Papers by Miranda Hickman
Historicizing Modernists. Eds. Matthew Feldman, Anna Svendsen, and Erik Tonning, pp. 229-244., 2021
Even in a post-Derridean era sensitized to the hazards of a desire for origins, much work with ar... more Even in a post-Derridean era sensitized to the hazards of a desire for origins, much work with archives unfolds from the assumption that there is much to be gained from awareness of traces provided through the archive of the materials and environment from which something emerges and takes form, its originary matrix. This essay maintains that the work of Q. D. Leavis (QDL)well-known Cantabrigian figure, spouse of F. R. Leavis (FRL), co-founder of Scrutiny and author of Fiction and the Reading Public (1932) -itself represents such a formative matrix. Q. D. Leavis's research comprises a still generally unrecognized body of conceptual material importantly shaping the cultural contributions of the group associated with the periodical Scrutiny and its legacy. Moreover, through its impact on the Scrutiny circle, I would argue, in still little acknowledged ways, Q. D. Leavis's work significantly influenced what Terry Eagleton famously calls 'the rise of English' -the field this group did so much to build. 1 Finally, this line of thought informs preliminary notes on how we might, today, approach a trove of newly available archival material on 'QDL' herself and, more generally, how the case of Q. D. Leavis might offer ways to think beyond what Derrida calls (in an enigmatic footnote of Archive Fever) the 'patriarchive' -patriarchal understandings of the archive and the patriarchal logic of the archive as generally understood. 2 That archives witness and keep cultural memory through their artefacts provides good reason to read them at times through the concept of a 'matrix' (OED): 'a place or medium in which something is originated, produced, or developed; the environment in which a particular activity or process begins; a point of origin and growth'. A matrix points to the past of an organism; archival material can register a text's past and genesis. From this flows the customary cultural gendering of the archive. Relevant here is the Aristotelian distinction as articulated by Judith Butler between 'matrix' and 'form' -in the received cultural binary, respectively gendered feminine and masculine. Butler comments on the classical association of femininity with materiality [which] can be traced to a set of etymologies which link matter with mater and matrix (or the womb) ….
Women, Periodicals, and Print Culture in Britain, the Modernist Period (1880-1920). Eds. Faith Binckes and Carey Snyder. Edinburgh University Press, 2019. 120-133., 2019
Entering the new domain of film criticism in the 1920s, Iris Barry would become one of the most w... more Entering the new domain of film criticism in the 1920s, Iris Barry would become one of the most widely circulated film critics of her day, and a figure who contributed in vital ways to shaping emerging film culture as it evolved. Through her film criticism in periodicals, Barry offered contributions to the ‘battle of the brows’ of the interwar years. Through the lens of feminist periodical studies, I consider how Barry’s notably brow-crossing film criticism was structured by her habitus as emancipated woman and class outsider.
In exploring the potentials of the new medium of film, Barry attended to what cinema could do for and in culture – by providing ‘layers of experience’ and ‘resources’ for the ‘future’ to a diversity of cinema-goers (British Vogue Aug 1924: 65). Importantly, her project, shaped by a specific set of cultural commitments, was made possible both by featuring for critical assessment a marked diversity of films, from avant-garde to popular; as well as by publishing in a range of different periodical contexts. This multiplex strategy, dependent for impact on the range of periodicals in which she published, allowed Barry to enter the public sphere as versatile public intellectual appealing to, and seeking cultural access for, the many.
*Vorticism: New Perspectives,* eds. Antliff and Klein (Oxford UP), 2013
McGill-Queen's University Press eBooks, May 6, 2011
Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 5, 2015
University of Toronto Quarterly, 2013
Modern Fiction Studies, 2009
Tulsa studies in women's literature, 2021
Modern Fiction Studies, 2005
Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Jul 6, 2015
Cambridge University Press eBooks, Jul 14, 2014
American Literary History, Jul 20, 2022
Reviewed by Miranda Hickman, McGill University I ran back to look at him, there had been nothing ... more Reviewed by Miranda Hickman, McGill University I ran back to look at him, there had been nothing to be seen through the mass of bandages but two eyeholes and a gash for the mouth, but at last there was a change, a trickle of blood was dribbling slowly out of the gash and soaking the white bandage. Old Ninety-nine would not count much further. The new rhythm was strangely disturbing: 'Ninety ninety ninety-hic-seven, ninety ninety-nine, hic, ninety hic, ninety hic.' He was obviously just going.
Tulsa studies in women's literature, 2008
In the Times Literary Supplement's annual review of learned journals, Tulsa Studies in Women... more In the Times Literary Supplement's annual review of learned journals, Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature received plaudits from Christine Bold for how its Silver Jubilee issue (vol. 26, no. 1; Spring 2007) illuminates [End Page 181] the complexities and challenges ...
Classical Receptions Journal, Oct 1, 2018
The Geometry of Modernism, 2005
In my method, I take a cue from Lawrence Rainey's call for specifi c studies of individuals' live... more In my method, I take a cue from Lawrence Rainey's call for specifi c studies of individuals' lived experiences of fascism-in this case, I trace the role of geometry in the formation of Pound's allegiance to Mussolini's Italy-in order to enrich theoretical claims about the nexus between modernism and fascism (Ezra Pound and the Monument of Culture 3). Through its discussion of a little-known novella by H.D., Nights, whose protagonist meditates frequently, even obsessively, on geometric fi gures, the book explores modernism's debates about bodily sanity. Finally, through analysis of how Yeats and H.D. use a geometric lexicon to record the experience of mystical knowledge, as well as of how their geometric vocabulary comes to register their attitudes toward mystical epistemology, the book contributes to a growing body of scholarship on modernism's relationship to the occult-including recent work by Materer (Modernist Alchemy), Surette (The Birth of Modernism), Sword (Engendering Inspiration), and Tryphonopoulos (The Celestial Tradition). Major chronicles of Anglo-American modernism such as Kenner's classic The Pound Era (1971), Levenson's Genealogy of Modernism (1984), and Nicholls's Modernisms (1995) have recognized Vorticism as one of the vital early projects of Anglo-American modernist practice. Although even one of the movement's major chroniclers, Richard Cork, has acknowledged Vorticism's tepid critical reception throughout the decades of the twentieth century, the scholarly attention Vorticism continues to draw suggests that it is still a topic that merits debate, especially as traditional accounts of modernism's development undergo reconsideration. I argue, in fact, that understanding the way Vorticism has been appropriated within the chronicles of modernism's history can tell us much about the assumptions and desires guiding our modernist mythmaking. Germinal books on the movement include William Wees's Vorticism and the
American Literary History
Reviewed by Miranda Hickman, McGill University I ran back to look at him, there had been nothing ... more Reviewed by Miranda Hickman, McGill University I ran back to look at him, there had been nothing to be seen through the mass of bandages but two eyeholes and a gash for the mouth, but at last there was a change, a trickle of blood was dribbling slowly out of the gash and soaking the white bandage. Old Ninety-nine would not count much further. The new rhythm was strangely disturbing: 'Ninety ninety ninety-hic-seven, ninety ninety-nine, hic, ninety hic, ninety hic.' He was obviously just going.
Uploads
Papers by Miranda Hickman
In exploring the potentials of the new medium of film, Barry attended to what cinema could do for and in culture – by providing ‘layers of experience’ and ‘resources’ for the ‘future’ to a diversity of cinema-goers (British Vogue Aug 1924: 65). Importantly, her project, shaped by a specific set of cultural commitments, was made possible both by featuring for critical assessment a marked diversity of films, from avant-garde to popular; as well as by publishing in a range of different periodical contexts. This multiplex strategy, dependent for impact on the range of periodicals in which she published, allowed Barry to enter the public sphere as versatile public intellectual appealing to, and seeking cultural access for, the many.
In exploring the potentials of the new medium of film, Barry attended to what cinema could do for and in culture – by providing ‘layers of experience’ and ‘resources’ for the ‘future’ to a diversity of cinema-goers (British Vogue Aug 1924: 65). Importantly, her project, shaped by a specific set of cultural commitments, was made possible both by featuring for critical assessment a marked diversity of films, from avant-garde to popular; as well as by publishing in a range of different periodical contexts. This multiplex strategy, dependent for impact on the range of periodicals in which she published, allowed Barry to enter the public sphere as versatile public intellectual appealing to, and seeking cultural access for, the many.