The Passion Projects: Modernist Women, Intimate Archives, Unfinished Lives

(Hardback)

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Description

How modernist women writers used biographical writing to resist their exclusion from literary history It's impossible, now, to think of modernism without thinking about gender, sexuality, and the diverse movers and shakers of the early twentieth century. But this was not always so. The Passion Projects examines biographical projects that moderni

Reviews

"Shortlisted for the MSA First Book Prize, Modernist Studies Association"
"

A wondrous ode to feminist research and biography as a tool and method for revisiting the past. . . . The book will become a key pedagogical resource for the study of Feminist Modernist Studies due to its scope as well as the myriad of primary sources and the bibliography that it provides. Besides this, it is an easy-to-read and thought-provoking work that will appeal to a diverse audience.

"---Cristina Daz Prez, LSE Review of Books
"Micirs queer counterhistory of modernism writes into the story not only authors and artists, but the collectors, curators, editors, archivists, and biographers who create and hold space for the work they value. Micirs book itself will appeal to anyone interested in modernism and feminist and queer critical methodsand to anyone looking for a compelling and often moving story. . . . a must-read for all researchers sensitive to the framing of the historical narratives they compose."---Carolyn Dever, Public Books
"The Passion Projects is a feminist manifesto disguised as a monograph, advocating for a revaluation of feminized labor, a more inclusive understanding of what counts as scholarship, and a renewed approach to collaboration. Micirs focus on the editing, collecting, curating, and archiving of modernism reveals literary carework and intellectual housekeeping as instrumental to the continued expansion of new modernist studies."---Erica Gene Delsandro, Feminist Modernist Studies
"From the unpublished to fragments to curated and collected materials preserved for a future reader, Micir traces beautifullyat times heartbreakinglythe stories of what these incomplete projects tell us about queer womens lives and desires and their artistic commitments. . . . Micir illuminates partnerships and projects that havent received enough attention."---Rowena Kennedy-Epstein, Women: A Cultural Review
"Micir exposes in minute detail the difficult balancing act between the personal and political when it comes to unravelling the self-made archive."---Eilish Mulholland, Modernist Review
"If the intimacy between lovers and friends is central to The Passion Projects, no less so is that between the scholar or other reader of later times and the author who lived years before. . . . One of the glories of Micirs book is its attention to the intergenerational connections that, arising in such circumstances, help to realize intensely held hopes for queer futurity."---Douglas Mao, Modernism/modernity

Author Bio

Melanie Micir is assistant professor of English and an affiliate faculty member of the Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Washington University in St. Louis.