Modernisms in Transit: Dialogues and Crossings

Aix-Marseille Université

Alexis Nuselovici is Professor of General and Comparative Literature at the Aix-Marseille University. His research and publications span translation studies, the experience of exile, European culture, the literature of personal accounts, issues for mixed-race individuals, and the aesthetics of modernity. He is the leader of the ‘Transpositions’ group based at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Literature Study (CIELAM) at Aix-Marseille University and holds the ‘Exile and Migration’ Chair at the College of World Studies (Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris). 

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens

Mina Karavanta is Associate Professor of Literary Theory, Cultural Studies and Anglophone Literature at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Publications include articles in boundary 2, Feminist Review, Modern Fiction Studies, Mosaic, Symplokē, Journal of Contemporary Theory. She was a member of Travelling Concepts, ATHENA, European Thematic Network (2009- 2014), a co-ordinator of the research subgroup Interculturality and Gender, and participated in the AHRC-funded network “Behind the Looking-Glass: ‘“Other”-Cultures-within’ translating cultures” (2011-2014). She is a founding member and co-editor of the peer-reviewed e-journal Synthesis: an Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literature Studies.

University of Bucharest

Oana Șerban is a Teaching Assistant in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest. She is the author of Artistic Capitalism (Paralela 45, 2016) and The Death of Light Happiness.  From Moral Reform to Aesthetic Metaphor (Ars Docendi, 2012). She is co-editor of Octavio Paz:  Culture and Modernity (2017), Culture and Religion in the Balkans: Philosophical Approaches (2015). Recent work includes an essay on the biopolitical potential of modern art in Philosophy and Film:  Bridging Divides (Routledge, 2019). 

Professor Mihaela Pop has been working at the intersection between cultural studies and philosophy from the perspective of moral, religious and aesthetic values. Professor Pop recently coordinated the international research project “Church and Culture in Romanian and Bulgarian History. The Future of Religion in the Balkans”.  

Viorel Vizureanu is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest. Along his research on modern European philosophy, with a particular focus on Descartes, he has also contributed to the history of Romanian logic and, more recently, to the understanding of the impact of globalization on cultural identities. 

Sapienza University of Rome

Pierluigi Cervelli is a Research Professor and a member of the Faculty of Political Sciences, Sociology and Communication at Sapienza University of Rome. He has recently started investigating cultural and linguistic creolization in subsaharan French-speaking Africa (Niger, Cameroon, Ivory Coast). Professor Pezzini is one of the global leaders of semiotic research worldwide, strongly involved in research projects in Latin America and particularly Brazil and Colombia. 

Isabella Pezzini is Professor of Semiotics at the Department of Sociology and Communication, at Sapienza University of Rome. Her research into the semiotics of text and discourse examines contemporary forms of expression, audio-visual language, consumerism and the imaginary, and research strategies in efficacity.

Stockholm University

Andrea Kollnitz is Associate Professor of Art History at Stockholm University. She is co-editor of Fashion and Modernism (Bloomsbury 2018, in Swedish: Modernism och mode, Carlssons 2015) and A Cultural History of the Avant-Garde in the Nordic Countries, vol 2: 1925-1950 (Brill, 2019). She is currently working on a monograph about the Surrealist artist Leonor Fini, and co-editing Fashion, Performance & Performativity (Bloomsbury, 2020).

Kristoffer Noheden is a researcher in cinema studies in the Department of Media Studies at Stockholm University. He is the author of Surrealism, Cinema, and the Search for a New Myth (2017). His current project, tentatively titled Excursions in the Night Side of Nature: Surrealism and Ecology, is funded by the Swedish Research Council. He is co-editor of Surrealism and myth (with Daniel Zamani), and of Surrealism and Film after 1945: Absolutely Modern Mysteries (with Abigail Susik, forthcoming with Manchester UP). Noheden is guest co-curator of Alan Glass: Surrealism's Secret at Leeds Arts University, to open September 2020.

Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe is Associate Professor in Art History at Stockholm University. She has edited Curating Differently: Feminisms, Exhibitions, and Curatorial Spaces (Cambridge Scholars, 2016) and her monograph Nell Walden, Der Sturm and the Collaborative Cultures of Modern Art is forthcoming with Routledge. Her current project, Swedish artists en route. Mobility, transnationalism and artistic practices in the early 20th century,  has been generously supported by Landskrona museum, Åke Wibergs Stiftelse, and Magnus Bergvalls Stiftelse. 

Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen

Astrid Franke is professor of American Studies at the Univesity of Tübingen. Her most recent book examines American public poetry. She has been a member of the Collaborative Research Center "Threatened Orders" with a project on the resilience of the racial order in the US. Her interests include Popular Culture, Cultural History and Theory, Modern and Contemporary Novel, and, as an underlying thread, intersections of literature and sociology.

Russell West-Pavlov holds the Chair of Anglophone Literatures at the Univesity of Tübingen. He teaches and researches comparative Global South cultural and literary studies, focusing on Australia, Africa and the Caribbean. He is a co-convenor of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Global South Studies at the University of Tübingen. He is co-editor of the book series Literary Cultures of the Global South (Routledge) and Challenges (Narr).

ORGANISERS:

Anne Reynès-Delobel is Associate Professor of American Literature at Aix-Marseille University. She has published widely on American modernisms and the international avant-gardes, and more specifically on their transatlantic circulation in the interwar period. She is the current president of The Kay Boyle Society (an ALA and SSAWAA affiliate).  

Stamatina Dimakopoulou is Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Publications include articles on Surrealism, modernist magazines, US literature and the visual arts. She is a founding member and co-editor of the peer-reviewed e-journal, Synthesis, an Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies.