1. In her introduction to a special section on modernism and pedagogy inModernism/modernity,Helen Swordputs difficulty in quotation marks: “Most scholars of modernism are also teachers of modernism, and a significant proportion of our day-to-day intellectual labor involves prompting our students to engage with notoriously ‘difficult’ cultural artifacts” (Introduction471). Both pedagogically and in scholarship, modernist difficulty looms large, and I think it important to indicate to students that it is not merely the common reader who finds these texts difficult for one reason or another.
2. Mao and Walkowitz cite expansions of time period, geography, considerations of “high” and “low” art, canon, marginalized writers, and attention to production, dissemination, and reception (737–738). For more on their sense of the new directions of modernist studies, see their introduction toBad Modernisms.
3. Bryant, Marsha.“Counter-Intuitive Innovation.”Sword482–484.