The Little Art Colony and Us Modernism - (Modern American Literature and the New Twentieth Century) by Geneva M Gano (Paperback)

About the Book

This book is first to historicise and theorise the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production.

Book Synopsis

Explores the little art communities and their aesthetic products in the early twentieth century
Historicizes and theorizes the role and function of the little art community as a geo-social formationComparative, place-based study of three semiperipheral (non-metropolitan) sites New readings of major authors Jeffers, O'Neill, and LawrenceInterdisciplinary methodology based in primary source analysisChallenges a center-periphery model of modernist activity and literary-aesthetic production and instead emphasizes a network-based, collaborative model

This book is first to historicise and theorise the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production. Alongside a historical overview of the emergence of three critical sites of modernist activity - the little art colonies of Carmel, Provincetown and Taos - the book offers new critical readings of major authors associated with those places: Robinson Jeffers, Eugene O'Neill and D. H. Lawrence. Geneva M. Gano tracks the radical thought and aesthetic innovation that emerged from these villages, revealing a surprisingly dynamic circulation of persons, objects and ideas between the country and the city and producing modernisms that were cosmopolitan in character yet also site-specific.

From the Back Cover

Explores the little art communities and their aesthetic products in the early twentieth century This book is first to historicise and theorise the significance of the early twentieth-century little art colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production. Alongside a historical overview of the emergence of three critical sites of modernist activity - the little art colonies of Carmel, Provincetown and Taos - the book offers new critical readings of major authors associated with those places: Robinson Jeffers, Eugene O'Neill and D. H. Lawrence. Geneva M. Gano tracks the radical thought and aesthetic innovation that emerged from these villages, revealing a surprisingly dynamic circulation of persons, objects and ideas between the country and the city and producing modernisms that were cosmopolitan in character yet also site-specific. Geneva M. Gano is Associate Professor of English and Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies at Texas State University.

Review Quotes

The Little Art Colony compellingly reveals how fundamentally modernist cosmopolitanism has relied as much on its cultivated retreats as on its metropolises. Thoughtfully analysing Carmel, Provincetown and Taos, Gano maps modernism's material participation not only in the culture industry but also in processes of settler colonialism, racial displacement and gentrification.-- "Natalia Cecire, Senior Lecturer in English and American Studies, University of Sussex"

Arguing that the little art colony "has been largely overlooked as an important geosocial formation" (9) within modernist studies, Geneva M. Gano here offers a sustained recompense for this absence with this excellent book.--Robert Thacker, St. Lawrence University "Western American Literature"

Geneva Gano's account of literary modernism is one for our classrooms: richly situated in local history and global flows, and ever shadowed by racialized violence. [...] Like the best literary historical scholarship, this study plunges us into a past that is starkly other, but, at the same time, uncannily familiar, and thus confronts us with our own historicity.--Kathryn S. Roberts, University of Groningen "American Literary History"

Well researched, compellingly argued, and lucidly written, The Little Art Colony and US Modernism adeptly speaks to readers across U.S. history, American literature, and modernist art history to urge serious reflection on the imbrication of place, culture, capitalism, and creativiry.--Emily Lutenski "Pacific Historical Review"

About the Author

Geneva M. Gano is Associate Professor of English and Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies at Texas State University. She is the current past President of the Robinson Jeffers Association.