Modern Literature & Culture Research Centre & Gallery

DATE: April 5, 2010, Toronto By: Dr. Irene Gammel

Theodor Adorno asserted that modernity is a qualitative entity rather than a chronological one and that was perhaps the guiding idea for our Modernity Unbound: Inaugural Literatures of Modernity Symposium, March 29, which brought together 35 presenters and artists and over 120 visitors from Ontario, Québec, and New York. Scott Duchesne (University of Guelph) discussed theosophy and the occult as a way of laying bare the crisis of modernity, while Melba Cuddy Keane (University of Toronto) located Canada's modernity in its internationalism between the two wars. The Blues player is the figure of modernity, argued Joshua Schuster (University of Western Ontario), and he also noted that Modernism missed the opportunity to understand nature or to embrace ecology. Modernity relies on myths of deferral, argued keynote speaker Garry Leonard, by pointing to progress, efficiency, perfection, satisfaction and innovation. "Modernity is never here,” he concluded: “It's never now." Ed Slopek and Elaine Brodie (Ryerson University) focussed on neurasthenia as the quintessential experience of modernity, and critically probed the narcissim and lack of empathy for others that results from the pseudo-interactivity of New Media. The symposium was organized by 11 students in my LM8912: Modernity as a Public Event course. The students had worked hard for three months and the organization was impeccable. Congratulations to all.

Derek Fisher welcomes the audience
Photo by Lainna El Jabi

 

Keynote speaker Dr. Garry Leonard (U of Toronto)
Photo by Lainna El Jabi

Jillian Harkness addresses the audience
​Photo by Lainna El Jabi

Click to view the photo gallery of the symposium
Click here more photographs taken by Lainna El Jabi.

Recent News

Attention Students — Call for Student Volunteer Docents

Attention Students — Call for Student Volunteer ...

Become a docent at the MLCRC exhibition Threads of History: Repatriating World War II Quilts at Toronto City Hall.

Payton Knox joins MLC

Payton Knox joins MLC

Payton is involved in providing grading support for the course ENG 240: Contours of Creativity.

MLC Annual Impact Report 2023 - 2024

MLC Annual Impact Report 2023 - 2024

The MLC Research Centre is proud to present a summary of its annual achievements.

Call for Papers for Routledge Book: Life Writing in a Pandemic

Call for Papers for Routledge Book: Life Writing in a ...

We welcome papers that engage with any aspect of life writing during the pandemic.

The Great War in Literature and Visual Culture

MLC Themes

The Great War in Literature and Visual Culture

Amid the unprecedented social change of World War I, women renegotiated their identities by dramatically changing the way they engaged with the arts. But how did they do so? And how did everyday citizens engage with the war?

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

MLC Themes

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, considered by many to be the mother of Dada, was a daringly innovative poet and an early creator of junk sculpture. “The Baroness” was best known for her sexually charged, often controversial performances.

Modernism in the World

MLC Themes

Modernism in the World

Recent research has departed from the Euro-centric and national view of Modernism to include approaches and methods studying Modernism across national boundaries and across different art forms to include fashion, dance, performance, technology, and visual culture.

Lucy Maud Montgomery

MLC Themes

Lucy Maud Montgomery

L.M. Montgomery is perhaps Canada's most important literary export. She was prolific writer of over 500 short stories and poems, and twenty novels, including the beloved Anne of Green Gables.

Canadian Modernism

MLC Themes

Canadian Modernism

The works of numerous Canadian authors who lived during the modernist era may well constitute the most central and experimental articulation of Canadian modernism in prose, allowing authors to stage cross-cultural, controversial, and even conflicted identities.

Modernist Biography and Life Writing

MLC Themes

Modernist Biography and Life Writing

Life writing, including autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters and testimonials written or told by women and men whose political, literary or philosophical purposes are central to their lives, has become a standard tool for communication and the dissemination of information.