eCommons

 

Media Studies 1932: Nancy Cunard in the Archive of Claude McKay

dc.contributor.authorBraddock, Jeremy
dc.date.accessioned2018-08-03T21:26:12Z
dc.date.available2018-08-03T21:26:12Z
dc.date.issued2018-05-30
dc.description.abstractThis essay examines the 1931-1933 correspondence of Claude McKay and Nancy Cunard, apparently the only surviving set of letters that document the composition of Cunard's Negro anthology (1934). The few scholars who have read the letters tend to emphasize the vehement dispute that terminates it. I am concerned instead to account for the nature of McKay's interest in and enthusiasm for Cunard's project, which occupies the great majority of his letters. This is strikingly emblematized by the small archive of international press clippings about Cunard and the making of the anthology, which McKay was able to compile in Morocco, and then send to Cunard in New York and London. The clippings are evidence of the changing technological conditions during these years (the expansion and consolidation of wire services for instance), which distributed modernist and political culture on an increasingly global scale, enabling transnational affiliation as well as transnational surveillance. Each of those transnationalisms is discernible in McKay's reading of the international press coverage of Cunard. McKay, I argue, was interested in Cunard as a media phenomenon, and in her attempt to translate her iconic celebrity into a political force; his understanding of the representational game that had evolved around Cunard is confirmed by his proposal to contribute to her mythography with his contribution to the Negro anthology.en_US
dc.identifier.issn1080-6601
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1813/57655
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.publisherModernism/modernityen_US
dc.relation.doihttps://doi.org/10.26597/mod.0050en_US
dc.rightsAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/*
dc.subjectmodernismen_US
dc.subjectmediaen_US
dc.subjectcelebrityen_US
dc.subjectraceen_US
dc.subjectAfrican American literatureen_US
dc.titleMedia Studies 1932: Nancy Cunard in the Archive of Claude McKayen_US
dc.typearticleen_US

Files

Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Name:
Media Studies 1932_  Nancy Cunard in the Archive of Claude McKay _ Modernism _ Modernity Print+.pdf
Size:
189.42 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
main article