Dr. Matthew Levay, ISU professor of English, discusses his decade of research on modernist literature and how the variety of forms, including novels, magazines and even comics and file, describe the times in which they were written, and provide lessons for today. We talk about how the literature of the past provides a window into our understanding of the culture and the issues that persist, rightly or wrongly, over generations. Dr. Levay discusses the role that research plays in the discovery of new knowledge and joy.
Guests:
Matthew Levay is Professor of English at ISU. His research focuses on twentieth-century literature and culture, with an emphasis on the relationship between modernism and popular culture as it appears in a wide variety of forms, from novels and magazines to comics and films. He is the author of Violent Minds: Modernism and the Criminal, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, and his next book, The New Old Style: Anachronism in Contemporary Comics, will be published this summer with the University of Nebraska Press. He is also the Co-Editor of the Journal of Modern Periodical Studies, a scholarly journal devoted to the study of twentieth-century magazines and newspapers published by Penn State University Press, and he is now busy editing the Cambridge Companion to American Comics for Cambridge University Press. In Spring 2022 he was the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Warsaw's American Studies Center, and he currently serves as the ISU College of Arts and Letters (CAL) Faculty Research Development Fellow, where he works with CAL faculty on developing their research agendas and applying for external funding opportunities.
