Projects
The MDRN lab runs various funded research projects, a chronological list of which is provided here.
Learning Modern Literature
The research project Learning Modern Literature. Literary Education in Western Europe (1880-1940) is funded by the University of Leuven Research Council. It studies the complex interactions between the world of school and the world of literature in Western Europe in the modernist period.
Reanimating Morgue Files
Reanimating Morgue Files. A Media Archeology of Reference Picture Collections is an FWO-sponsored project that examines the specific case of morgue files: picture collections used as reference aid for drawing comics and cartoons.
Pictures for the Kids
Pictures for the Kids. Visual Seriality in Illustrated Periodicals for Children in Belgium, 1919-1949 is a project sponsored by the FWO. It proposes a critical rediscovery and timely, methodologically innovative analyses of Belgian illustrated periodicals for children before the postwar rise of the comics magazine.
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.
Dada Affect
Dada Affect: The Production of Affect in Erwin Blumenfeld, Francis Picabia and Kurt Schwitters is a project sponsored by the FWO that studies the ways in which Dadaists deployed their work to give shape to alternative types of affect.
Crisis, Critique & Cultural Heritage from Futurismo to Neoavanguardia
Crisis, Critique & Cultural Heritage from Futurismo to Neoavanguardia is an Una-Her-Doc Program in Cultural Heritage project. It studies the ways in which Italian (neo)avant-gardes transformed the notion of cultural heritage.
The Archive of the Avant-Garde
The Archive of the Avant-Garde. Interpretations of the Franciszka and Stefan Themerson Correspondence is an Excellence Initiative of the University of Warsaw. It studies the archive of said Polish-British avant-gardists.
Family Fiction of German and British Women Writers 1900-1945
Genealogy, Genes and Generations: the Family Fiction of German and British Women Writers 1900-1945 is an FWO-sponsored project that examines the depiction of family histories in fiction by German and British women writers.
Italian Ermetismo: Theological poetry, poetical theology
This project, funded by LUMSA (Rome), studies echos of the Bible in two Italian so-called ‘hermetic’ poets: Mario Luzi (Florence 1914 – 2005) and Piero Bigongiari (Pisa 1914 – Firenze 1997).
Archaeology and the Unconscious
Archaeology and the Unconscious: The Rediscovery of the Past in Italian Print Culture (1779-1849) is a Chancellor's International Scholarship (University of Warwick) project that studies the prehistory of the modernist articulation of the unconcious and archeology.
Jewish Women Writers in 1940s Occupied France and Belgium
The literary trajectories of French and Belgian Jewish women writers who lived through the Occupation in the 1940s is a project sponsored by the FWO.
Domesticity and Suffragism in Middlebrow Magazines, 1897-1914
Domesticity and Suffragism in Middlebrow English and Irish Magazines, 1897-1914 is a project sponsored the FWO. It investigates the ideological treatment of the women’s suffrage movement in magazines such as The Woman at Home and Lady of the House.
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.
Pop Heritage
Popular Heritage Lost and Found is a FED-tWIN project funded by BELSPO in collaboration with the Belgian National Library (KBR). It studies modernist 'lowbrow' print culture.
Middlebrow Modernity
Middlebrow Modernity: Irish Writers and The New Yorker in the Mid-Twentieth Century is a European Commission Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions project that explores Irish writers’ connections with The New Yorker.
Women Artist Novels, 1880s to the present
Irish Women Artist Novels, 1880s to the present is a project funded by CSC (China Scholarship Council). It studies the imagination of women artist protagonists in modern and contemporary Irish fiction.
The Feminine Avant-Garde Manifesto
Ethos and Performative Writing in the Avant-Garde Feminine Manifesto is a project sponsored by the Université de Montréal. It studies the rhetoric of manifestoes written by women members of the historical avant-gardes.
Popular Astronomy
Popular Astronomy is a project sponsored by the University of Leuven Research Council. It investigates how German and English-language popular fiction in the modernist period dealt with insights from astronomy.
Mathesis Universalis. The Œuvre of Rahel Varnhagen as Knowledge
Mathesis Universalis. The Oeuvre of Rahel Levin Varnhagen as Form of Knowledge is an FWO-sponsored project. It investigates the work of Varnhagen as a formal precursor of modernist literary knowledge production.
Remembering the Possible
Remembering the Possible. Literature, Affect and Activist Memory in Germany, 1848-1900 is an FWO-sponsored project that studies literary forms of activist memory in Germany in the period from 1848, when socialist activists started to regroup after the failed revolution, up to 1900.
Artpresse. Belgian Art in Popular Magazines of the Interwar Years
Artpresse. An Intermedial Study of Belgian Art’s Networked Structure in Popular Magazines of the Interwar Years is a BELSPO BRAIN-be project. It investigates the view of Belgian art that circulated in the country’s mass media print culture.
Belgian Avant-Garde Art on Paper in a European Context, 1918-1950
Belgian Avant-Garde Art on Paper in a European Context, 1918-1950 is a BELSPO BRAIN-be project. It studies the massive rise of Belgian avant-garde art on paper from 1918 onward.
The Imaginary of Literary Genres in Visual Culture
The Imaginary of Literary Genres in Visual Culture is a project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and KU Leuven's Faculty of Arts. It studies (re)presentations of literature and literary genres in French-language, 20th and 21st-century films, comic strips, graphic novels and photo novels.
Literary Knowledge (1890-1950): Modernisms and the Sciences in Europe
Literary Knowledge (1890-1950): Modernisms and the Sciences in Europe is an Excellence-Funds research programme of the University of Leuven Research Council. It studies the ways in which European literature dealt with insights stemming from the social sciences and humanities, the life sciences and medicine, and the physical sciences and engineering.
Avant-Garde Egypt
Avant-Garde Egypt is a project funded by the University of Leuven Research Council. It investigates the ways in which European historic avant-garde writing related to Ancient Egypt and its archaeological field of study, Egyptology.
Eugenic Women
Eugenic Women is a project funded by the University of Leuven Research Council. It examines English and German popular fiction that drew on insights from genetics and eugenics to portray the role of women and to further feminist as well as other causes during the modernist period.
Colonised Citizens
Colonized Citizens is a research project sponsored by the University of Leuven Research Council. It studies the ways in which insights from genetics and eugenics were mobilized in fiction dealing with the Belgian and German colonies in the modernist period.
Modern Etruscans
Modern Etruscans is a research project sponsored by the University of Leuven Research Council. It studies the ways in which Italian and other European literatures in the modernist period dealt with insights stemming from the archaeological discipline of Etruscology.
Poetic Cosmos
Poetic Cosmos is a project funded by the University of Leuven Research Council. It studies the ways in which modernist and avant-garde literature gave shape to knowledge about the universe stemming from cosmology.
Italy's Phantoms
Italy's Phantoms: Italian / Italic Identity Between History and Memory is a project funded by the FWO. It studies the re-elaboration of Pre-Roman history, figures, and places in Italian modernist literature.
The Construction of Countries
The Construction of Countries: the Phototextual "Portraits de pays" Series (1950-1980) is sponsored by FWO. The project studies photographically illustrated book series devoted to the depiction of countries and cities.
Margarete Susman's Gesammelte Schriften
This edition project sponsored with private funding and undertaken by Anke Gilleir and Barbara Hahn (Vanderbilt University) for the first time makes available the oeuvre of German-Jewish philosopher and critic Margarete Susman in five volumes.
From Rhetoric to Interdiscursivity
From Rhetoric to Interdiscursivity: Reception of an Epistemic Shift in German Vormärz Literature (1815-1848) is a project funded by FWO. It studies the transition from a rhetorical to an interdiscursive episteme in post-1800 German literature.
The Poetics of Precarity
The Poetics of Precarity: Representations of the Worker in German Literature in the Aftermath of the “Great Depression” (1873-1914) is a project sponsored by FWO. It studies the representations of precarity in late 19th-century German social novels.
The Irish Short Story and The Bell Magazine (1940-1954)
The Irish Short Story and The Bell Magazine (1940-1954): Forging a Tradition is a project funded by FWO. It investigates the publication and mediation of the Irish short story in the influential Irish literary periodical The Bell between 1940 and 1954.
Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives
DETECt is a project sponsored by the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. It investigates the topics of identity and popular culture and aims to show how the transnational circulation of crime narratives from various European countries has contributed to the formation of a plural, shared European identity.
The Idea of 'Poetry' in Cinema (1920-2015)
The Idea of Poetry outside the Boundaries of Literature: the Case of Cinema (1920-2015) is a project funded by FWO. It studies the multiple meanings and functions of 'poetry' and 'the poetic' in cinema and film.
Remembering the City of Life
Remembering the City of Life: The Literary Memory of the Occupation of Fiume (1919-2015) is funded by FWO. It studies how the occupation, led by poet Gabriele D’Annunzio, of the town of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia) has been represented in literary works from 1919 till the present day.
Photo-Lit: The Belgian Photo Novel
PHOTO-LIT - The Belgian Photo Novel: Local Reuse of a European Cultural Practice is a research project funded by the BRAIN-be framework (Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks). A media archeological and cultural historical study of the photo novel in Belgium since the late 1940s.
Grieving Alone and/or Together
Grieving alone and/or together. Elegies from the Low Countries in the 20th and 21st centuries is a project sponsored by FWO. It studies the genre of the funeral elegy in the Low Countries from the modernist period into the 21st century.
Homo Mimeticus: Theory and Criticism
Homo Mimeticus: Theory and Criticism is a project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. It studies the role behavioral imitation plays in modernist literature, SF film, and continental philosophy.
Comic Modernism
Comic Modernism: The Reception of Aristophanes in British Poetry, Fiction, and Criticism, 1900-1940 was a research project funded by FWO. It examined the presence of ancient Greek comedy in British modernist literary culture in an attempt to counter the dominant view of modernist literature as a profoundly serious endeavor.
‘His Majesty the Baby’. Literature's Unchained Sovereigns
‘His Majesty the Baby’. Unchained Sovereigns in Modern and Contemporary Comic Literature was a project funded by the Università di Siena (Progetto Pegaso). The project studied the topos of the unchained sovereign in Western literature.
European Neo-Avant-Gardes
European Neo-Avant-Gardes: profile, politics, circulation and mediality is a WOG (Scientific Research Community) funded by FWO. It explores the literary output of the European neo-avant-gardes, focussing particularly on movements in Dutch, French, German and English, and paying special attention to their politics, locality, mediality and genericity.
The Poetics of the Ciné-roman-photo
The Poetics of the Ciné-roman-photo was a project funded by FWO. It aimed to sketch the poetics of a nearly forgotten yet wonderful genre: the publication of films in photonovel format.
Towards a 'Post-Lyric' Poetry?
Towards a “post-lyric” poetry? The “narrative turn” in Italian poetry between 1955 and 1975 was funded by FWO. It considered late modernist Italian poetry, isolating the increased turn to narrative from the 1950s onward.
Portraits of Countries and Cities
Portraits of Countries and Cities: Literature and Photography is a research project funded by FWO and BELSPO. Focusing mainly on the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, the project examines the verbo-visual make-up and cultural functions of photobooks, made in collaboration between Francophone writers and photographers, that portray specific countries and cities.
Perceptibility Techniques
Perceptibility Techniques: Restoring Agency in Times of Crisis is a research project funded by FWO. It studies artistic and literary techniques developed in the modernist period that have the capacity to restore ‘perceptibility’, as Walter Benjamin called it, that is, the ability to ‘read’, reorder and map the flow of information, images and opinions in times of confusion.
The Prussian Phantasm
The Prussian Phantasm. Imaginations of Prussia in 20th- and 21st-Century German Literature is a research project funded by FWO. It studies the Janus-faced imaginations of Prussia in German literary works of the 20th and 21st century.
Testimonies of War in the Works of Women Writers
Testimonies of War in the Works of Modern and Contemporary Women Writers is a project funded by a KU Leuven IRO grant. It investigates the literary representation of war (WWI, WWII & 1947 Indian Partition and War on Terror) in the fiction of modern and contemporary British and Pakistani women writers.
Ligne Claire Cinema
Ligne Claire Cinema is a project funded by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT). It argues that concurrent with the development of a 'ligne claire' tradition in comics and graphic literature during the modernist period a similar trend manifested itself in film.
Italian Literary Anthologies of the 20th Century
Italian Literary Anthologies of the 20th Century as a Vehicle for Literary Change is a research project funded by FWO. It studies the role of anthologies in (re)defining modern Italian literary history.
On the Crossroads of Literature and Science
On the Crossroads of Literature and Science. The Essayistic and the Scientific Fields in Huxley, Ortega y Gasset and Valéry is a research project funded by FWO. It analyses how essay writers from various European traditions in modernism defined and developed both their writing and their conception of literature according to scientific models.
Literary Expressionism in Flanders
Literary Expressionism in Flanders, 1914-1930. A history of its concepts and its images is a research project funded by FWO. This project questions the common view that privileges the ‘autonomous’ over the so-called ‘humanitarian’ interpretation of expressionism in Dutch-language literature.
La Fabrique du Patrimoine Littéraire
La Fabrique du Patrimoine Littéraire. Les collections d'essais biographiques illustrés en France, 1944-2014 is a project funded by FWO and BELSPO. It studies five book series of illustrated (modernist) writers’ biographies published in France from the post-war period to the present and manifests the importance of such series/biographies in the construction of French literary heritage.
Arts et Métiers Graphiques
Arts et Métiers Graphiques: An Example of Tempered Modernism is a project funded by the Leuven Research Council. It examines Arts et métiers graphiques (1927-1939), a leading French graphic design magazine in the interwar period, scrutinising the form and content of the magazine as well as highlighting its 'tempered' variant of modernism.
When Literature Meets Cinema
When Literature Meets Cinema. French Literature, 1918-1948 is a research project funded by FWO. It studies how the emergence of cinema affected French literature from the end of World War I to the post-World War II era.
Middlebrow Literature from Flanders in the Interwar Period
Middlebrow Literature from Flanders in the Interwar Period: Authors and Authority, Genres and Functions was a project funded by the Leuven Research Council. It studied a sample of largely neglected popular middlebrow authors writing in Dutch during the interwar period.
Literature and Lifestyle
Literature and Lifestyle. Books, Reading and Taste in 20th-Century Writing was a research project funded by FWO. It investigated what people did and do with modernist books in their everyday lives (besides reading them), and looked at how lifestyles were given shape in modernist fiction.
Empathy and Pacifism in the Essays of Vernon Lee (1900-1935)
Being in Borders: Empathy and Pacifism in the Essays of Vernon Lee (1900-1935) was a project funded by KU Leuven. It studied the essays of psychologist and pacifist activist Vernon Lee (1856-1935) who was one of the first authors to mobilise a concept of empathy across disciplines in the early 20th century.
The Regenerative Traditionalism of the Jewish Avant-Garde
The Regenerative Traditionalism of the Jewish Avant-Garde was a project funded by the Kone Foundation, Finland. It investigated Jewish avant-gardists’ integration into and influence on Western literary cultures and experimental writing.
Toward Another Graphic Novel
Toward Another Graphic Novel: Word, Image and Narrative in Comics and the Historical Avant-Gardes was a research in the arts project. Conducted by a practicing graphic novelist, it isolated forms of graphic narration devised by historical avant-gardists that could take the genre of the graphic novel in new directions in the 21st century.
The Literary Interview
The Literary Interview: A Study of the Genre and its Mediological Mutations was a research project funded by BELSPO. It examined interviews with writers and charted the genre's literary, cultural, social, and media transformations in the course of the 20th century.
Schriftstellerreden im deutschsprachigen Raum, 1880-1938
Schriftstellerreden im deutschsprachigen Raum, 1880-1938 was a research project funded by BELSPO. It dealt with the genre of the writer’s speech in German-speaking modernism. It built on a database of over 1400 speeches by 123 (canonised) German and Austrian writers.
Rethinking Immunity in the German Novel
Rethinking Immunity in the German novel between 1918-1942 was a research project funded by FWO. It studied literary and narrative modes developed by writers in Germany and Austria between 1918 and 1942 to cope with the anxieties and dangers of modernity's relentless cultural changes.
Modernism's Literariness Reconsidered
Modernism's Literariness Reconsidered: on the phonograph and gramophone in the literature of the Low Countries, 1890-1940 was a research project funded by FWO. It investigated how the arrival of the first sound-recording media, the phonograph and its successor, the gramophone, helped change the perception of literary language in modernism.
Literature and Media Innovation
Literature and Media Innovation (LMI): The Question of Genre Transformation was an Interuniversity Attraction Pole programme (IAP - P 7/01) financed by BELSPO. Coordinated by the MDRN-team in Leuven, it also involved researchers from other Belgian, American and Canadian universities.
L'imaginaire Nobiliaire dans la Littérature Française
L'imaginaire Nobiliaire dans la Littérature Française, 1911-1958 : Un esprit de Chevalerie au XXe Siècle. Alphonse de Châteaubriant, Jean de La Varende et Henry de Montherlant was a research project funded by the Leuven Research Council. It dealt with the oeuvres of three writers from the modernist period who were of noble birth: Alphonse de Châteaubriant, Jean de La Varende and Henry de Montherlant.
The Renewal of the Italian Novel Around 1930
The Renewal of the Italian Novel around 1930: Contextual Dynamics and Generational Tendencies (1926-1936) was a research project funded by the Leuven Research Council. It revisited the so-called 'neo-realism' of the 1930s and explored the complexity of its novelistic output as well as the literary debates surrounding it.
The Modernist Soundscape
The Modernist Soundscape: Toward a Theory of the Representation and Perception of Sound in Narrative was a research project sponsored by the Leuven Research Council. It provided an initial framework for the study of sound in modernist narrative texts and applied the framework to the writings of Ford Maddox Ford and Virginia Woolf.
The Documentary Paradigm in Modern Descriptive Poetry
The Documentary Paradigm in Modern Descriptive Poetry, 1900-1950 was a research project funded by FWO. It elaborated a theory of modernist and avant-garde descriptive poetry in French.
The Book in Italy, 1900-1950
The Book in Italy, 1900-1950. Paratextual Elements and Typographic Techniques in Middlebrow Literature was a research project funded by the Leuven Research Council. Concerned with the history of the book, this project studied paratextual and typographic techniques borrowed by middlebrow writing from avant-garde experiments and vice versa.
Modernism and Rhetoric
Modernism and Rhetoric: Literary Culture and Public Speech, 1900-1940 was a research project funded by FWO. It investigated the relationship between English-language literature and rhetoric in the period between 1900 and 1940. Particular attention went to oratory and the oral delivery of texts by canonised as well as lesser known writers from the period.
Literature and Its Multiple Identities, 1900-1950
Literature and its Multiple Identities, 1900-1950 was a GOA (Orchestrated Research Action) awarded to MDRN by the Research Council of the University of Leuven. This project studied the multiple functions, histories and mediatisations of writing in the modernist period.
Literatures, Literary Aesthetics and Theory
Literatures, Literary Aesthetics and Theory: Conflict and Interaction (OLITH) was a WOG (Scientific Research Community) funded by FWO. It gathered researchers from the MDRN lab as well as from the universities of Vienna, Groningen, Liège and Ghent. It provided a platform for discussions on concepts and issues central to the historical study of European literature.
Concepts of Tradition
Concepts of tradition in literary theory was a research project funded by FWO. It investigated various conceptions of tradition in literary theory in part to counter modern historiography's predilection for the new and innovation.
'Realisers': The Rise of Architects between Crisis and Reconstruction.
'Realisers’. The Rise of Architects between Crisis and Reconstruction. Central Europe 1910-1950 was a project funded by the VolkswagenStiftung. It studied a group of modernist architects that emerged in Central Europe around the First World War.