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>
Upcoming Events
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Hannah Freed-Thall (NYU): "Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal Commons"
March 21, 2025 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm -
Avni Sejpal (UPenn): Work in Progress
April 11, 2025 - 5:00pm to 6:30pm
Past Events
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Seo Hee Im (Hanyang): "Beckett's Hoarding"
April 30, 2021 - 10:00am to 11:30am -
Matt Hart (Columbia) : Excerpt from “Extraterritorial” and Publishing Q&A
March 31, 2021 - 5:00pm to 6:45pm -
Megan Quigley (Villanova): "T.S. Eliot’s Fictional Afterlives”
March 17, 2021 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm -
Jonathan Sterne (McGill): “There Are Never Enough Spoons: Fatigue and the Political Phenomenology of Impairment”
February 26, 2021 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm -
John Greaney, Mod/Con Work in Progress. "Elizabeth Bowen and Irish Modernism."
December 4, 2020 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm -
Jed Esty, WIP: "Russian Plots Revisited: The Long Cold Wars of Conrad and Nabokov"
November 20, 2020 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm -
Discussion of Short Stories by Octavia Butler
October 23, 2020 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm -
Discussion of Sianne Ngai's "Theory of the Gimmick"
September 18, 2020 - 12:00pm to 1:30pm -
John Greaney Talk--CANCELED
April 15, 2020 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm -
Sarah Wasserman (University of Delaware)--CANCELED
March 25, 2020 - 5:30pm to 7:30pm