U.S. Modernism at Continent’s End: Carmel, Provincetown, Taos historicizes and theorizes the significance of the early twentieth-century little arts colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production. Emphasizing communities rather than single artists, and modernist activity instead of products, this study considers modernism as social, aesthetic, and political processes that developed differentially in response to local and global pressures. In addition to offering a historical overview of the emergence of three critical sites of modernis ... More

U.S. Modernism at Continent’s End: Carmel, Provincetown, Taos historicizes and theorizes the significance of the early twentieth-century little arts colony as a uniquely modern social formation within a global network of modernist activity and production. Emphasizing communities rather than single artists, and modernist activity instead of products, this study considers modernism as social, aesthetic, and political processes that developed differentially in response to local and global pressures. In addition to offering a historical overview of the emergence of three critical sites of modernist activity—the little art colonies of Carmel, Provincetown, and Taos—this study offers new critical readings of major authors associated with those places: Robinson Jeffers, Eugene O’Neill, and D. H. Lawrence. Continent’s End tracks the radical thought and aesthetic innovation that emerged from these villages and reveals a surprisingly dynamic circulation of persons, objects, and ideas between the country and the city and back again, producing modernisms that were cosmopolitan in character yet also site-specific.