Modernism at the Beach: Queer Ecologies and the Coastal Commons

The beach is a surprisingly generative setting for twentieth-century literature and art, as it is a space of performance and connection between human and more-than-human forces. Hannah Freed-Thall argues that the beach was to the modernist imagination what mountains were to Romanticism, offering new ways of understanding twentieth-century literature and its relation to ecological thought.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 288 pages
Publication date: 07 March 2023
Publisher: Columbia University Press

The beach, a captivating realm where bodies harmonize with the elements, unveils enigmatic treasures that defy conventional associations with modernity. Departing from the urbancentric perspective, this book presents a compelling argument for the coastal zone as a remarkably fertile ground for twentieth-century literature and art. An untamed and elusive convergence of human and more-than-human forces, the seashore emerges as a dynamic space of performance, where loosely scripted, improvisatory forms of embodiment and togetherness take center stage.

In the eyes of Hannah Freed-Thall, the beach emerges as a profound counterpart to the Romantic notion of mountains, representing a realm not merely of human conquest but of vital elemental and creaturely connection. By examining the peripheries of capitalist leisure, Freed-Thall reimagines familiar seaside practices, such as tide-pooling, beachcombing, gambling, and sunbathing, as radical experiments in perception and sociability. Through close readings of works by renowned authors like Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf, Claude McKay, Samuel Beckett, Rachel Carson, and Gordon Matta-Clark, among others, Modernism at the Beach explores the modernist beach as a queer refuge, a precarious commons, a scene of collective exhaustion and endurance, and a visionary threshold at the end of the world.

Interweaving environmental humanities, queer and feminist theory, and cultural history, Modernism at the Beach offers fresh perspectives on twentieth-century literature and its profound relationship with ecological thought. By delving into the complexities of human-nature interactions, this book encourages readers to reevaluate our understanding of modernity, urbanization, and the role of the coastal zone in shaping artistic and intellectual narratives of the past century.

Weight: 412g
Dimension: 151 x 229 x 19 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780231197090