Modernism on File
Subtitle: Writers, Artists, and the FBI 1920-1950
Contributors: Claire A. Culleton (Editor); Karen Leick (Editor)
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: February 5, 2008
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9780230601352
Subjects: American - General; Literary Criticism & Collections / American; Literary Criticism; Literature - Classics / Criticism; 20th century; American literature; History; History and criticism; Literature and state; Politics and literature; United States
Description: Modernism on File: Writers, Artists, and the FBI, 1920-1950 brings together important new scholarship focused on J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and its institutional presence in shaping and directing American print, film, and art culture. From Harlem to Hollywood, Hoover and his bureau workers were bent on decontaminating America's creativity and this collection looks at the writers and artists who were tagged, tracked, and in some cases, trapped by the FBI. Contributors detail the threatening aspects of political power and critique the very historiography of modernism, acknowledging that modernism was on trial during those years.