Modernity and metropolis -Writing, film and urban formations

A study of urban identity and community looks at selected twentieth century literary and film texts in the context of theorizations of modernism, postmodernism, postcoloniality and globalization. Brooker draws on Beck and Giddens to propose a 'reflexive modernism' which rewrites and re-imagines the urban scene. The principal cities considered are London and New York, Tokyo, Hong Kong and Bangkok. Writers considered include Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot, Langston Hughes, Hanif Kureishi, Iain Sinclair, Paul Auster, Sarah Schulman and William Gibson. Filmmakers include Patrick Keiller and Wong Kar-Wai.
Contents:
Introduction: Beginnings in Endings
American Modernists in Modern London
Modernism Deferred: Harlem Montage
Inside Ethnicity: Suburban Outlooks
Re-imagining London
'Hymn to the Great People's Republic of Brooklyn'
Sarah Schulman and the Lower East Side
In the Matrix: East West Encounters
Postmetropolis and the Art of Fabrication
Index
Author Biographies:
PETER BROOKER is Professor of Modern Literature and Culture and Head of the Centre for Criticism and Culture at University College Northampton. His previous publications have included Bertolt Brecht, Dialectics, Poetry, Politics, and New York Fictions: Modernity, Postmodernism, the New Modern. He is editor of Modernism/Postmodernism and A Glossary of Cultural Theory and has published widely on aspects of modernism, postmodernism and contemporary theory.
Printing of the book is limited to 10 pages per day.

Keywords: literature, urban identity, urban community, modernism, postmodernism, postcoloniality, globalization, globalisation