IUPUC Assistant Professor Julie Goodspeed-Chadwick, Ph.D., recently presented at the Modernist Studies Association Annual Conference in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Her paper was titled “Imagism, Vorticism, and Modernist Circles: Aesthetics, Ethics, and Modernist Politics in Amy Lowell's Poetic Feud with Ezra Pound.”

Goodspeed-Chadwick’s paper examines the rift between former friends and collaborators Amy Lowell and Ezra Pound over the gender politics, ethics, and aesthetics of imagist poetry that resulted in the centering (and canonization) of Pound and the marginalization (and neglect) of Lowell.

Goodspeed-Chadwick examined the politics of Lowell’s legacy, which is more indebted to her relationship with Pound than it is to the work she did in establishing and codifying the Imagist movement. This ethical and aesthetic debate reveals the gendered tensions at work in the construction of Modernism(s). Lowell responded to Pound’s brand of hard, masculine modernism by developing a female-centered and female-focused aesthetic that was not always cloaked in classicism or otherwise motivated by male narratives and desires.

Founded in 1999, the MSA is devoted to the study of the arts in their social, political, cultural, and intellectual contexts from the late nineteenth through the twentieth century. Through its annual conferences and journal, Modernism/modernity, the organization seeks to develop an international and interdisciplinary forum for exchange among scholars in this revitalized and rapidly expanding field.

Goodspeed-Chadwick is an Assistant Professor of English in the IUPUC Division of Liberal Arts.