I am looking for papers that will address the issue of authenticity in modernism—both in modernists texts and in modernist discourse about culture, society, identity, etc. Some possible questions papers might consider include: What constitutes modern authenticity? How does the concept of the authentic function in relation to the past? How does authenticity relate to other cultural and artistic developments of modernism, including celebrity, primitivism, book-of-the-month clubs, the Hollywood film industry? How does it function in relation to class, race, gender? What response/feeling does authenticity arouse—is it revered, a source of anxiety, etc.? The goal of this panel is to open a discussion on the ways in which modernists think about and discuss authenticity and to begin to assess its import for modernism for generally.

Send 250-500 word proposals and a brief CV to Suzanne del Gizzo via email at sdelgi@tulane.edu.