Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement

Edited by Jody Cardinal; Deirdre E. Egan-Ryan and Julia Lisella - Contributions by Nathaniel Cadle; Jody Cardinal; Laura Dawkins; Deirdre E. Egan-Ryan; Linda A. Kinnahan; Celena Kusch; Julia Lisella; Linda Martin; Windy Counsell Petrie; William Solomon; Lesley Wheeler and Amanda J. Zink

Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement explores the role of social and political engagement by women writers in the development of American modernism. Examining a diverse array of genres by both canonical modernists and underrepresented writers, this collection uncovers an obscured strain of modernist activism. Each chapter provides a detailed cultural and literary analysis, revealing the ways in which modernists’ politically and socially engaged interventions shaped their writing. Considering issues such as working class women’s advocacy, educational reform, political radicalism, and the global implications for American literary production, this book examines the complexity of the relationship between creating art and fostering social change. Ultimately, this collection redefines the parameters of modernism while also broadening the conception of social engagement to include both readily acknowledged social movements as well as less recognizable forms of advocacy for social change.

Lexington Books

Pages: 326 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-8290-2 • Hardback • March 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-8291-9 • eBook • March 2019 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Series: Innovation and Activism in American Women's Writing

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Social Science / Women's Studies, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women

Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement explores the role of social and political engagement by women writers in the development of American modernism. Examining a diverse array of genres by both canonical modernists and underrepresented writers, this collection uncovers an obscured strain of modernist activism. Each chapter provides a detailed cultural and literary analysis, revealing the ways in which modernists’ politically and socially engaged interventions shaped their writing. Considering issues such as working class women’s advocacy, educational reform, political radicalism, and the global implications for American literary production, this book examines the complexity of the relationship between creating art and fostering social change. Ultimately, this collection redefines the parameters of modernism while also broadening the conception of social engagement to include both readily acknowledged social movements as well as less recognizable forms of advocacy for social change.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 326 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-8290-2 • Hardback • March 2019 • $142.00 • (£109.00)

978-1-4985-8291-9 • eBook • March 2019 • $134.50 • (£104.00)

Series: Innovation and Activism in American Women's Writing

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Social Science / Women's Studies, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women

Author

Jody Cardinal is director of the Writing Center at the State University of New York, Old Westbury.

Deirdre E. Egan-Ryan is associate professor of English at St. Norbert College.

Julia Lisella is associate professor of English at Regis College.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement

Jody Cardinal, Deirdre E. Egan-Ryan, and Julia Lisella

Part I: Women’s Work as Modernist Engagement

1. Resisting Dismissal: Working-Class Women in the Popular Fiction of Edna Ferber and Mary Roberts Rinehart

Windy Counsell Petrie

2. Virginia Lee Burton’s “Just Sentimental Talk”: Modernist Children’s Literature and Collective Action

Deirdre E. Egan-Ryan

3. “In Harmony with the Desert”: Syncretic Modernism in Polingaysi Qoyawayma’s No Turning Back

Amanda J. Zink

Part II: Modernism, Social Movements, and Advocacy

4. Gertrude Stein and College Education for Women: Early Activism and its Modernist Legacy

Jody Cardinal

5. Unclassified: The Political Feminism of Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “Sonnets from an Ungrafted Tree”

Linda Martin

6. Anne Spencer’s Epistolary Activism

Lesley Wheeler

Part III: Political Radicals and Modernism

7. Lola Ridge, Modernism, and the Poetics of Radical Sentimentalism

Nathaniel Cadle

8. Radical Re-Invention of the Lyric in Genevieve Taggard’s Poems of Hawai‘i

Julia Lisella

9. Politics, Rhetoric, and Death in Katherine Anne Porter

William Solomon

Part IV: Modernist Social Engagement in its Global Context

10. “Is it time?”: Modernist Experimentation and Harlem Renaissance Prophecy inMarita Bonner’s The Purple Flower

Laura Dawkins

11. Economics, Nation, and Family in Mina Loy’s Anglo-Mongrels and the Rose

Linda A. Kinnahan

12. Anti-Fascist, Anti-Imperialist, Anti-War: The Political Alter-Egos of Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore in 1930s Britain

Celena Kusch

Index

About the Editors

About the Contributors

Reviews

[T]o see a full-length book about American modernist women writers continues to surprise and excite, even in the 21st century. No matter how far women authors have come in English literary studies, an anthology focused on women modernists is a cause for celebration. . . . Editors Jody Cardinal, Deirdre E. Egan-Ryan, and Julia Lisella do an impressive job of contextualizing the sections of their book Modernist Women Writers and American Social Engagement in an indispensable introduction. . . . To end, I want to return to the editors’ three major objectives for this collection: the recovery of American women writers, the further study of American women writers, and connecting American women’s modernist literature with cultural studies. In light of these goals and of the remarkable and stimulating work they have commissioned to meet them, this reviewer congratulates them on an admirable success.

— IdeAs: Idées d'Amériques

This wide-ranging and fascinating collection of essays represents a significant intervention into the study of modernist writing by women, as it was enrolled in the social and political structures of modernity. This volume will appeal to scholars working across American modernist literature and culture; the history of women’s writing; and the history of social engagement and political activism.
— Alix Beeston, Cardiff University

This book fills in important missing contexts surrounding modernist writing. In a series of absorbing essays, the authors treat an array of modernist writers, from the canonical to the middlebrow to the little known, bringing to the fore the myriad social and political commitments animating their work.
— Maren Tova Linett, Purdue University

This book is a welcome addition to the scholarship on gender in modernism/modernity. The editors and contributors capably relate their work to previous study, expanding on its social concerns, genres, terminology, and the diversity of its canon. The collection contains little-known examples of authors’ activism and encourages comparison of diverse arenas and expressions of social engagement.
— Bonnie Kime Scott, professor emerita, San Diego State University and the University of Delaware