Professor of English and Wayne D. McMurray Endowed Chair, Kristin Bluemel, Ph.D., is leading a Northern Modernism Seminar at Newcastle University in North East England on Gardens in the Gorse: Rural Britain’s Modernist Cultures, co-sponsored by the Leverhulme Foundation and Newcastle University. Scheduled for Oct. 15, this event brings together top scholars of rural Britain’s modern arts, literature, and cultural institutions for an intensive one-day research seminar. A capstone event of Bluemel’s six-month long Leverhulme Visiting Professorship in the English Department of Newcastle University, the Gardens in the Gorse Seminar will examine ways that early-twentieth century artists, writers, archeologists, designers, and gardeners who were working in the countryside responded to changes brought about by modern development, industrialization, World War, and the fall of Empire.
In addition to organizing and leading this Northern Modernism Seminar–one of two offered each year by the British Association of Modernist Studies–Bluemel will deliver a paper at Gardens in the Gorse on the 1930s book arts of the English wood engraver and writer Clare Leighton. She is also editing a special journal issue featuring articles by the Gardens in the Gorse Seminar contributors, with likely publication in 2024.
