Davidson College

Inspired by “The Cantos Project” for Pound and the several annotated versions of Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” “The Annotated ‘Songs to Joannes’” offers students of Mina Loy’s work a gloss of the surgically precise language deployed in her 34-part poem sequence, “Songs to Joannes.” Capable of bewildering even the most careful reader, Loy’s quintessentially Modernist work collages various lexicons (medical, biological, slang, etc.) and referents; these annotations are designed to serve as a tool of entry into the poems, providing definitions contemporary to the Songs’ publication, as well as additional textual information, hyperlinked for easy interaction. “The Annotated ‘Songs to Joannes’” enables fellow “cerebral foragers” of Loy’s work to parse the poems’ careful language as users build their own individual readings and responses.

Jacqueline Kari is a doctoral candidate in contemporary American poetry and international Modernism at the University of Georgia. She is the author of several chapbooks of poetry and currently serves as Assistant to the Editors at The Georgia Review.

Duquesne University

The work of literary scholarship most often means looking inside of a text. Studies of the avant-garde movement, however, demonstrate that scholars can and should also learn about texts by understanding texts’ connections to larger artistic and cultural movements. In the spirit of the en dehors garde, digital mapping turns outside of the text and demonstrates the importance of connections between texts, artists, authors, and historical contexts.

In our project, “Mina Loy in Paris” we seek to make these connections documenting various figures, texts, and concepts of modernist art and literature in the early twentieth century and explore the potential of digital mapping to offer new ways forward in literary studies. We also mark the successes and challenges that we encountered in learning a new digital tool and offer reflections on how these successes propelled our project forward and how the challenges might move the project in new or surprising directions.

“Mina Loy in Paris” uses History Pin, a not-for-profit digital mapping site, to represent Mina Loy’s time in Paris from 1902 to 1907 and 1923 to 1927. Through our History Pin collection, we demonstrate how Loy’s life in Paris connected her to other artists and to the avant-garde movement as a whole. We use her relationship to Gertrude Stein as an example of how other scholars could expand this project in a specific direction. We also begin to illuminate Loy’s connections to other figures, offering potential routes for further expansion. We decided on our topic because of our shared interests in mapping, the city of Paris, and women’s contributions to the avant-garde. Additionally, we recognize how Loy can serve as an important nexus for understanding Surrealism, Dadaism, and Modernism.

We wanted to create a map influenced by the Paris Baedeker of 1907, which Indy found in the archives at the Carnegie Library. The discovery of this particular Baedeker was fortuitous, since 1907 marks the final year of Loy’s first tenure in Paris. Our central research questions included: What was Mina Loy’s presence in Paris from 1903-1907 and 1923-1927?; How is the avant-garde as an artistic movement manifesting in Paris during this time?; How was Loy’s poetry influenced by her residencies in Paris?; and, What are potential directions a full project might take? We decided to represent both periods of Loy’s time in Paris in order to leave our small project open for expansion in multiple directions. We hope that the open-ended format of our project leaves room for scholars with additional research questions to expand upon our work.

Duquesne University, English PhD

Color Key

• Mabel Dodge: Bright Orange
• Carl Van Vechten: Gray
• Gertrude Stein: Deep Purple
• Mina Loy: Deep Orange
• Neith Boyce: Light Purple

This map, produced through Gephi software, compiles data from a variety of sources to trace known moments of social connection (either in person or via letters) between such leading Avant-Garde figures. Each figure is represented by a node (a colored circle) and lines of intersection that bridge that person to individuals around him or her with whom contact was made. Larger nodes indicate greater social influence based on the sources reviewed. Such sources centered around the lives of Mabel Dodge, Gertrude Stein, Carl Van Vechten, Mina Loy, and Neith Boyce. These primary figures alone were assigned a unique color representation as indicated in the key below. You might notice, however, that the colors indicated in the key do not always correspond to the color represented in the network map. Just as two individuals influence each other once in communication, so too does Gephi blend colors each time an individual intersects with someone else to reveal the generative artistic possibilities made possible through each union.

Bibliography

Duquesne University

Mina Loy & F.T. Marinetti: Geographic Storymap is a two-person “biography” that traces the life story of Italian Futurist F. T. Marinetti, a person who influenced and interacted with Loy, and that also traces Loy’s life during, or approximately during those same years. The best way I found to segment and correspond each writer’s life years was to group the years by theme without sacrificing chronology, similar to how the Burke biography does with Loy. The user will begin in a place relevant to Marinetti and then switch over to Mina Loy’s life during those same years, if not at whatever point is relevant for Loy (So if the first slide is Marinetti’s birth and education years, Loy’s slide will also be about her birth and education years, etc.).

After looking through other Knightlab tools (of which Storymap is one) and other story-telling tools, I decided that the format of Storymap offered the best medium for giving a dynamic representation of Marinetti and Loy’s life. A two-person timeline, while perfect for following parallel processes, does not have the space for information, and multiple pictures and links to other sites or locations—all of which fit more nicely in the vertical scrolling window of the Storymap tool. The tool allows for the easy placing of any quantity of information in two ways:

1. For any new or missing information found, that information can simply be added and adjusted into whichever theme or group-of-years window it corresponds to;
2. If the information does not correspond as harmoniously as one would like, a brand-new slide can be created and placed wherever it is needed in the slide sequence. The information can be added and adjusted to the new slide to both transition seamlessly in between slides and to transition between themes and years.

Duquesne University

The goal of my Poetry Gallery project, using the Omeka platform, was to create a gallery that could aid students in reading Mina Loy’s The Lost Lunar Baedecker. Many of the references that Loy makes in the poems are lost to a contemporary audience. Take for instance the Café de Néant mentioned in “Three Moments in Paris.” Although Loy mentions being “Stuck in coffin tables,” it is difficult to imagine what a café with coffins for tables looks like; it is not a common cultural experience today.

This project seeks to provide a visual image to what Loy talks about in her poetry so that readers can have a greater understanding and appreciation for what Loy is doing with her poetry. Ideally, the project can work both pedagogically and for pleasure. It can provide for students background images to help inform their readings while discussing in class. Also, it should inform a Loy reading by having the images gathered in a single place. It is impossible to fully appreciate poetry if somebody does not understand the many allusions and culture of the time. The website collects images from the web that can place the audience in the time period of Mina Loy.

The photos are grouped in three sections that Roger Conover creates in the book and are organized in order of their appearance within each section. Each image comes with a one to two sentence description describing which poem the image is mentioned in and how it relates to the poem

Davidson College undergraduates, Class of 2019

Although perhaps best known for her poetry, Mina Loy (1882-1966) was also an entrepreneur and prolific inventor.

Our collaborative research project, Illuminating Loy: Designs, Inventions & Commerce, seeks to shed light on Loy’s  entrepreneurial and creative pursuits beyond writing. We join Jessica Burstein in attempting to cast Loy “not just as a poet, but something more as an entrepreneur whose work included word as well as objects, like lampshades and fashion accessories” (Burstein 6). Building on Carolyn Burke and Susan Rosenbaum’s research on Loy’s lampshade shop in Paris in the 1920’s, we explore various facets to Loy’s creativity: its roots in financial insecurity, emphasis on functionality, and interest in domestica, to name a few.

In the spirit of Loy’s sophisticated yet unconventional style, our site is designed with a pictorial focus; each picture relates to some aspect of Loy’s entrepreneurial adventures, linking to short descriptions providing explanation. This collage style allows users to take ownership of their experience, charting their own path on the site as they navigate between pictorial representations.

The site also includes an e-Marketplace containing many of Loy’s inventions. The products are not actually for sale, yet the hope is that “window shopping” for Loy’s products will be both enjoyable and informative to users. The idea that shopping is pleasurable and worthy of scholarly attention is a relatively unexplored one, in part because by way of Marxist critique, scholars have been wary of consumer culture and commodity fetish. Our work here seeks to suggest that shopping can still be pleasurable even as it may simultaneously pose deeper questions about the commodification of objects–and of avant-garde objects in particular.

By Caitlyn Hunter (English PhD)

Duquesne University

My goal for this project was to map the migratory movements of Mina Loy and Georgia Douglas Johnson. I knew that it was difficult to situate both women in New York as Johnson is the only Harlem Renaissance writer to never live/work directly in the city. I used the Negro Motorist Green Book as a contemporary Baedeker legend to guide the narrative of the map. As Johnson was African American, this suggested that there were places the writer and those affiliated with her were incapable of going to. Additionally, as the project required connecting other people within the Harlem Renaissance and modernist circles, this suggests that the Green Book would have been a useful navigation tool to those who were involved in both Johnson and Loy’s lives such as heiress Nancy Cunard and Carl Van Vechten.

To best visually depict this information I used KnightLab StoryMap JS to approach this project’s scope. Initially, I was attracted the usability of this tool as it allowed for the incorporation of multimedia components (e.g. videos and images)  to embed within my visual narrative and required very little web coding. Additionally, it was essential to me that my individual project could embed within my larger group project seamlessly. KnightLab’s tools typically provide hyperlinks and embed codes for their users which was ideal and highly marketable. The ease of the website and the provided examples in KnightLab’s website were beneficial in terms of seeing how other projects were structured, thus providing a baseline of how I wanted to frame my own. One thing I particularly liked about this tool was the visual representation of my data. Having my data strewn across a map of the United States with such clear imaging of the icons helped me to understand and strategize as to how my data would appear on both a macro and micro level—as some of the locations reference cities or states, and other location points are much more specific and reference addresses.

To view this StoryMap in the context of the larger group project, navigate to Women With Voice: Mina Loy & Georgia Douglas Johnson.

Duquesne University

Women with Voice: Mina Loy and Georgia Douglas Johnson represents Mina Loy and Georgia Douglas Johnson’s importance within 20th century literary movements. The purpose of our website is to emphasize connections between modernism and the Harlem Renaissance through these and other key figures of the period by presenting these two authors side-by-side in a digital space in an attempt to place equal emphasis on these figures and their contributions. Additionally, our mission is to expand scholarly discussions around these two women and their respective periods, (re)establishing a canonical position for voices that have historically been forgotten and/or erased by creating a space for continued research on these important figures and moments in time.

Working on an extensive collaborative project was useful as it allowed us to inter-dimensionally explore the lives and contributions of these two important writers. Creating a timeline, digital stories, and a map helped us to visualize scholarly connections between them.

From the start of the project we divided up the tasks required to begin building the Google Site. Molly, using the digital tool of POWTOON, worked on the digital storylines under the category “The Story of Two Strong Women.” Rochel worked on the biographical timelines under the category “Timelines” by utilizing the online timeline generator, knight lab. Similarly, Caitlyn worked on the modes of migration under the category “US Baedecker.”

Our project includes:

1. Timeline of each poet
2. Storymap, using Greenbook tour guide, charting migrations of & significant sites for each poet
3. Animations (POWTOON) of biographies

Duquesne University

In creating Mabel Dodge Luhan: Musing the Avant-Garde, our team sought to take an unconventional approach to understanding Dodge through her multifaceted relations with those whom she gathered and mused in her Greenwich Village and Florence salons between the years of 1912-1914. The digital humanities, as we will argue throughout this work, proctors new tools for reconstructing historical figures like Mabel Dodge through visual, textual, and contextual means, which we have implemented via network maps, photographs, and diary entries.

As Dodge held prominent salons in New York’s Greenwich Village and Florence, her work and personality drew others to her in an organic and deeply inspiring way. Rather than positioning herself as a social hub, she used her artistic inspirations to gather artists about her and inspire their genius. It was Mabel Dodge’s relationship to other avant-garde figures that became the inspiration for our project, including each individual elements and the larger, final project as a whole. Our group decided to take an unconventional approach to understanding Dodge by methodologically tracing her body, positionality, and her inspiration through her social connections. One of the most interesting and supporting elements of Mabel Dodge and her importance as an avant-garde figure an as a woman artist is her detailed writings about her own life and the people with whom she interacted. The author of the autobiography Movers and Shakers, Mabel Dodge Luhan was quite the social influencer. Dodge gathered many primary avant-garde artists and writers together at her salons in Greenwich Village and Florence respectively, 23 Fifth Avenue and Villa Curonia. Her visitors influenced her as much as she influenced them, resulting in a figure without whom the modernist movement would not have been as prevalent.

This project sought to render the world of Mabel Dodge a visual, textual, and conceptual reality by re-instantiating Dodge’s unique perspective and world-view through digital means. It includes:

1. Salons: locations & visuals
2. Gelphi visual network map
3. Gallery of individuals described by Dodge