Writing & Society Research Seminar Series

Can modernism be happy? As we witness a popular, political and scholarly ‘turn’ towards happiness and well-being in recent decades, modernist studies has remained largely silent on the subject. In spite of the many revisionary approaches that have transformed the field in the past twenty years, modernism continues to be aligned with negativity and troubled feelings. This seminar investigates possible reasons as to why the field has occluded happiness from its critical narratives, and some of its implications. Through discussing a range of engagements with happy feelings in modernist literature and visual cultures, I argue that this is an important historical and cultural moment for modernist studies – and literary studies more broadly – to take happiness and positive affect seriously.