Modernism: Evolution of an Idea by Sean Latham and Gayle Rogers, Modernism’s Print Cultures by Faye Hamill and Mark Hussey, Modernism, Science, and Technology by Mark S. Morrison

The appearance of Bloomsbury’s New Modernisms series marks a turning point in the study of modernism, a moment at which its discoveries and insights can be productively evaluated and reflected upon. Bloomsbury’s series offers a range of introductions, guides, and handbooks—not manifestoes or polemics—to help students and scholars map the diverse perspectives and approaches that now make up the field. This dispassionate accounting of what has been accomplished in modernist studies over the past twenty or so years—in relation, of course, to the longer history of modernism itself—signals an important watershed: the “new” modernist studies is no longer primarily preoccupied with its own project of “making it new,” and is now a well-established field. Of course we might read Douglas Mao and Rebecca Walkowitz’s important 2008 PMLA article, “The New Modernist Studies,” in a similar light—less a proclamation than a summary and assessment of the field as it stood at...