Centre for Modernist Studies Reading Group

The Centre for Modernist Studies Reading Group was revived in 2022 as a response to the growing need in our postgraduate community to discover and rediscover writings from some of the most challenging authors in recent history. We aim to explore modernist literature as an interdisciplinary, transhistorical and transcultural phenomenon. The group takes canonical texts as sites of renegotiation, but also examines texts by under-studied women writers and authors from cultures outside Anglo-European borders. We welcome discussion of various modernisms in music, film, and the visual arts as well as in literature. We have an expansive view of modernism, and are interested in its post-1945 iterations, and in arguments that locate concerns associated with modernism much earlier than they are typically placed.  

The Reading Group meet roughly every three weeks. We take a fluid and flexible approach to our reading list and welcome everybody that has an interest in a variety of modernisms. We also set quantities of reading that should not impinge upon our ever-heightening demands as postgraduate students: no more than 60 or so pages between each session.  

If you are interested in joining please just come along to a meeting as advertised through School email bulletins and through invitations from the group organisers, or you can email Chrissie Dobson at cd405@sussex.ac.uk  

Proposed Reading List for 2023/2024 Theme: Women Modernists 

We meet at 19:30 in a pub in Brighton, Hove, Lewes. Find details for each group on our events page.

High Modernism (Autumn/Winter)

30 October: H.D. Helen in Egypt

27 November: Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

18 December: Nancy Cunard, Outlaws

29 January: Edith Sitwell, Façade

Late/Neo/Post/Contemporary Modernism (Winter/Spring)

26 February: Barbara Guest, Selected Poems

25 March: Bernadette Meyer, Midwinter Day

29 April: Lyn Hejinian, My Life

27 May: Denise Riley, Say Something Back

Summer: Women Theorists/Critique

24 June: Melanie Klein, psychoanalyst

29 July: Maya Deren, film writings

26 August: Yvonne Rainer, dance/film writings