MDRN

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October 16 2026 → MDRN Lecture: 'Sustaining Djuna Barnes’s Late Poetry' by Jade French

MDRN Lecture || Friday October 16, 2026, 16:00-18:00 || LETT. 01.52 (Jos Cretenzaal) - Faculty of...

October 15 2026 → MDRN Workshop - Literary WASTE Collage Workshop

Workshop || October 15th 16:00-18:00, Museumzaal, MSI, Leuven Literary WASTE Collage Workshop A...

June 10 2026 → MDRN Lecture: 'Piet Mondrian: On the Artist and the Myths' by Wietse Coppes

MDRN Lecture || Wednesday June 10, 2026, 16:30 || LETT. 01.52 (Jos Cretenzaal) - Faculty of Arts,...

May 12 2026 → MDRN Lecture: 'Learning by Drawing' by Jessica Sjöholm Skrubbe

MDRN Lecture || May 12 2026, 16:30 || Faculty of Arts Leuven, Lett. 01.52 (Jos Cretenzaal) '...

Featured Projects

The Rise of 'Technocelebrity': Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius

The Rise of the ‘Technocelebrity’. The Politics of Social Expertise in the Public Careers of Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius, sponsored by the FWO, studies the key role of mass media in the rise to fame of two key avant-garde architects.

Decolonizing the Avant-Garde

This collaborative research project, initiated by Sascha Bru and Isabel Wünsche (Constructor University, Bremen) seeks to explore how we can decolonize the post-1945 history and idea of the avant-garde.

Selected Publications

About MDRN

MDRN is a research lab based at the University of Leuven in Belgium. MDRN studies the literature and culture of a key period in European cultural history: the first half of the twentieth century.

Europe in the first half of the twentieth century not only saw a series of fundamental changes that affected the whole of cultural life. It also witnessed an exciting phase in literary history, which is perhaps best known for its modernist fiction and for the rich variety of experiments conducted by avant-gardists in poetry, drama and beyond. The continent in the first half of the twentieth century further saw a substantial rise of literacy rates, which led to the arrival of a mass readership. This expanded readership, along with many other factors, constantly challenged literature to change and adapt itself.

Studying this process of unbroken change in literature, all MDRN research initiatives share a double aim. On the one hand they wish to add to our understanding of European writing from the first half of the twentieth century, highlighting its ever-shifting conceptions, functions and complex medial make-up. On the other hand MDRN research more generally seeks to reflect on the practice of modern literary historiography. For how can we best write the history of modern European literature? How do we adequately capture its incessant process of becoming? One thing is certain: an agile object of study requires flexible methods, giving rise not to the one history, but to the multiple histories it deserves.

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