BOOK NEWS: Tracing the arbitrary or frivolous whims of four modernist authors

Modernism’s Whims

By Beci Carver

Oxford UP, 2026

ISBN: 9780198950721

https://global.oup.com/academic/product/9780198950721

Thomas Hardy asks of the ghost stalking him: 'Whither, O whither will your whim now draw me?' Immediately tripping up on its own laid-out comma, then pausing to howl theatrically, and hedging its bets with a stuttering, archaic 'whither' that skeptically hovers between 'where' and 'whether', this line has already begun to worry about where it is going or being 'whim-drawn.' On the other hand, it enjoys its worry, over-performs the conundrum. It is a whim addressing a whim.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Beci Carver's Modernism's Whims is a book about whims; their tyrannies, arbitrariness, ultimate frivolity: how they may feel urgent for all their lightness, while still letting you play, letting you go, letting you off the hook. The book is at once a meditation on the whim as a phenomenon and an endeavor to track the specific (albeit necessarily intangible) literary whims of four modernist writers: Hardy, T. S. Eliot, William Empson, Elsie Elizabeth Phare. Moving counter to the otherwise professionalized spirit of modernism, these literary whims and their author sponsors are imagined to occupy a fugitive position within the broader movement, their progress dangerously silly. Carver situates modernism after whim's Golden Age in the mid-nineteenth century, at a literary-historical moment when authors were expected to know what they were about. Hardy's stalker ghost is on the run.

• Offers hundreds of original close readings of poems and prose passages, which in their turn contribute to a new take on the history of literary whims
• Offers a new lens on modernism, via a hitherto unknown modernist author, Elsie Elizabeth Phare
• The first extended and in-depth treatment of the debt to geometry in William Empson's poems

Beci Carver is a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter. She earned her BA, MPhil, and PhD at Cambridge University,  and stayed on there for a four-year Junior Research Fellowship at Trinity College. After that, she moved on to a teaching fellowship at University College London, followed by a three-year Early Career Leverhulme Fellowship. She took up a one-year lectureship at the University of St Andrews in 2016, and in 2017, was appointed to a permanent lectureship at the University of Exeter. Her first book is Granular Modernism (Oxford UP, 2014). 

BOOK NEWS: Post-1960 poetry speaks directly to eroding notions of public life

Poetry in General: How a Literary Form Became Public

By Keegan Cook Finberg

Columbia UP, 2025

ISBN: 9780231219228

https://cup.columbia.edu/book/poetry-in-general/9780231219228/

In the second half of the twentieth century, poetry leapt out of books and became an interdisciplinary public form. Poetry entered bureaucratic systems of organization like index card catalogues; it pushed the boundaries of privately owned public parks. Keegan Cook Finberg argues that poetry became an increasingly capacious force during this period because it could speak directly to the degradation of the social-democratic notion of the public.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

Poetry in General explores how poets expanded their practice into the realms of politics, work, and everyday life from 1960 to the present, from the apex of the welfare state to an era of privatization and austerity. It considers a compelling array of figures—including Yoko Ono, George Brecht, Frank O’Hara, Amiri Baraka, Bernadette Mayer, Eleanor Antin, Adrian Piper, and NourbeSe Philip—whose works draw on conceptual techniques to transform official documents and spaces. Finberg shows how these public texts expose the mechanisms of the neoliberal consensus about work and leisure, the state’s facilitation of capitalism, and enduring racial and gender inequities. She also provides politically charged ways to interpret and critique racial capitalism, antiabortion legislation, and mass debt. A new literary and institutional history of postwar poetics, this book shows how poetic experiments address the privatization of collective life and rethink the category of the public.

"Poetry rarely gets to be general, but Keegan Cook Finberg blasts past misconceptions of marginality, framing it as a vibrant, interdisciplinary, public practice. What a relief to see this truth so clearly stated: poetry—when at its weirdest!—is uniquely positioned to contest the state's facilitation of capital." —Sarah Dowling, author of Here Is a Figure: Grounding Literary Form

"Keegan Cook Finberg takes poems seriously enough to see their claims on expanding the genre of poetry itself. Recognizing ambitions beyond individual expression, Poetry in General reads poems not as private refuges from social politics but as urgent interlocutors in a world of increasing privatization and politically managed bodies." —Craig Dworkin, author of Dictionary Poetics: Toward a Radical Lexicography

Keegan Cook Finberg is an assistant professor of English and affiliated faculty in the Departments of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies and Language, Literacy, and Culture at University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

BOOK NEWS: Examining anachronism in contemporary comics

The New Old Style: Anachronism in Contemporary Comics

By Matthew Levay

U of Nebraska P, 2026

ISBN: 9781496237620

https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496237620/the-new-old-style/

The New Old Style explores how the deliberate use of cartooning styles that mimic those of the early twentieth century has paradoxically become one of the most significant vehicles for formal experimentation in contemporary comics. Dubbing this phenomenon “the anachronistic aesthetic,” Matthew Levay argues that what can initially appear to be a nostalgic affinity for outmoded drawing styles is in fact a complex and holistic movement in contemporary comics with profound consequences for how artists and audiences might understand the critical possibilities and historical legacies of the medium itself.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

The phenomenon of anachronism as an aesthetic mode is visible in North American comics as early as the 1970s, but it rose to prominence in the 1990s. Since then, multiple artists have drawn in ways that reference cartooning styles of the distant past—those of early twentieth-century newspaper comics, early American animation, and midcentury comic books for young children, to name a few. The New Old Style characterizes these cartoonists’ use of anachronism as a mode of critical engagement that reveals how comics, as a medium, can simultaneously interrogate its history—and the violence, misogyny, and racial stereotypes that pervade it—while opening up new ways of addressing its aesthetic conditions. A work of comics history as well as theory, The New Old Style traces the uses of anachronism in comics published from the 1970s to the present and, via a focused set of case studies, argues that those uses represent a wide-ranging critique of the politics of the past, the material culture of the present, and the aesthetic possibilities of the future.

“In isolating the anachronistic aesthetic, The New Old Style makes an important contribution to the field of comics studies, providing a critical term for a distinctive style or even a kind of genre, and offering a vocabulary and a set of parameters for other scholars to think about similar works. The distinctions being made between the anachronistic aesthetic, retro style, and nostalgia more broadly provide useful contextualization.”—Barbara Postema, author of Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments

“Through the notion of the ‘anachronistic aesthetic,’ The New Old Style helps contextualize an important strand of comics and cartooning that is increasingly prevalent in both independent comics and those owned by major media corporations. By introducing this term, The New Old Style situates itself at the forefront of a conversation that is only beginning to emerge, and I suspect that the introduction, in particular, will be frequently cited by scholars working on independent and alternative comics, especially those interested in the cartoonists represented in this volume.”—Zack Kruse, author of Mysterious Travelers: Steve Ditko and the Search for a New Liberal Identity

Matthew Levay is a professor of English at Idaho State University. He is the author of Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal.

BOOK NEWS: An expansive and multifaceted account of the Bloomsbury Group

A History of the Bloomsbury Group 

Edited by Derek Ryan

Cambridge UP, 2025

ISBN: 9781009423663

https://www.cambridge.org/us/universitypress/subjects/literature/english-literature-1900-1945/history-bloomsbury-group

A History of the Bloomsbury Group ranges more widely across the Bloomsbury group's interdisciplinary activities and international networks than any previous volume. From innovations in the literary and visual arts to interventions in politics and economic policy, core members including Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, E. M. Forster, Lytton Strachey, Vanessa Bell, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, and John Maynard Keynes are explored in relation to a diverse cast of lesser-studied figures to offer an expansive and multifaceted account of the group's achievements and influence. Leading international scholars provide authoritative and accessible commentaries on a variety of topics under the broad headings of 'Aesthetic Bloomsbury,' 'Global Bloomsbury,' 'Intimate Bloomsbury,' and 'Public Bloomsbury.' Whether addressing established narratives or pushing into new critical terrain, the book demonstrates that, more than a century on from its formation, the Bloomsbury group remains an active and dynamic force in the key critical debates of today.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

• Shows how relevant the Bloomsbury group remains for the study of modernism and contemporary culture
• Demonstrates how serious engagement with the Bloomsbury group involves analysis of literature, the visual arts, economics, global politics, gender and queer studies, and more
• Offers a range of historically contextualized readings by experts in the field

Contents

1. The Bloomsbury friction by Derek Ryan

Part I. Aesthetic Bloomsbury:

2. The Bloomsbury novel by Jesse Matz

3. Bloomsbury's shorter fiction by Bryony Randall

4. Bloomsbury and the new biography by Todd Avery

5. Post-impressionism and the Bloomsbury brand by Wendy Hitchmough

6. Bloomsbury and music by Tsung-Han Tsai

7. Poetry in, or around, Bloomsbury by Sara Sullam

Part II. Global Bloomsbury:

8. Bloomsbury, South Asia, and empire by Susheila Nasta and Florian Stadtler

9. Bloomsbury and China by Patricia Laurence

10. Bloomsbury and the USA by Mark Hussey

11. Bloomsbury and Russomania by Rebecca Beasley

12. Cross-channel diplomacy and postwar Bloomsbury by Claire Davison

13. Late Bloomsbury's dialectic of enlightenment by Christine Froula

Part III. Intimate Bloomsbury:

14. Bloomsbury, friendship, and love by Jesse Wolfe

15. Bloomsbury's gender politics by Pamela Caughie

16. Bloomsbury, nudity, and race by Jane Garrity

17. Bloomsbury and psychoanalysis by Gabrielle McIntyre

18. Bloomsbury life writing by Drew Patrick Shannon

Part IV. Public Bloomsbury:

19. Bloomsbury and economics by Paul Crosthwaite

20. Bloomsbury and the meanings of labor by Morag Shiach

21. The Bloomsbury bookshop by Derek Ryan

22. Bloomsbury, education, and meritocracy by Natasha Periyan

23. Bloomsbury and science by Michael H. Whitworth

24. Bloomsbury afterlives by Monica Latham

Derek Ryan is a senior lecturer in modern literature at the University of Kent. His previous books include Bloomsbury, Beasts and British Modernist Literature (2022), and the co-edited volumes Cross-Channel Modernisms (2020) and The Handbook to the Bloomsbury Group (2018). He is editor of Edinburgh University Press's book series Virginia Woolf – Variations.

BOOK NEWS: Examining transhistorial re-imaginings of the early American past in literary and creative media

Early America and the Modern Imagination: Rewriting the Past in the Present 

Edited by Patrick M. Erben and Rebecca L. Harrison

Edinburgh UP, 2025

ISBN: 9781399536172

https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-early-america-and-the-modern-imagination.html

Recurring culture war controversies in the US—ranging from reproductive freedom and gender identity to racial inequality and immigration—often turn public attention to early American precedents. At the same time, early American figures and tropes enjoy a stunning cachet in popular culture. Early America and the Modern Imagination squarely interprets the significance and cultural uses of these transhistorical re-imaginings of the early American past. While drawing productively on public memory scholarship, this volume augments its neglect of early American studies. The collection’s critical and pedagogical essays investigate how a variety of modalities—including literature, film, television, theatre, video games and graphic novels—rescript early America as a usable past for contemporary audiences. Early America and the Modern Imagination, therefore, interprets early American themes and their present-day echoes to grapple with the evolving and highly contested import of the American nation’s past in the present cultural moment.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

• Analyses the pervasive use of early American themes in contemporary culture, including literature, television series, film, theatre, graphic novels and video games
• Combines expertise in early American research methods with the study of new modalities (such as video games and graphic novels) and cultural paradigms (such as restorative approaches to Native American history and sovereignty)
• Interfaces with the burgeoning field of memory studies/public memory, especially its examination of cultural artifacts as mediators of a shared past
• Models innovative methodological approaches for navigating transhistorical topics and textualities that so far lack robust scholarly treatment
• Foregrounds particular strengths in Native American and Indigenous studies, African American studies, Gender and Sexuality studies, and Film studies

"This book is both brilliant and necessary. Each chapter links a deep knowledge of the past to its modern redeployments in contemporary media. In doing so, the book makes a powerful case for the humanities, explaining public memory and showing how important it is for literary scholars to study it. A vital project, and a terrific book." – Abram Van Engen, Washington University in St. Louis

Patrick M. Erben is professor of English at the University of West Georgia. He is the author of A Harmony of the Spirits: Translation and the Language of Community in Early Pennsylvania (2013) and co-edited The Francis Daniel Pastorius Reader (2019). Erben is a past president of the Society of Early Americanists and currently serves on the editorial board for Early American Literature.

Rebecca L. Harrison is professor of English at the University of West Georgia. She is the co-editor of the Eudora Welty Review and President of the Eudora Welty Society. Her books include Inhabiting La Patria: Identity, Agency, and Antojo in the Work of Julia Alvarez (2013), Teaching, Pedagogy, and Learning: Fertile Ground for Campus and Community Innovations (2017) and Revitalizing Classrooms: Innovations and Inquiry Pedagogies in Practice (2017).

BOOK NEWS: Examining department stores in French and Egyptian literature

Emporialism: Department Store Fictions and the Politics of the Mediterranean

By Amr Kamal

SUNY Press, 2025

ISBN: 9781438499468

https://sunypress.edu/Books/E/Emporialism

A comparative study of iconographic and fictional representations of department stores in France and Egypt, as sites of imperial and Mediterranean cultural memory, from 1869 to the present.

BOOK NEWS is an online-only feature announcing new publications in modernist and contemporary literary studies. These announcements do NOT constitute an endorsement by the Journal of Modern Literature.

This book examines what Amr Kamal calls the phenomenon of emporialism, or the convergence between the spaces and imaginaries of empires and emporia in the context of a modern Mediterranean divided among the British, French, and Ottoman empires. By "emporia," Kamal refers to the commercial network of nineteenth-century department stores, which gained prominence after the Suez Canal project. Taking as a focal point French and Egyptian department stores, the author examines emporialism as a set of phenomenological experiences, discursive and social praxes, and mechanisms of control and resistance, born from the intersection of modernity, colonialism, and mass consumption. Drawing on archival evidence, Kamal reads iconographic and literary representations of emporia in English, French, Arabic, and Hebrew, from the nineteenth century to the present, addressing works by Émile Zola, Huda Shaarawi, Jacqueline Kahanoff, and others. Emporialism, Kamal argues, served to rewrite the history of the Mediterranean, to reinvent national belonging, and to interrogate issues of modernity and social justice.

"A major critical study of the phenomenon of the department store in modern consumer culture, Emporialism offers a stimulating intervention in the fields of Egyptian literature, French literature, cultural studies, and postcolonial studies. Blending historical, literary, and visual analysis, Kamal rigorously draws out and cross-examines the interplay of imperialism, Orientalism, and commerce in transnational contexts, while the illustrations help highlight the rich iconography of the emporium." — H. Hazel Hahn, editor of Cross-Cultural Exchange and the Colonial Imaginary: Global Encounters via Southeast Asia

"The word 'Emporium' today carries with it a quaint and nostalgic reference to a luxurious and remote past. But if the great nineteenth-century 'department stores' have been eclipsed today by the Amazons of the Internet, Amr Kamal's genealogical, multinational study invests them with an 'aura'—in the sense given the word by Walter Benjamin. In its disappearance, Emporialism casts an illuminating light upon contemporary consumer culture." — Samuel Weber, author of Preexisting Conditions: Recounting the Plague and Singularity: Politics and Poetics

Amr Kamal is associate professor of French, Arabic, and comparative literature at the City College of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center.

NEW ISSUE: JML 49.3 (Spring 2026) "Long Modernisms" is now LIVE

Journal of Modern Literature 49.3 (Spring 2026), on the theme "Long Modernisms," edited by Jean-Michel Rabaté, is now LIVE on ProjectMuse at https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/57113.

Content includes:

Jean-Michel Rabaté

Long Modernisms: Editor’s Introduction

Jonathan Foster

Woolf’s Westminster: Decentering the State in Mrs. Dalloway

Carolina Iribarren

Strange Communications: Conversation Breakdowns, Monadic Hang-Ups, and Telepathic Approximations in Virginia Woolf’s Novels

Yuli Pan

Anticipating the Postdramatic: Greek Ritual, Modernist Rupture, and Theatrical Innovation in Woolf’s Theater-Fiction Between the Acts

Florian Gargallio

Histories of Violence: William Carlos Williams and Daniel Boone

Nathan Wallace

Dante and Moses in “The Parable of the Plums”

Joseph LaBine

“Gabriel the chauffeur”: James Joyce and D.H. Lawrence as Modernist Precursors to W.G. Sebald’s “Ambros Adelwarth” 

Andrew Koenig

The Refusal to “Write Back” in Elizabeth Costello

Thomas Gould

The Everyday Conversation and the Construction of Whiteness in Claudia Rankine and Rachel Cusk

Carra Glatt

Trompe-l'œil: Neo-Victorian Plotting in Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch

Phillip Masterman Broadbent

Against the Oriental Gaze: Race and Belonging in Yoko Tawada’s The Naked Eye

Reviews

Ira Nadel

Reading Ellmann Reading Joyce

Arka Chattopadhyay

Reading The Nabokov Effect: The Letter between Literature and Cinema

 

Matthew Holman

Glittering Like Cut Glass