Literary Knowledge (1890-1950): Modernisms and the Sciences in Europe

Literary Knowledge (1890-1950): Modernisms and the Sciences in Europe studies literature’s epistemic status during the modernist period. It homes in on writing from different registers (highbrow, avant-garde, middlebrow and more popular forms of literature) as well as on writing from various cultures and languages, in order to determine how European literature in the modernist period defined its own epistemic function within a larger economy of knowledge production. The programme focusses particularly on the ways in which literature selected, mediated, transformed and disseminated knowledge produced by science and scholarship. Covering a broad spectrum of (composite and nascent) scientific disciplines in the period—from the humanities and social sciences, the life sciences and medicine, to the physical sciences and engineering—this large-scale research programme involves various subprojects and research initiatives. The programme is further backed by historians of science, scientists from various disciplines and an international board of experts in modernism and science studies. More information on the programme’s subprojects, which deal with disciplines as varied as archaeology, genetics and cosmology, can be found in the “Related” section on this page.