In Abstract
If early 20th century Anglo-American literary modernism is a reaction to modernity, whose modernity matters? Whose reaction is legitimate? This question led us away from the "traditional" modernism of Joyce, Pound, and Woolf to the traditionally "too political" Harlem Renaissance. Is that reaction to modernity any less modernist?
Enter: Georgia Douglas Johnson. She is an early 20th Century poet, dramatist, activist, and literary socialite. On this site we explore her work at the intersection of modernism and the Harlem Renaissance; art and politic; racial uplift and women's roles. Using Bibliographic Codes and Intersectional Theory we aim to reread Johnson's poetry and plays, challenging the standing definition of modernism. But, we don't aim to squish this poet into a modernist Canon. We want to see her in her own contexts and on her own terms. We want to challenge the rules, assumptions, and presumptions of modernism itself.