Based on a conference held at the Center for Literary Studies at Harvard University, this collection of essays from scholars in literature, philosophy, politics, and medicine seeks to shed new light on the wide range of ethical debates raging today; from bioethics and the ethics of political action to the ethics of reading and making distinctions between morality and ethics.

Based on a conference held at the Center for Literary Studies at Harvard University, this collection of essays from the leading scholars in literature, philosophy, politics, and medicine casts new light on the wide range of ethical debates raging today, from bioethics and the ethics of political action to the ethics of reading and making distinctions between morality and ethics.

This volume of presents an account of current thinking on central issues within and beyond the humanities. It brings together such leading figures as Sacvan Bercovitch and Helen Vendler, Anthony Appiah and Barbara Johnson, Seyla Benhabib and Norman Bryson, Martha Minow and Henry Louis Gates,Jr, Marjorie Garber and Susan Suleiman. It explores such questions as: What is culture? What are cultures? Are literary texts and cultural texts different? What do literary and other fields engaged in cultural work have in common? What can literary studies profitably do with other disciplines? and What can cultural studies tell us about culture ?

This presents an account of current thinking on central issues within and beyond the humanities today. Brings together leading figures such as Sacvan Bercovitch, Helen Vendler, Anthony Appiah, Norman Bryson, Seyla Benhabib and Marjorie Garber.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

Series Information:
CultureWork: A Book Series from the Center for Literary and Cultural Studies at Harvard

As a growing number of contemporary novelists write for publication in multiple languages, the genre's form and aims are shifting. Born-translated novels include passages that appear to be written in different tongues, narrators who speak to foreign audiences, and other visual and formal techniques that treat translation as a medium rather than as an afterthought. These strategies challenge the global dominance of English, complicate "native" readership, and protect creative works against misinterpretation as they circulate. They have also given rise to a new form of writing that confounds traditional models of literary history and political community. Born Translated builds a much-needed framework for understanding translation's effect on fictional works, as well as digital art, avant-garde magazines, literary anthologies, and visual media. Artists and novelists discussed include J. M. Coetzee, Junot Diaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, Mohsin Hamid, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jamaica Kincaid, Ben Lerner, China Mieville, David Mitchell, Walter Mosley, Caryl Phillips, Adam Thirlwell, Amy Waldman, and Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries. The book understands that contemporary literature begins at once in many places, engaging in a new type of social embeddedness and political solidarity. It recasts literary history as a series of convergences and departures and, by elevating the status of "born-translated" works, redefines common conceptions of author, reader, and nation.

As a growing number of contemporary novelists write for publication in multiple languages, the genre's form and aims are shifting. Born-translated novels include passages that appear to be written in different tongues, narrators who speak to foreign audiences, and other visual and formal techniques that treat translation as a medium rather than as an afterthought. These strategies challenge the global dominance of English, complicate "native" readership, and protect creative works against misinterpretation as they circulate. They have also given rise to a new form of writing that confounds traditional models of literary history and political community. Born Translated builds a much-needed framework for understanding translation's effect on fictional works, as well as digital art, avant-garde magazines, literary anthologies, and visual media. Artists and novelists discussed include J. M. Coetzee, Junot Diaz, Jonathan Safran Foer, Mohsin Hamid, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jamaica Kincaid, Ben Lerner, China Mieville, David Mitchell, Walter Mosley, Caryl Phillips, Adam Thirlwell, Amy Waldman, and Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries. The book understands that contemporary literature begins at once in many places, engaging in a new type of social embeddedness and political solidarity. It recasts literary history as a series of convergences and departures and, by elevating the status of "born-translated" works, redefines common conceptions of author, reader, and nation.

Modernism is hot again. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, poets and architects, designers and critics, teachers and artists are rediscovering the virtues of the previous century's most vibrant cultural constellation. Yet this widespread embrace raises questions about modernism's relation to its own success. Modernism's "badness"-its emphasis on outrageous behavior, its elevation of negativity, its refusal to be condoned-seems essential to its power. But once modernism is accepted as "good" or valuable (as a great deal of modernist art now is), its status as a subversive aesthetic intervention seems undermined. The contributors to Bad Modernisms tease out the contradictions in modernism's commitment to badness.Bad Modernisms thus builds on and extends the "new modernist studies," recent work marked by the application of diverse methods and attention to texts and artists not usually labeled as modernist. In this collection, these developments are exemplified by essays ranging from a reading of dandyism in 1920s Harlem as a performance of a "bad" black modernist imaginary to a consideration of Filipino American modernism in the context of anticolonialism. The contributors reconsider familiar figures-such as Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Josef von Sternberg, Ludwig Wittgenstein, W. H. Auden, and Wyndham Lewis-and bring to light the work of lesser-known artists, including the writer Carlos Bulosan and the experimental filmmaker Len Lye. Examining cultural artifacts ranging from novels to manifestos, from philosophical treatises to movie musicals, and from anthropological essays to advertising campaigns, these essays signal the capaciousness and energy galvanizing the new modernist studies. Contributors. Lisa Fluet, Laura Frost, Michael LeMahieu, Heather K. Love, Douglas Mao, Jesse Matz, Joshua L. Miller, Monica L. Miller, Sianne Ngai, Martin Puchner, Rebecca L. Walkowitz

Modernism is hot again. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, poets and architects, designers and critics, teachers and artists are rediscovering the virtues of the previous century's most vibrant cultural constellation. Yet this widespread embrace raises questions about modernism's relation to its own success. Modernism's "badness"--its emphasis on outrageous behavior, its elevation of negativity, its refusal to be condoned--seems essential to its power. But once modernism is accepted as "good" or valuable (as a great deal of modernist art now is), its status as a subversive aesthetic intervention seems undermined. The contributors to "Bad Modernisms" tease out the contradictions in modernism's commitment to badness.

"Bad Modernisms" thus builds on and extends the "new modernist studies," recent work marked by the application of diverse methods and attention to texts and artists not usually labeled as modernist. In this collection, these developments are exemplified by essays ranging from a reading of dandyism in 1920s Harlem as a performance of a "bad" black modernist imaginary to a consideration of Filipino American modernism in the context of anticolonialism. The contributors reconsider familiar figures--such as Virginia Woolf, D. H. Lawrence, Josef von Sternberg, Ludwig Wittgenstein, W. H. Auden, and Wyndham Lewis--and bring to light the work of lesser-known artists, including the writer Carlos Bulosan and the experimental filmmaker Len Lye. Examining cultural artifacts ranging from novels to manifestos, from philosophical treatises to movie musicals, and from anthropological essays to advertising campaigns, these essays signal the capaciousness and energy galvanizing the new modernist studies.

"Contributors." Lisa Fluet, Laura Frost, Michael LeMahieu, Heather K. Love, Douglas Mao, Jesse Matz, Joshua L. Miller, Monica L. Miller, Sianne Ngai, Martin Puchner, Rebecca L. Walkowitz