Literature Subject Overview
Literary modernism is a truly global and plural phenomenon, playing out in multiple cultural paradigms, in various timeframes, and in response to diverse experiences of…
Literary modernism is a truly global and plural phenomenon, playing out in multiple cultural paradigms, in various timeframes, and in response to diverse experiences of…
Anti-Semitism, a term coined in Europe at the end of the 19th century, is the hatred of Jews and Jewishness, the latter being perceived in…
Wu Xiaobang, known in China as “the father of Chinese new dance,” was the most important pioneer of modern dance in twentieth-century China. Exposed to…
A poet of peasant origins who became a prominent figure in the Russian Silver Age, Kliuev grew up in Olenets province to the northeast of…
José Carlos Mariátegui was the most influential Latin American Marxist of the twentieth century. From 1914 to 1920 he worked as a journalist in Lima,…
Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899–1974), the recipient of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Literature, is one of the most decorated Guatemalan writers in history. He was…
The Ukrainian film director, artist, and writer Alexander Dovzhenko was born in Sosnytsia (Chernihiv region) and graduated from the Hlukhiv teachers’ college in 1914. He…
Kurt Pinthus—pen name Paulus Potter—was a German-Jewish publicist, editor, and critic, who is considered as one of the most important mediators of literary expressionism in…
Kurt Tucholsky was an important and widely-read author, poet, satirist, and editor of small literary forms during the Weimar Republic. He was a prolific writer…
Pan Tianshou was a 20th-century Chinese painter, calligrapher, and art teacher. A dedicated advocate of guohua [國畫], he is highly esteemed for his dynamic landscape…
Nâzım Hikmet (Ran) (b.January 15, 1902, Thessaloniki–d.June 3, 1963, Moscow) was a Turkish poet, playwright, novelist, and screenwriter who spent nearly fifteen years of his…
Tsai Jui-Yueh was a concert dance pioneer in Taiwan. Born under Japanese colonial rule of the island (1895–1945), Tsai was one of the first Taiwanese…
Born Nikolai Vasil’evich Korneichukov, Chukovsky was a renowned writer, critic, and translator. He was born in St. Petersburg but moved to Odessa at the age…
A Russian dancer and choreographer, Leonid Veniaminovich Yakobson choreographed for the Kirov and Bolshoi ballets from 1930 to the early 1970s, during which time he…
Born into a middle-class family in Minieh, Egypt, Ramses Younan enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Cairo in 1929. Due to an irreconcilable…
Dan Jacobson was a South African novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and translator who spent most of his adult life and the more productive…
Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, is one of the most controversial figures in twentieth-century history. Along with Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), he played a decisive…
George Grosz was a leading artist of Germany’s early 20th-century expressionist, Dada, and New Objectivity movements. His works from this period remain celebrated examples of…
Frédéric Bruly Bouabré is one of the best-known contemporary African artists. His drawings first gained international exposure in 1989 when exhibited in the groundbreaking show…
Zionism is the umbrella term used to describe the various strains of Jewish nationalism that grew out of other 19th-century nationalist ideologies and movements. Zionist…
Anna Akhmatova was one of Russia’s most famous poets and arguably its most famous woman poet. During her formative years, she belonged to a literary…
Herman Joachim Bang was a Danish author, journalist, lecturer and theater director. He was born on the island of Als near the site of the…
Marieluise Fleiβer is best known for her critical dramas, though she also wrote short stories and an autobiographical novel. Fleiβer is associated with the genre…
George Oppen was an innovative poet associated with the Objectivist movement in American poetry. Early in his poetic career, he appeared in both the ‘Objectivist’…
Although some official has organized the acting and scenery in theatrical performances since ancient Greece, the director only emerged as a significant creative figure in…