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The Centre for Modernism Studies in Australia is a UNSW research centre drawing together a range of disciplinary strengths across three Faculties in the broad area of cultural Modernism—literary, visual, philosophical, architectural, theatrical, and musical. We understand Modernism to be the defiant gesture of negation and liberation that overturns established ways of doing and being, and sets human thought and perception on new roads of discovery and freedom. Clustering around a diversity of “isms” in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Modernism has its roots in the cultural revolution of the Enlightenment, and extends to the lingering perceptual shocks of the post-post-modernisms today.

Taking a “long Modernism” view of cultural history, the Centre fosters innovative research and collaborations between members of staff, postdoctoral fellows, postgraduate students, and advanced undergraduate students, as well as external scholars, in a range of activities and projects. We seek to build a notional, regional, and international profile for Modernism studies here at UNSW, and to provide a beachhead for global Modernism studies on Australian shores.