Intellectual Currents
This section focusses on the historical, sociological, philosophical, economic, political, and scientific context of modernism. Entries cover individuals, coteries, movements, and events. The primary criterion…
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Modernism in Europe
We are living in a very singular moment of history. It is a moment of crisis, in the literal sense of that word. In every…
Modernism in Africa
Though they often escape critical scrutiny, concepts such as modernism, modernity, and modernization are at the heart of the concept of development, and thus omnipresent…
Drama, Theater and Performance Subject Overview
This brief preamble will introduce the kinds of material the reader can expect to find in the entries treating drama, theater, and performance, and suggest…
Architecture Subject Overview
Modernist architecture and design represented a utopian vision of how the built environment could be adapted to the needs to modern industrial society. Industrialization had…
Modernism in Latin America
In Latin American intellectual history, modernism is a term that can be usefully and accurately applied to at least two distinct intellectual movements: a clearly…
Modernism in Canada and The United States
In Canada and the United States modernism emerges from transnational engagements with global intellectual movements while also grappling with local intellectual, cultural, and political developments…
Social Realism
Dadaism
Dada began in Zurich, Switzerland, in the midst of World War I. Several expatriate artists converged in the city to escape the brutal and seemingly…
Symbolism Overview
Symbolism is a late-nineteenth-century literary movement centred mostly around the work of poets such as Stéphane Mallarmé, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Philippe Villiers de L’Isle-Adam,…
Modernism in the Middle East and Arab World
Exploring modernity and its intellectual trends in the Middle East is a very fitting endeavour, as ‘Middle East’ itself is a ‘modern’ term which has…
Modernism in South Asia
In South Asia, a certain haziness regarding modernism and modernity derives not only from the manner in which they can be elided with each other,…
Impressionism (Painting)
Impressionism is an artistic movement that flourished in France between 1860 and 1890. The term has been widely adopted around the world to describe artistic…
Photography
Expressionism
Expressionism was one of the foremost modernist movements to emerge in Europe in the early years of the twentieth-century. It had a profound effect on…
Simmel, Georg (1858–1918)
A foundational figure in sociology and social theory, Georg Simmel developed a methodology for analyzing modernity by tracing Capitalism’s disorienting effects on social relations, aesthetics,…
Tokoudagba, Cyprien (1939--2012)
Cyprien Tokoudagba was born in 1939 in Abomey, former royal capital of Dahomey, nowadays Benin. As an artist appreciated locally as the restorer of the…
Kafka, Franz (1883–1924)
Franz Kafka was born 3 July 1883 to a bourgeois family in Prague, the Czech capital that in the late nineteenth century belonged to the…
Paisà
Paisà (Paisan. Italy 1946, b/w, 124 min. Drama). Directed and produced by Roberto Rossellini. Production: OFI, Foreign Film Production Inc., Capitani Film. Written by Federico…
Fascist Modernism
Fascist modernism is an artistic and literary movement emphasizing extreme nationalism, romantic anti-capitalism, and cultural renewal most closely associated with Fascist Italy, Vichy France, and…
Modernism in Austria-Hungary
Modernism in Austria-Hungary developed in the imperial capital Vienna and other major cities such as Prague, Budapest, and Trieste. In the coffees houses of these…
Clair, René (1898–1981)
Filmmaker, novelist, and critic René Clair (original name René-Lucien Chomette) was one of the foremost French film directors of the 1920s and 1930s. His first…
Atget, Jean Eugène Auguste (1857–1927)
Eugène Atget employed one of the defining instruments of modernity—the camera—to produce a comprehensive photographic record of what modern city planning was about to destroy:…
Zhu, Tianwen (1956– )
In Taiwan, the Zhu family is like the Brontës of England, known for their literary achievements. Zhu Tianyi, youngest of the three, is a fluent…
Populism
The most salient first use of the term populism and its cognates can be found in late 19th-century Tsarist Russia. The Russian peasant Narodniki [populists]…