The Politics of Intermedial Modernisms

The Politics of Intermedial Modernisms challenges current conceptions of both modernist and intermedial studies by investigating the media practices of marginalized artists and networks in and beyond the time period (c. 1890 to 1950). This edited collection of essays asks three key questions: How does intermediality shape our understanding of modernism? How does modernism continue to shape our understanding of intermedia? What are the political stakes of engaging with materials intermedially? Taken together, the essays in this interdisciplinary collection demonstrate that intermediality can be a fundamental condition and a critical method. The collection focuses on literature, art history, drama, music, and media archaeology. It explores artists and coalitions that are often overlooked in approaches from a single discipline, method, or location to shift attention away from historical definitional debates about modernism and intermediality and enable the emergence of diverse voices and creative practices. Contributions to this collection highlight the political engagements of intermedial artists to address a lack of socio-political analysis in intermedial studies, especially in cultural "high" modernism. The interdisciplinary scope of this book invites a broad audience of undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as academics teaching and researching in twentieth-century visual, literary, and sound cultures, media studies, and performance studies to examine fresh perspectives on intermedial modernisms.

Sarah Jensen is an Assistant Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Arts, Culture and Media at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada. Elicia Clements is a cross-appointed Associate Professor of the Departments of English and Humanities and Chair of the Department of Humanities at York University, Canada.

Introduction Sarah Jensen and Elicia Clements Part 1: Intermedial Crossings 1. Watching Dunham Dance: Langston Hughes at the Ballet Rebecca Bradburn 2. El Lissitzky in the Intermedial Era Jonathan Najarian 3. Zelda Fitzgerald's Intermedial, Embodied Celebrity Emily Christina Murphy 4. Intimate Disruptions: Visuality, Affect, and the Politics of Colour in Eileen Chang Shiyi Zhu 5. Dorothy Day's Intermaterial Modernism Sean Weidman Part 2: Intermedial Networks 6. Materializing the Immaterial: The BBC's Intermedial Objects Debra Rae Cohen 7. Mexican Muralism and the Collective Novel: Monumentality and Multiplicity in John Dos Passos' U.S.A and Diego Rivera's Secretariat de Educación Pública Murals Geneva Gano 8. Lines in Motion: The Tableaux Animés of Isadora Duncan and Maurice Denis Rachel Coombes 9. The Sapphic Conviviality of the "Academy of Witches": Carmen Conde and Amanda Junquera's Intermedial Collaborations Angela Acosta Part 3: Intermedial Afterlives 10. An Assurance of a Fuller Self: On Black Female Subjectivity in Mary P. Burrill, Firelei Báez, and Miatta Kawinzi Erica N. Caldwell 11. Transnational Networks, Collaborations, and the Refunctioning of Indo-German Jazz: The Patronage of the Goethe Institut-Max Mueller Bhavan Malvika Singh 12. Working In-Between Dreams and Reality: Winsor McCay's Little Nemo and Modernist Intermediality Alison Halsall 13. Ann Petry's Transmedial Re-emergence: Hearing The Street in 2020 Sarah Jensen