Mod/Con
The Mod/Con Working Group is coordinated and funded by the Department of English.
Mod/Con, Penn English's Modernist and Contemporary Literatures Reading Group, is a working group devoted to the discussion of cultural and literary problematics in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Our critical and historical interests range from the late nineteenth century through to the present day, across early and high moderism, postmodernism, and beyond. Each semester, we work to develop ways of thinking about these period markers—how they differ, what they share—through invited lectures and works-in-progress by graduate students and faculty in and outside of the Penn English community. In tandem with these works-in-progress, Mod/Con frequently hosts reading events of scholarly monographs as well as works of short fiction and poetry. We hope you can join us for an event!
For more information or to be placed on the Mods listserv, please contact Jonathan Dick <jondick@sas.upenn.edu>
Past Events
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Anna Shechtman (Cornell): "The Voice of the Internet"
March 22, 2024 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm -
Eric Hayot (Penn State): “The End of Aesthetic History?”
December 7, 2023 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm -
Sangina Patnaik (Swarthmore): "What We Owe: Reparations in Literature and Law”
November 30, 2023 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm -
Alexander Manshel (McGill): "Writing Backwards: Historical Fiction and the Reshaping of the American Canon”
November 9, 2023 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm -
Discussion of Martin Hägglund’s "Dying For Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov"
October 11, 2023 - 1:30pm to 3:00pm -
Michaela Bronstein (Stanford): On Crimes For All Humanity: Revolution and the Modern Novel
April 20, 2023 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm -
Guenther Leypoldt (University of Heidelberg), "Literary Prestige and the Laureate Position in Cultural Space"
April 13, 2023 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm -
Arthur Wang (Penn), “Inventing Rape Ecology: Octavia E. Butler and the Sociobiology of Sexual Violence"
March 24, 2023 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm -
Joint Book Launch: Jed Esty, Nancy Yousef (Rutgers) & Jonah Siegel (Rutgers)
February 23, 2023 - 5:00pm to 7:00pm -
Sonya Posmentier (NYU): "Lyric Education as a Practice of Freedom”
February 10, 2023 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm