Modernist Communities across Cultures and Media

Book excerpt: Marked by a rejection of traditional affiliations such as nation, family, and religion, modernism is often thought to privilege the individual over the community. The contributors to this volume question this assumption, uncovering the communal impulses of the modernist period across genres, cultures, and media. Contributors show how modernist artists and intellectuals reconfigured relations between the individual and the collective. They examine Dada art practices that involve games and play; shared reactions to the post–World War I rhetoric of Woodrow Wilson; the reception of James Joyce’s Ulysses in Harlem Renaissance circles; the publishing platform of the Bengali literary review Parichay; popular radio shows and news broadcasts; and the universal aspects of film-viewing. They also explore radical reimaginings of community as seen in the collective cohabiting envisioned by Virginia Woolf, the utopian experiment of Black Mountain College, and the communal autobiographies of Gertrude Stein. The essays demonstrate that these pluralist ecosystems based on participation were open to paradox, dissent, and multiple perspectives. Through a transnational and transmedial lens, this volume argues that the modernist period was a breakthrough in a rethinking of community that continues in the postmodern era. Contributors: Hélène Aji | Jessica Berman | Jeremy Braddock | Supriya Chaudhuri | Debra Rae Cohen | Melba Cuddy-Keane | Claire Davison | Irene Gammel