These three first books, all with American modernism in their titles, provide an interesting snapshot of modernist studies. Although the terrain and the arguments of these studies are each quite different, there are some similarities of style and methodology. First, although each does discuss important canonical works of literature, each also ranges freely across genres and juxtaposes texts that all readers are likely to know with texts that few readers will. Second, each is post-theoretical not in the sense of eschewing theory but in the sense of invoking multiple theoretical frames and perspectives. Third, although aiming ultimately to explicate canonical literary works, each book explicates with reference to a range of social and historical contexts in a way that is genuinely explanatory and does not in general feel overdetermined. In each of these dimensions—generic, theoretical, and contextual—there is a nimbleness found in these books that is both encouraging and refreshing....
The New Death: American Modernism and World War I
The Politics of Irony in American Modernism
Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life
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Reed Way Dasenbrock was educated at McGill, Oxford, and Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a PhD in English in 1981. He is the author or editor of seven books on modernism and literary theory. From 1997 until 2016 he was a full-time administrator, first at New Mexico State University, then at the University of New Mexico, and then at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where he was vice chancellor for academic affairs from 2009 until 2016. In the fall 2017 semester, he resumed teaching English, Italian, philosophy, honors, and higher education administration courses, while also chairing the Western Association of Schools and Colleges commission responsible for accreditation of higher education in California, Hawaii, and the Pacific.
Reed Way Dasenbrock; The New Death: American Modernism and World War I
The Politics of Irony in American Modernism
Celibacies: American Modernism and Sexual Life. American Literature 1 March 2018; 90 (1): 180–182. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-4326502
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