Modernism, Religion, and Empire

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.