Modernist Objects
Third international conference of the French Society for Modernist Studies
13-16 June 2018
Sorbonne Université
Maison de la Recherche
28 Rue Serpente, 75006 Paris
Organisers: Hélène Aji, Noëlle Cuny, Xavier Kalck
Keynote speakers:
Pr Rachel Bowlby, University College London
Pr Douglas Mao Johns Hopkins University
PROGRAMME
Wednesday 13 June
Walking tour of Modernist Paris (fully booked)
Tour guide: Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec (Université de Caen Normandie)
Thursday 14 June
09.30-10.00am: Registration and welcome refreshments
10.00-10.30am: Opening addresses
Pascal Aquien (Vice-President for Research, Sorbonne Université)
Hélène Aji (Vice-President for Research, Université Paris Nanterre)
10.30-12.00: Plenary session 1 (Room D 035)
Matches, Mantelpieces, and Machines: The Secret Life of Things
Chair: Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec (Université de Caen Normandie)
Patrizia Muscogiuri (University of Salford): Matchsticks out of their Boxes: from Arthur Melbourne-Cooper to Virginia Woolf
Judith Allen (Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania): The Mantelpiece as Blank Canvas
Suzanne Bellamy (University of Sydney): Abstract Machines: Composition as Recombination
12.00-1.30pm: Lunch and registration
1.30-3.00pm: Panels 1
Panel 1a: Objects and the Visual Arts (Room D 116). Chair: Clara Jones (King’s College, London)
Sanja Bahun (University of Essex): The Fabric of Home: Household Cloth between Ontology and Use-Value in Paul Klee and Varvara Stepanova
Lynn M. Somers (Drew University): Louise Bourgeois’s Melancholy Objects to be Used
Yasna Bozhkova (Université de Cergy-Pontoise): American Beauty Toaster: Baroness Elsa’s “Ready-to-Wear” Poem-Objects
Panel 1b: Living objects (Room D 040). Chair: Morgan Thomas (University of Cincinnati)
Julia Jordan (University College London): Broken Effigies: The Stuff of Late Modernism
Hervé G. Picherit (University of Texas at Austin): The Eiffel Tower Between Myth and Modernism
Marta Soares (New University of Lisbon): Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso’s “Living” Objects
Panel 1c: Poetic Objects (Room D 035). Chair: Juliette Utard (Sorbonne Université)
Chloé Thomas (Paris 8 Vincennes): Objectivist Poetry and Anti-Correlationist Ontology
Dianne Sears (University of Massachusetts): On Time: Marianne Moore’s “Four Quartz Crystal Clocks”
Allison Neal (University of California): Marianne Moore’s Technologies of Voicing
3.00-3.15pm: Coffee break
3.15-4.45pm: Panels 2
Panel 2a: Lost and Found (Room D 035). Chair: Chloé Thomas (Université Paris 8 Vincennes)
Harriet Barratt (University of Sussex): The Cement Leg: Modernist Object Relations and the Prosthetic
Nonia Williams (University of East Anglia): “LOST! HANSOME GOLE BROOCH” – the Intimacy of Broken, Lost and Forgotten Objects
Aimee Gasston (Birkbeck, University of London): Robert Walser’s Rubbish
Panel 2b: The Psyche of Objects (Room D 040). Chair: Nicholas Manning (Sorbonne Université)
Lauren Terry (Nottingham Trent University): (Re)collecting Material Objects: Constructing Memory and Desire in Mina Loy’s The Lost Lunar Baedeker
Gina Stamm (University of Alabama): “Hullo Object!”: Francis Ponge and D.W. Winnicott
Sanna Melin Schyllert (University of Westminster): Time Travel and Magical Materiality in Mary Butts and H. D.
4.45-5.00pm: Coffee break
5.00-6.00pm: KEYNOTE 1 (Room D 035)
The Very Long Pregnancy: Test-Tube Babies and New Reproductive Stories
Pr Rachel Bowlby, University College London
Chair: Noëlle Cuny (Université de Haute-Alsace)
From 7.00pm: COCKTAIL PARTY, Le Club des enseignants, Sorbonne Université, 1, rue Victor Cousin, 75005 Paris
Friday 15 June
9.30-11am: Plenary session 2 (Room D 035)
Prosaic Objects
Chair: Caroline Pollentier (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3)
Clara Jones (King’s College, London): “Very Pure and Vegetable”: Cabbages and the Goods Train in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes (1926)
Isabelle Brasme (Universités Nîmes/Paul Valéry Montpellier 3): “It Is All Just Matter”: Objects and Subjects in Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End
Ruchi Mundeja (University of Delhi): The “Unseeing” Gaze: Re-Placing Objects in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness
11-11.15am: Coffee break
11.15am-12.45pm: Panels 3
Panel 3a: Woolf’s Time-Enclosed Objects (Room D 035).
Chair: Judith Allen (Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania)
Nataliya Gorbina (Technische Universität Dortmund): Ecstasy of Ordinary Experience in Virginia Woolf’s Fiction
Leonard Driscoll (Uppsala University): “Such Fragments as Time Preserves”: Virginia Woolf’s Prehistoric Things
Panel 3b: Poetics of Repurposed Objects (Room D 040).
Chair: Sanja Bahun (University of Essex)
Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec (Université de Caen Normandie): The Harps and Lyres of Modernist Poetry
Diane Drouin (Sorbonne Université): “Wash bowls and Cigarettes”: Mina Loy, or Portrait of the Artist as a Craftswoman
Hunter Dukes (University of Cambridge): Modernist Vessels
Panel 3c: Book and Magazine Materiality (Room D 116).
Chair: Benoît Tadié (Université Rennes 2)
Steven D. Paschall (Université de Lorraine): Reclaiming the Pages of the Book Object: Ezra Pound and Materiality
Louise Kane (College of Coastal Georgia): The Periodical as Metaobject: A Comparison of British, American, and Caribbean Modernisms
Ryan Coogan (Liverpool John Moores University): Mina Loy, Material Poetics and the Material Poem in the Modernist Tradition
12.45-2pm: Lunch
2-3.30pm: Panels 4
Panel 4a: Everyday Objects (Room D 035).
Chair: Yasna Bozhkova (Université de Cergy-Pontoise)
Julie Chevaux (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3): “Cracks Appeared. Legs Came off. Varnish Ran.” Amateurism, the Omega Workshop and Bloomsbury’s Domestic Modernism
Benedict Jones-Williams (University of Edinburgh): Alienating Objects: The Material World of Henry James
Abbie Garrington (Durham University): A Parliament of Fidgets: Objects, Fiddling, and the Steady Hand of Modernist Governance
Panel 4b: Benjamin’s Objects (Room D 040).
Chair: Isabelle Brasme (Universités Nîmes/Paul Valéry Montpellier 3)
Justine Baillie (University of Greenwich): Diasporic Modernism: Walter Benjamin, Jean Rhys, Consumption
Ӧzen Nergis Dolcerocca (Koç University): “Do Objects Endure?”: Benjamin’s Material Philosophy of Time
Iain Bailey (University of Manchester): Walter Benjamin’s connoisseur value
Panel 4c: Material Stories (Room D 116).
Chair: Hervé G. Picherit (University of Texas at Austin)
Barbara Cooke (Loughborough University): “They Nicked the Edge and Tore Straight”: Materiality, Process and Vocation in the Aesthetic Philosophy of Evelyn Waugh
Anna Schmitt (Johannes-Gutenberg University): Mr Rossiter’s Chair, Or: Narrating Objects in Modernist Short Stories
Nathaniel Davis (Université Rennes 1): Lime Twigs and Blood Oranges: John Hawkes’s Objects
3.30-3.45pm: Coffee break
3.45-5.15pm: Panels 5
Panel 5a: The Mouthpiece Object (Room D 035).
Chair: Iain Bailey (University of Manchester)
Betsy Porritt (University of Kent): Duchamp’s Heiress: Unstable Narratives in the Poem Objects of Susan Howe
Sean Mark (Université Paris 12): “A Bastion Against Those who Destroy Language”: Pound’s Ideogram as Poetic and Political Object
James Dowthwaite (University of Goettingen): The Meaning of Objects: C.K. Ogden, I.A. Richards, and the Revolution of the Word
Panel 5b: Excess and Revolt/Revolting Excess (Room D 040). Chair: Cécile Beaufils (Sorbonne Université)
Kim Lockwood (University of East Anglia): Inside “The Tyranny of Things”: Opulence, Excess, and Meret Oppenheim’s Object
Martin Schauss (University of Warwick): Beckett’s “Nightmare Thingness” and the Draff of Modernism
Michel Delville (Université de Liège/Belspo) and Andrew Norris (Université de Bruxelles): Edible Objects of Disgust: Hemingway, Lewis, Stein and the Anti-Vomitive
5.15-5.30pm: Coffee break
5.30-6.30pm: KEYNOTE 2 (Room D 035)
Objectionable Objects
Pr Douglas Mao, Johns Hopkins University
Chair: Xavier Kalck (Sorbonne Université)
8pm: CONFERENCE DINNER, Bastide Odéon, 7 Rue Corneille, 75006 Paris
Saturday 16 June
9.30-11am: Plenary session 3 (Room D 040)
Affectivity and Consumer Goods
Chair: Naomi Toth (Université Paris Nanterre)
Pavlina Radia (Nipissing University): From Eggbeaters and Alcohol to Gryphons, Dolls, and Puppets: The Affective Mobilities of Djuna Barnes’s Objects
Amy Foley (Bryant University): Flat-pack Bauhaus: Liberating Objects in New Mass Markets
Arthur Rose (Durham University): Asbestos: The Last Modernist Object
11-11.15am: Coffee Break
11.15am-12.45pm: Panels 6
Panel 6a: Radical Objects (Room D 040)
Chair: Maurice N. Fadel (New Bulgarian University)
Joseph Kuhn (Adam Mickiewicz University): James Agee and the Radical Object
Anna Tomi (Universities of Helsinki and Berkeley): Writing the Revolution — Henry Parland and the Unruly Objects of Modernism
Ryan Helterbrand (University of Washington): The Surrealist Landmines of Claude Cahun
Panel 6b: Objectifiers (Room D 223).
Chair: Nonia Williams (University of East Anglia)
Kit Toda (Université Jean Moulin Lyon 3): Material Objects and Objectification in the Depiction of the “Lady” in Modernist Poetry
Elizabeth Picherit (University of Texas at Austin): The Deafening Telephone
Fiorenzo Iuliano (University of Cagliari): Ontology over the Phone: Objects and Other Worlds in Dorothy Parker’s Short Stories
12.45-2pm: Lunch
2-3.30pm: Panels 7
Panel 7a: Magical Materialism (Room D 223).
Chair: Joseph Kuhn (Adam Mickiewicz University)
Duygu Senocak (Durham University): T.S. Eliot and the Totem of the Tribe
Morgan Thomas (University of Cincinnati): Vases, Vessels, Voids: Mark Rothko’s Lacunary Objects
Lisa Mullen (University of Oxford): “Asleep in his Box”: Visualising the Modernist Hyperobject in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)
Panel 7b Architectural Objects (Room D 323).
Chair: Xavier Kalck (Sorbonne Université)
Maurice N. Fadel (New Bulgarian University): Mandelstam, Architecture and Language
Ryan Johnson (University of Sydney): Paul Claudel’s Construction of a Premodern Space in Modern Tokyo
Kevin Donovan (University College Dublin/Dublin School of Architecture): The Maison du Peuple as Objeu
3.30-3.45pm: Coffee Break
3.45-4.30pm: Conclusion and information about upcoming SEM projects and events
Hélène Aji, Noëlle Cuny, Xavier Kalck
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Hélène Aji, Université Paris Nanterre
Rachel Bowlby, University College London
Vincent Bucher, Université de Grenoble Alpes
Noëlle Cuny, Université de Haute-Alsace
Xavier Kalck, Sorbonne Université
Jennifer Kilgore-Caradec, Université de Caen Normandie
Douglas Mao, Johns Hopkins University
Scott McCracken, Queen Mary, University of London
Caroline Pollentier, Université Paris Sorbonne nouvelle - Paris 3
Naomi Toth, Université Paris Nanterre