MySpace Modernism

Is “making it new” a linear process of continual reinvention, or does this process involve cycling back to earlier forms of the old?

Whereas the traditional definition of modernism denies any mantle of commercialism, the current age of modernist studies firmly establishes modernism’s dependence upon market dynamics. The field of “Material Modernism,” initiated over the last few decades by critics such as Lawrence Rainey, Kevin Dettmar, Stephen Watt, and George Bornstein, has persuasively shown how modernism marketed itself and was disseminated to an increasingly popular audience.¹ Jonathan Rose and Patrick Collier, among others, have explored how modernism became the purview of working class intellectuals and was available in populist forms.² Fewer scholars, however, have taken into consideration how modernism was defined and canonized by academia. Jennifer Wicke, for one, points out the need for scholars and critics to acknowledge their own implication in establishing modernism’s “brand name,” how our scholarship is involved in the ongoing and self-defining modernist industry.³

I would take Wicke’s suggestion one step further and point out that not only is our research involved in the “marketing” of modernism, but so is our pedagogy. We, as teachers, are dealers in the multivalent forms of modernism, and the classroom is the place where the movement is “bought and sold.” Yet, as Helen Sword points out in her introduction to this collection, pedagogy is often overlooked in our highly theoretical field of study. There is a divide between what we write and the praxis of the classroom. This gap, I believe, may very well be an echo of that old academically constructed bias against seeing modernism in the marketplace.

In an attempt to bridge this divide, I have devised a semester-long group assignment that involves students in the ongoing process of modernist vision and revision. The project uses new, student-based, digital media to teach by example how modernism aspired to innovative forms and stylistics, was spread and marketed as a cultural movement, and, finally, was dependent upon the public sphere. Assigned early in the semester as students grapple with the anomalous, protean definition(s) of modernism, the project has students construct networks of MySpace profiles based upon modernist books, characters, and authors. As part of the process of defining (or un-defining) modernism, we collectively explore many of the movement’s contradictions: how prejudice and misogyny coexisted alongside humanism and feminism; how displacement of the reader encouraged a new, democratic way of reading; how modernism was restrictive yet became the canonized and influential literature of the century.

The prompt gives groups (usually four students) a limited option of texts (such as Ford Maddox Ford’s The Good Soldier or Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers) and/or coterie groups (such as Lewis, Pound, Marinetti, and Blast, or Woolf’s Bloomsbury Salon) for which students produce MySpace profiles. The students research and represent biography, historical context, characterization, and criticism. They are directed to emulate stylistic experimentation in their profiles as a means of “translating” and “enacting” modernism in a non-traditional media. The rubric stresses that pages will be graded on:

1. a. understanding of the text and author’s innovations;

2. b. creativity in capturing aspects of the work on their pages (i.e. their own stylistic innovation in capturing or updating the subject);

3. c. intertextuality between group members and even other groups (i.e. using the “network” aspect of both modernism and MySpace to its fullest advantage);

4. d. rationalization for their choices on their group’s discussion board, which includes a bibliography to substantiate research.

Groups are required to contribute weekly both to their profiles and to the class discussion board. This way, the profile clusters evolve organically over the course of the semester both in their sophistication and in their understanding of modernism.

Students respond enthusiastically and energetically to the unconventional nature of the project, which invites them to use a known language and skill to explore a difficult and academic subject. For example, their detailed historical research into textual allusions has consistently surprised me. One student’s profile for James Joyce was amazingly astute, featuring interplay between illustrations, such as numerous...