Making Modernism: Literature and Culture in Twentieth-Century Chicago, 1893-1955

FAIN: EH-50305-12

Newberry Library (Chicago, IL 60610-3305)
Liesl Marie Olson (Project Director: March 2012 to November 2014)

Funding details:
Original grant (2012) $189,359.00
Supplement (2013) $11,937.00

A four-week institute for twenty-five college and university teachers on modernism in Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century.

The Newberry Library proposes a 4-week summer 2013 institute for college and university faculty that will explore Chicago’s literary and cultural centrality in the twentieth century. The institute will begin by considering the cultural resonances of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and end by analyzing mid-century literary representations of African-American experience. It will be led by renowned scholars in the fields of literature, history, art history, print culture, and African-American studies. Four themes will be emphasized: the geographic centrality of Chicago both locally and internationally; modernism’s distinctive reception history in Chicago; the women in Chicago who served as key cultural arbiters; and the connections between the Chicago Renaissance and the Chicago Black Renaissance. Participants will engage with Newberry collections in order to understand the hidden networks that contributed to the explosion of cultural styles associated with the modernist period.