Modernism, Religion, and Empire
Virtual Session
Description
Traditionally modernism has been thought of as a cluster of aesthetic movements emerging out of a declared crisis of faith. An expanded or ‘global’ modernist studies has been slow to reckon with the myriad manifestations of this crisis or with the topic of religion as the complex and richly generative issue it must needs become when viewed in this wider frame.
This panel invites papers focusing on any aspect of the rich intersections between global modernisms, race, religion, and empire. We are particularly interested in underrepresented and underexplored writers, artists, and archives from the global south and in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of modernism, religion, and empire. This panel would pay particular attention to the interrelations between literary form and genre, critiques of empire and imperial geopolitics, and topics of religion and spirituality in the myriad contexts of transnational modernity.
Far from confirming the supposedly secular character of modernism, this panel recognises the presence and agency of religion and the secular as key factors in the modernity(s) imagined and contested by the literary and artistic archives of the global twentieth century.
Schedule
Papers
Speaker Bio
Oscar G. Chaidez is a PhD student in the Program of Comparative Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, where he specializes in queer Latin American literatures and cultures. Specifically, he is interested in analyzing the ways in which queer writers and visual artists in this region of the world have historically negotiated the question of religion (namely, Catholicism—historically, the dominant credo of this region) in their work.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Apala Das is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey. She received her PhD in English from the University of Toronto in 2023. Her areas of specialisation include global modernisms, postcolonial theory, poetry and poetics, and postsecularism. Her work has appeared in the Wallace Stevens Journal, the Journal of Postcolonial Writing, and the Bloomsbury Philosophy Library's volume on Aesthetics and Politics in the Global South.
Speaker Bio
Speaker Bio
Jiacheng Feng, M.A. in Comparative and World Literature, Tsinghua University. Research interests: Russian, Japanese and Chinese Modernism; Cultural and political history of the Russian Far East; Russian imperial history and post-colonial studies; world literature.
Papers
Speaker Bio
Speaker Bio
Matthew Mullins is Associate Professor of English at Oklahoma Baptist University and author of Postmodernism in Pieces (2016) and Enjoying the Bible (2021).
Speaker Bio
Abdul Sabur Kidwai is a 3rd year PhD student of Comparative Literature at King’s College London. His doctoral research explores Indian Muslim travel writing to Britain in the nineteenth century, with a focus on Urdu and Persian manuscripts, combining history and literature. He is particularly interested in the dynamics of religion, travel, and empire. He is supported by the London Arts & Humanities Partnership funding for his doctoral work, and has previously read for a BA and MA in English Literature at the Aligarh Muslim University, and an MA in Comparative Literature with Distinction at the SOAS University of London, funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, UK. He was awarded the University Gold Medal for his MA at Aligarh.
Abdul Sabur Kidwai was Visiting Research Fellow at the Sir Syed Academy, India in 2024. He is a translator of Urdu and English, and teaches Urdu at King’s College London.