“The Modernist Mediterranean”

This panel seeks to explore representations of the Mediterranean (Southern Europe and North Africa) in various modernist traditions. Which characterizations of the Mediterranean underlie modernist tropes? How do modernist representations of the Mediterranean inform imaginative conceptions of the genealogy of colonial Europe and of its modernity? What role do such configurations of the region play in the articulation and complication of responses to modern experiences of race, gender, and cross-cultural encounters in a colonial context? Papers examining modernist aesthetics in relation to the development of European national and colonial projects will be especially welcome. Papers may examine Euro-American (Anglophone and non-Anglophone) forms of modernism or Mediterranean responses to these configurations.

Please send 250-word abstracts and a short biographical note to Edwige Tamalet Talbayev at etamalet@ucsd.edu by May 5th.