Welcome to the Canada Research Chair Program in Modern Literature and Culture

From Avant-Garde to Mainstream: Catalyzing Culture Shift

Women’s Everyday Cultures of the Modern Era

Established in 2005, the Canada Research Chair Program in Modern Literature and Culture is housed in the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University with links to English, Image Arts, Fashion, and the Graduate Program in Communication and Culture. Our mandate is to research women’s everyday cultures of the modern era (from 1880 to 1940) with an emphasis on the relationship between avant-garde and popular cultures.

Our research contributes to an understanding of women’s cultural production in the modernist era, preserving and advancing women’s heritage while also promoting Canadian heritage within an international context. Our research also includes the editing and publishing of newly uncovered textual and visual source materials. The research constructs a trajectory from the early modernist to the postmodern era.

Our current projects investigate:

• Early female avant-garde performance and body art, in particular the work of the Dada artist Baroness Elsa
• Fashion and body image in the writings of Canadian icon L.M. Montgomery
• Modernist biographies and autobiographies