Call for Papers
Feminism: Activism: Modernisms

Keynote Speaker: Professor Janet Lyon

Feminism and modernism have long had an uneasy relationship. The
feminist position within modernism, an arguably masculinist complex of
movements, is an ambiguous and problematic one which is further
complicated when it comes into relationship with activism. Throughout
the twentieth century, artists and writers aligned with feminism and
the women’s movement have engaged with modernist tropes in a variety of
ways, employing literary, filmic and artistic practices both to
evaluate political positions and to prosthelytize for them. Much of the
recent scholarship on these practitioners has neglected to
contextualise their output as work that might operate against or within
contemporaneous manifestations of feminist activism.

This conference seeks to explore how feminist activism has intersected
with modernism and postmodernism in the arts, examining the tensions,
connections, and contributions made to modernisms by participants in
the women’s movement and by individual feminist activists. Looking at
phenomena ranging from early futurist claims for the autonomy of the
female practitioner to an artistic and literary engagement with the
second wave of the women’s movement, and the relationship between
feminism and poststructuralism, this conference seeks considerations of
a variety of approaches from across the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries in order to interrogate activist feminism and its
relationship to the modernist artworld.

Suggested topics might include:
- Feminist modernist appropriations and subversions of the manifesto
form
- Feminist modernist texts invervening in public/political/social
discourses
- New propositions regarding the activistic currency of
familiar/canonical/classics of feminist modernism
- The problems inherent to any such intersections
- Feminist activism by modernist men
- Feminist activism in modernist and avant-garde performance
- New candidates for consideration or integration within a
feminist-modernist canon

We would particularly welcome submissions for papers seeking to
recalibrate the scholarly discourse on feminist interventions in
sociopolitical discourse as they were conceived, attempted and/or
successfully executed by modernist artists and writers. Abstracts of no
more than 300 words are invited.

Please email modernismsuccgmail.com by 30 June 2012

Dr Lee Jenkins, Dr Kerstin Fest, Dr Sarah Hayden, James Cummins, Rachel
Warriner
Modernisms Research Centre, University College Cork