CfP: "Between folk and highbrow: popular culture and its functions in avant-garde magazines of the 1920s and 1930s" Einladung zur Sektionsteilnahme im Rahmen der 2. EAM-Konferenz, Poznan
- Ort: Poznan, Adam Mickiewicz University
- Beginn: 09.09.10
- Ende: 11.09.10
- Disziplinen: Literaturwissenschaft
- Sprachen: Sprachenübergreifend
European Network for Avant-garde and Modernism Studies
Between folk and highbrow: popular culture and its functions in avant-garde magazines of the 1920s and 1930s
Reviews and magazines were not only an appropriate, flexible and urban medium for avant-gardes to establish and assert themselves as a collective movement after World War One, but they were also an experimental playground that allowed different disciplines of arts and media to connect despite their separation up until then. Within the review, the avant-gardes searched to deconstruct the aesthetic canon of tradition. One of the most prominent avenues for achieving this aim was the renewed appreciation of European and non-European folk traditions and the aestheticization of elements of the so-called “lowbrow” culture. The title of a Dada-Magazine called "Jedermann sein eigener Fußball" (Everyone his own football) was indicative of this phenomenon in that it connected in quite a paradoxical way the demonstrative will for anarchistic individualism and the attraction to “low-culture” popular sports. In the 1920s, sports, films and other “low-culture” phenomena such as commercials, variety shows or popular cabarets became important topics even in those avant-garde magazines clearly directed at an intellectual and elitist public, as was the case for Jeanneret’s and Ozenfant’s "Esprit Nouveau". In this review, the “highbrow” desire for distinguished aesthetic raffinement and the typical avant-garde inclination of going popular converged in an especially puzzling way. Whereas in this case “lowbrow” folk-culture served to differentiate the new modernist spirit from more traditional art-journals, avant-garde movements outside of Europe rediscovered indigenous folk-traditions to exhibit a new, post-colonial, cultural and national self-esteem. Such was the case for the Argentine review "Martin Fierro", the Peruvian "Boletín Titikaka" or the Brazilian "Revista Antropofágica".
The session aims to examine the functional variety of popular culture elements in avant-garde magazines of the 1920s and 1930s while considering different analytical levels, for example:
1. Popular culture, mass media and intermediality: what are the functions of popular media in the interplay with other media in those reviews? If it is true that film in the 1920s becomes the new leading art form for the avant-garde, what is the role of popular film genres such as slapstick or the funnies in this process?
2. Popular culture, national identity and the building of inter- or transnational communities: what role does “popular” and “folk” traditions play in the self-marketing strategies of avant-garde reviews and within the internal struggle of supremacy fought out between different avant-garde movements (for example, see the controversy between the Argentine review Martin Fierro and Spain’s Gaceta Literaria)
3. Popular culture and the aesthetic canon: what strategies are developed to widen the canon of literature and arts and include other forms of objects (from Dadaist ready-mades to surrealist objects trouvés) and what is the role of popular culture in this particular process of canonization?
Focusing on the place of popular culture especially in avant-garde reviews, the session will explore avant-garde movements in a inter- or transnational dimension and welcomes the contribution of examples from different countries in the three conference languages (English, German, and French).
Proposals for participation should include:
o The paper’s title and a 500-word abstract of the paper
o The speaker’s name, institutional affiliation, position or title and contact information
o The speaker’s CV (one page)
Deadline for proposals is November 30, 2009
Please send your proposal for participation directly at the session chair:
Dr. Hanno Ehrlicher,
e-mail: hanno.ehrlicher@rose.uni-heidelberg.de
Chairs determine the speakers for their sessions and reply to all applicants by February 1, 2010.
No one may participate in more than one session. Session chairs must be informed if one or more proposals are being submitted to other sessions for consideration. Acceptance in a session implies a commitment to attend that session and participate in person.
For all queries, please contact the principal organiser: Agata Jakubowska (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznan) at: eam2010@amu.edu.pl
Publiziert von: Kai Nonnenmacher