Modernist Intimacies

This book traces modern intimacy back to the first decades of the twentieth century, and shows that modernism played a crucial role in its emergence. Intimacy can no longer be seen as an exclusively private, familiar sphere of life independent of socio-political realities; disruptive and inescapably public, intimacy from the modernist period to the present furthers reactionary and violent as well progressive and creative forces. Modernist Intimacies offers incisive, original perspectives on intimacy as a vital dimension of modernist aesthetic and social practices. The twelve contributors engage topics from music-making, wartime radio broadcasting and transnational relations to diary-writing, affect, sexual pleasure, queer religiosity and same-sex love. In attending to a wide range of print literary texts as well as other media such as church murals and sonic archives, the volume also points to the resonance of modernist intimacies in our own time.