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Centre for Modern Literature and Culture

Modern art is above all about making it new. What did that mean in the early twentieth century and what does it mean for us now? Whether artists were willing or resisting change - hurling themselves into the (often technological) future or hankering elegiacally after lost forms and ways of life - the first fifty years of the twentieth century saw an explosion of artistic production in all the arts. We think that the questions of modernism and modernity need to be at the heart of intellectual culture today. 

Established in October 2013, the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture is a forum for academics, writers and artists to explore, interrogate, dismantle and reinvent the notion of the 'modern'. We fund and organise regular events aimed both at the academy and the wider public and collaborate with many of London's major cultural institutions to do so. Recently we've worked with Tate, the Southbank Centre and The White Review. In 2017 we put on the 'Melancholia' exhibition in the Ingio Rooms at Somerset House, which featured previously unseen work by Anslem Kiefer and Tacita Dean. 

At the heart of our work is the Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment. Postgraduate students from throughout Europe are invited to submit work in any form. Three winners (a writer, a composer and a visual artist) receive £1000 and collaborate on a new work of art on a two-week residency in Scotland's Cove Park. We are committed to using the prize both to enable boundary-breaking new work and to serving the wider community. With this in mind, winners of the prize run annual workshops with local school students. 

Our understanding of modernism is far-reaching and plural and our initiatives seek to reflect that in the sorts of people we invite and the experimental forms of intellectual and creative life that we open the to. We are always looking for ways of  reaching out of the academy to the larger intellectual culture these questions connect to and the largest and newest forms of creative life and political identity they bring to light. 

Find out more about the Ivan Juritz Prize and the judges on the website. 

Directors of the Centre: Dr Lara Feigel and Dr Benedict Schofield

Study the Modern Literature & Culture MA at King's. 

Centre for Modern Literature and Culture: Events Archive 

Members

Jon Day

Jon Day

Lecturer in English

Lara Feigel

Lara Feigel

Professor of Modern Literature and Culture

Patrick ffrench

Patrick ffrench

Professor of French

Johanna Malt

Johanna Malt

Professor of French Literature & Visual Culture

Silvina Milstein

Silvina Milstein

Professor of Music

Benedict Schofield

Benedict Schofield

Reader in German. Co-Director of the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture.

Hannah Vinter

Hannah Vinter

Administrator for the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture

German screen studies network

Professor Erica Carter, German Screen Studies Network, (2015-2017)

The German Screen Studies Network was founded in June 2012 as a platform for informed comment and German-language film promotion amongst researchers, educators, film professionals, and the interested public.

German Screen Studies Network

image of two soldiers in black and white

Dr Santanu Das, Cultural exchange in a time of global conflict: colonials, neutrals and belligerents during the First World War (2013-2016) HERA - Humanities in the European Research Area

This sourcebook is one of the outcomes of a three-year, collaborative research project Cultural Exchange in a time of Global Conflict: Colonials, Neutrals and Belligerents during the First World War that ran from 2013 until 2016 and was funded by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area). The sourcebook aims to introduce scholars and the interested public to rare or unknown sources, and stimulate further research and thinking on the subject of cultural encounters.

Cultural exchange in a time of global conflict: colonials, neutrals and belligerents during the First World War

Modern generic art

Dr Santanu Das, The Making of Modernist Resistance, 1880-1950 (ssmscaifa) (2015-2017) EC - European Commission

Modern generic art

Dr Lara Feigel, Beyond Enemy Lines: Literature and Film in the British and American Zones of Occupied Germany, 1945-1949, European Research Council (2013-2018) Leverhulme Trust (2014-2019).

This project investigates the cross-fertilisation of Anglo/American and German literature and film during the Allied Occupation of Germany between the end of the war and the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949. It is the first study to survey in detail the cultural landscape of the British and American zones of Germany, exploring in particular the British and American writers and filmmakers who worked in Germany during the Occupation, either as part of the Allied Control Commissions or as independent (although rarely neutral) participants. By doing so it aims to offer a new interpretative framework for postwar culture, in particular in three areas: the history of the Allied Occupation of Germany; the history of postwar Anglophone and Germanophone literature (arguing the two were more intertwined than has previously been suggested); and the history of the relationship between postwar and Cold War and of the creation of a united Europe.

Beyond Enemy Lines

artwork for the CMLC

Professor Patrick Ffrench, Dr Giovanni Menegalle, Visions of Technological Change in 20th-Century French Thought: Technics, Society and the Human from Durkheim to Deleuze & Guattari, British Academy (2018-2020).

Berlin building

Professor Patrick Ffrench, 'A sensation of one's own'. The Clinical Encounter in Twentieth-Century French Literature and Visual Culture, Leverhulme Trust (2013-2017).

Picasso show image

Professor Silvina Milstein, Musical dream forms, Leverhulme Trust (2016-2018).

Image of a corridor with multicoloured lights.

Anna Snaith , Leonora Carrington's Surrealist Space: Literary and Visual Artistry Leverhulme Trust (2014-2017)

View all publications

Ivan Juritz Prize Image

Ivan Juritz Prize for Creative Experiment

The Ivan Juritz Prize was established in 2014 to reward art that seeks to break boundaries and 'make it new'. Postgraduate students throughout Europe either from traditional academic disciplines or from creative courses submit texts, films, musical compositions, virtual documentation of artwork, excerpts of moving image work and proposals for installation and performance. Entrants are encouraged o play with form to make us think, feel and question. The prize is a collaboration between the Centre for Modern Literature and Culture and Cove Park, Scotland's International Artist Residency Centre. Winners in three categories (text, image, sound) receive £1000 and pend two weeks at Cove Park, engaging in a residency and showcase. The three winners collaborate on a new work of art which will then be performed. All shortlisted works are also given a public performance at the prize-giving and are written up in the journal Textual Practice. Recent judges have included Lisa Appignanesi, Rachel Cusk, Dexter Dalwood, Jeremy Harding, Deborah Levy, Richard Scott, Arlene Sierra, Gillian Wearing, Ryan Wigglesworth.

Please see our website for details of how to enter the competition (deadline is in March each year) and for information about the past winners and judges

Follow on Twitter @IvanJuritzPrize

Our partners

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Centre for Modernist Cultures

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University of Birmingham

Contact us

To join our mailing list and find out about future events please sign up. 

Follow us on Twitter: @CMLC_KCL and @IvanJuritzPrize


Mailing Address: 

Centre for Modern Literature and Culture
Arts & Humanities Research Institute
K1.18, King’s Building
Strand Campus
London
WC2R 2LS

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