackles such usual suspects as Joseph Conrad and Elizabeth Bowen but also focuses on Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Canadian M. G. Vassanji (who was raised in Tanzania but emigrated to Canada), and others. Particularly interesting is Kalliney's understanding of anticolonial modernism as expansive in nature. For him, the tools of modernism allow for a broad understanding and construction of community, which he argues is “asymmetrical in nature" and crosses temporal and spatial boundaries. This much-needed study allows for ownership of modernism beyond the traditional hegemony. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. A very effective, very accessible and remarkably even-handed survey of the existing, highly complex landscape of new modernist studies. Engagingly written and keenly aware of the enormity of its topic, Kalliney’s book maintains an enviable blend of scholarly rigor and accessible introduction, making it one of the most ideal teaching tools in a series devoted to that audience … Kalliney proceeds to move through a provocative range of examples of how one might conceive of modernism as a global phenomenon while remaining attentive to textual specificity.