Centre for Modernist Cultures

• Dr Rona Cran
• Dr Eleanor Dobson
• Dr John Fagg
• Dr Rex Ferguson
• Professor Andrzej Gasiorek
• Professor Alexandra Harris
• Dr Oliver Herford
• Professor David James
• Professor Deborah Longworth
• Professor Rebecca N Mitchell
• Professor Daniel Moore
• Dr Chris Mourant
• Dr Rebecca Roach
• Professor Max Saunders
• Professor Lyndsey Stonebridge
• Professor Nathan Waddell
• Dr Emma West

‘The Art of Identification’

Rex Ferguson has been awarded an AHRC Networking Grant, for the project ‘The Art of Identification’. In the modern period, the identification of individuals has taken a number of forms: from early-modern badges and insignia, to contemporary retinal scanners. Dr Ferguson thinks that while many scholars are exploring this topic, the links between identification methods and how personal identity is shown in literature and art have been overlooked. This research network aims to fill this scholarly gap. It will examine identity documents and various written and visual media. The project will create a new model for identifying practices and the artistic depiction of identity. 

Collected Works of Wyndham Lewis

Nathan Waddell and Andrzej Gąsiorek are on the editorial board for a complete critical edition of Wyndham Lewis's works. This edition will be published by Oxford University Press over the next ten years. The edition will have about 42 volumes. It will be authoritative, critical, and uniform. This is based on thorough research into the main archives. It will also include a complete record of textual variants and revisions. This edition will explore the origins, creation, publication, and reception of Lewis's many works. It will also explain their cultural and intellectual contexts. 

Dorothy Richardson Scholarly Editions Project

Deborah Longworth is an editor for the Dorothy Richardson Editions Project. This project is funded by the AHRC and involves four universities: Keele University, the University of Birmingham, the University of Oxford, and Birkbeck College, London. The project aims to create ten volumes of scholarly editions. These will include the letters and fiction of pioneering modernist writer, Dorothy Richardson. 

‘Revolutionary Red Tape: How state bureaucracy shaped British modernism’

Emma West has been awarded a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship for the project ‘Revolutionary Red Tape: How state bureaucracy shaped British modernism’. This project looks at how public servants and official committees supported modernist art, design, architecture, and literature in Britain. It uses many archival resources, like reports, memos, and minutes, to explore their roles in commissioning, sharing, and promoting these cultural movements. From vanguard exhibitions at local restaurants to new sanatoria on the Welsh coast, these committees created many plans to share modernism's bold style with everyone. I examine six case studies in architecture, town planning, literature, theatre, ballet, and painting. I argue that committees play a crucial role, just like publishers, magazines, and galleries. They act as key links between the artistic elite and the British public.

Past projects funded by the British Academy and AHRC include Dan Moore’s ‘The Politics of Taste: Modernism and the Reception of Art and Literature, 1900–1939’ and Deborah Longworth’s ‘The Sitwells: Ornamental Modernism’.

Modernist Cultures

Modernist Cultures is a leading journal in modernist studies. It promotes interdisciplinary research to revive discussions on the various cultures of modernism. As a result of its growing reputation for publishing cutting-edge scholarship, the journal has now moved to a four-issue format. Key features include:

• ‘Modernism Under Review’ essays that re-examine landmarks of modernist criticism

• Regular special issues (recent subjects include ‘Modernism and the First World War’, ‘Modernism in Public’, and ‘New Transatlanticisms’)

• Authors including Fredric Jameson, Laura Marcus, Marjorie Perloff, and David Trotter

The editors of Modernist Cultures are:

• Andrzej Gąsiorek (Birmingham)

• Deborah Longworth (Birmingham)

• Michael Valdez Moses (Duke University)

• Daniel Moore (Birmingham)

The next issue of Modernist Cultures, 12.3, will include the following articles:

• Tyrus Miller, ‘Modernism Under Review: Reyner Banham’s Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960)’

• Michael Kindellan, Joshua Kotin et al, ‘The Cantos and Pedagogy’

• Jamie Callison, ‘David Jones’ “Barbaric-fetish”: Frazer and the “Aesthetic Value” of the Liturgy’

• Nan Zhang, ‘“Solemn Progress”: Woolf, Burke, and the Negotiation of Virtue’

• Katharine Perko, ‘Gossip at Work: Professionalism, Oral Communities, and Narratives of Scandal in Lord Jim’

• Book Review: Steve Ellis, ‘The Poems of T. S. Eliot, ed. by Christopher Ricks and Jim McCue, 2 vols (London: Faber & Faber, 2015)’

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies

The Journal of Wyndham Lewis Studies (JWLS) is co-edited by Louise Kane and Nathan Waddell. It focuses on the painting and writing of Wyndham Lewis (1882-1957). The journal includes essays about Lewis’s work, along with reviews of exhibitions and related publications. JWLS is published once a year by the Wyndham Lewis Society in an open-access format. Since 2014, it has published the winning essay of the Wyndham Lewis Memorial Trust Essay Prize. This competition targets postgraduates and early career scholars. 

Undergraduate study

Centre members supervise undergraduate dissertations on modernist literature and culture and convene a range of modules, including: ‘Aspects of Modernism’, ‘The Modernist Novel’, ‘The Modern Short Story’, ‘Modernism in the Magazines’, ‘New York, New York’, ‘Modern American Poetry’, and ‘Modernist Fiction and Ethics’.

For more information, please see the EDACS Undergraduate page.

Postgraduate study

Postgraduate study is at the heart of the Centre for Modernist Cultures.

There is a vibrant postgraduate community in the Centre, with students hosting the monthly reading group of the Midlands Modernist Network.

Students have the option of studying for a taught MA either full-time or part-time. Centre members teach on the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature pathway for the MA Literature and Culture. We offer a variety of core and optional modules designed to allow students to gain a greater theoretical, contextual, and critical understanding of a wide range of topics in the field of modernist studies.

We would be very happy to hear from any prospective students wishing to complete an MA by research or a PhD. Please see the member profiles for individual areas of staff expertise and supervisory interests.

PhD funding is available through Birmingham’s membership of the Midlands3Cities AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership.

The departmental postgraduate page also has more information on postgraduate degrees.

The Centre for Modernist Cultures works closely with the British Association for Modernist Studies (BAMS) and the British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS).

Birmingham holds excellent resources for modernist studies, both in the Barber Institute of Fine Arts and the Cadbury Research Library, which holds a wealth of relevant archival material, including the Boulton D.H. Lawrence collection.

The University of Birmingham hosts a monthly postgraduate reading group of the Midlands Modernist Network. The network is an inter-university group of students and researchers of Modernism in Birmingham, Nottingham, Derby, Leicester, Coventry, Loughborough and the surrounding area. The monthly reading group meets to discuss new journal articles, books and discoveries in the field, and regularly holds work in progress sessions. All those interested in Modernist scholarship are welcome.

The Midlands is also home to the Garman Ryan collection and a large archive of material related to 20^th century sculptor Jacob Epstein, at the New Art Gallery Walsall. The archive comprises artefacts and information about the life of Epstein and his family and friends, including documents, photographs, letters, books and audio-visual material.