MDRN

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April 19 2023 → MDRN lecture: "Ellen West's Transsexual Hunger Hermeneutics" by Nicola Behrmann (Rutgers)

MDRN Lecture || 19 April 2023, 9.30 - 11.00 || Jos Cretenzaal (Erasmus House) Nicola Behrmann (...

March 15 2023 → MDRN lecture: "Esotericism and Avant-Gardism" by Sara Crangle (U of Sussex)

MDRN Lecture || 15 March 2023, 9.30 - 11.00 || Jos Cretenzaal (Erasmus House) Sara Crangle (...

February 1 2023 → MDRN lecture: "Abhumanism in Post-WWII Paris" by Iveta Slavkova (American U of Paris)

MDRN Lecture || 1 Febr. 2023, 9.30 - 11.00 || Jos Cretenzaal (Erasmus House) Iveta Slavkova (...

January 25 2023 → MDRN Lecture: "The Politics of Abstraction" by Isabel Wünsche (Constructor University)

MDRN Lecture || 25 Jan. 2023, 9.30 - 11.00 || Jos Cretenzaal (Erasmus House) Isabel Wünsche (...

Featured Projects

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.

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 project funded by the BRAIN-be framework (Belgian Research Action through Interdisciplinary Networks). It studies the massive rise of Belgian avant-garde art on paper from 1918 onward.

Selected Publications

About MDRN

MDRN is a research lab based at the University of Leuven in Belgium. MDRN studies the literature and print 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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