Papers by Nanette O'Brien
Last Post: A Literary Journal from the Ford Madox Ford Society, 2020
Ford Madox Ford's food writing in popular and glossy magazines forms an important, if neglected, ... more Ford Madox Ford's food writing in popular and glossy magazines forms an important, if neglected, part of his literary legacy. I argue in this essay that his writing in these periodicals, largely from the period 1920-1939, constitute part of a broader body of work experimenting with the rhythms, variations, substitutions and repetitions of both culinary labour and his Impressionist prose. Allowing him to reach a wide audience, and part of a tradition of modernist writing in popular magazines, Ford's writing and food experiences are both sublime and ordinary, gesturing to how food makes such expansion and daily transformations possible.
The Modernist Review , 2020
The 18th century gastronomer Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin is a common interest for both Ford Mad... more The 18th century gastronomer Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin is a common interest for both Ford Madox Ford and Gertrude Stein's modernist projects. This essay is especially interested in how food writing, culinary work, and sensations like taste, a theory of which Brillat-Savarin developed, can influence other senses as explored by modernist writers. Stein and Ford’s historicist approach to writing and thinking about civilization, especially about food culture, can be understood in the context of their appreciation for Brillat-Savarin.
Journal of Modern Literature, 2018
This is the abstract for a peer-reviewed, accepted and forthcoming article in the Journal of Mode... more This is the abstract for a peer-reviewed, accepted and forthcoming article in the Journal of Modern Literature, co-authored by Bárbara Gallego Larrarte and Nanette O'Brien.
Abstract:
Kate McLoughlin’s recent JML article, “The Modernist Party as Pedagogy,” introduces a role-playing model, a simulated modernist party, to teach modernist literature. The authors respond to McLoughlin’s modernist party by evaluating their experience of teaching a variation of it, considering the broader value of role-play for modernist pedagogy. Role-play requires performance and risk-taking, acts that can generate critical and creative ideas that may later be used in essay writing. This innovative exercise harnesses the spontaneity inherent in oral conversation. The main drawback is the possibility of students internalizing reductive impressions of modernist figures and ideas. These problems may be circumvented with adequate preparation and contextual class discussion. Playfulness and performativity can then lead to critical, historical, and biographical thinking.
Keywords: role-play / make-believe / modernism / pedagogy / innovation
Stet - an online postgraduate research journal, Jun 14, 2013
This paper examines the disorientation encountered in the use of reproduced images and constructi... more This paper examines the disorientation encountered in the use of reproduced images and construction of the self in fictional autobiography. Texts include Gertrude Stein's The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, W. G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn, and E. V. Lucas and George Morrow's What a Life!. Full text here: http://www.stetjournal.org/past-issues/disorientation/obrien/
CFPs by Nanette O'Brien
Through a one-day conference entitled ‘After-Image: Life-Writing and Celebrity,’ we want to consi... more Through a one-day conference entitled ‘After-Image: Life-Writing and Celebrity,’ we want to consider the interplay between celebrity and life-writing. The conference will explore ideas of image, persona and self-fashioning in an historical as well as a contemporary context and the role these concepts play in the writing of lives.
Conferences by Nanette O'Brien
Programme for the conference held at Oxford on 19 September 2015
Further details available here:... more Programme for the conference held at Oxford on 19 September 2015
Further details available here: https://afterimage2015.wordpress.com
Book Reviews by Nanette O'Brien
Review of Clara Jones, Virginia Woolf: Ambivalent Activist (2016) in Women: A Cultural Review, Vo... more Review of Clara Jones, Virginia Woolf: Ambivalent Activist (2016) in Women: A Cultural Review, Vol 28 (2017), Issue 1-2,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2017.1327755
Review available here: https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjx055
Books by Nanette O'Brien
Oxford University Press, Oxford English Monographs: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/food-and-culture-in-the-works-of-ford-madox-ford-gertrude-stein-and-virginia-woolf-9780198871729?q=oxford%20english%20monographs&lang=en&cc=gb#, 2024
Concentrating on the transatlantic work of Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf, m... more Concentrating on the transatlantic work of Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein, and Virginia Woolf, my monograph explores and challenges modernist uses of the terms 'civilization' and 'barbarism' with regards to foodways and food cultures, showing how these concepts are shaped by the rules of preparing and eating food in literature and in public.
Uploads
Papers by Nanette O'Brien
Abstract:
Kate McLoughlin’s recent JML article, “The Modernist Party as Pedagogy,” introduces a role-playing model, a simulated modernist party, to teach modernist literature. The authors respond to McLoughlin’s modernist party by evaluating their experience of teaching a variation of it, considering the broader value of role-play for modernist pedagogy. Role-play requires performance and risk-taking, acts that can generate critical and creative ideas that may later be used in essay writing. This innovative exercise harnesses the spontaneity inherent in oral conversation. The main drawback is the possibility of students internalizing reductive impressions of modernist figures and ideas. These problems may be circumvented with adequate preparation and contextual class discussion. Playfulness and performativity can then lead to critical, historical, and biographical thinking.
Keywords: role-play / make-believe / modernism / pedagogy / innovation
CFPs by Nanette O'Brien
Conferences by Nanette O'Brien
Special thanks to the Progress Conference committee: https://progressconference.wordpress.com/about/conference-committee/
Select papers from the conference are published in Oxford Research in English, Issue 4, 2016: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1WzZD8N6oNLYlRMcFVFMkEyck0/view
Further details available here: https://afterimage2015.wordpress.com
Book Reviews by Nanette O'Brien
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2017.1327755
Books by Nanette O'Brien
Abstract:
Kate McLoughlin’s recent JML article, “The Modernist Party as Pedagogy,” introduces a role-playing model, a simulated modernist party, to teach modernist literature. The authors respond to McLoughlin’s modernist party by evaluating their experience of teaching a variation of it, considering the broader value of role-play for modernist pedagogy. Role-play requires performance and risk-taking, acts that can generate critical and creative ideas that may later be used in essay writing. This innovative exercise harnesses the spontaneity inherent in oral conversation. The main drawback is the possibility of students internalizing reductive impressions of modernist figures and ideas. These problems may be circumvented with adequate preparation and contextual class discussion. Playfulness and performativity can then lead to critical, historical, and biographical thinking.
Keywords: role-play / make-believe / modernism / pedagogy / innovation
Special thanks to the Progress Conference committee: https://progressconference.wordpress.com/about/conference-committee/
Select papers from the conference are published in Oxford Research in English, Issue 4, 2016: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1WzZD8N6oNLYlRMcFVFMkEyck0/view
Further details available here: https://afterimage2015.wordpress.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2017.1327755