Yan (Amy) Tang

Candidate statement

Since I joined MSA in 2015, I have organized and participated in various MSA conference panels and seminars. My research interests in modernism mainly lie in the politics of literary form’s visceral dynamism, ecology and emotions, and theoretical intersections between affect and ideology. My most recent work, “Modernism, Critical Theory, and Affect Theory Avant La
Lettre” (published in the essay collection Modernism, Theory and Responsible Reading: A Critical Conversation), calls for a closer examination of the interplay between the affective and the political in modernist works and critical discourse. My essay “The Politics of Naming,” published as part of the M/m print plus responses to the essay cluster “Weak Theory, Weak Modernism,” examines along similar lines modernist scholars’ ethical responsibility of pushing the field towards increasing diversity of both scholarship and membership. My experience with MSA-related organizational work and research is also deeply connected with my commitment to advocating for a stronger presence of BIPOC scholars, scholars with disabilities, graduate students, contingent faculty, and other marginalized groups of scholars at MSA conferences.