Pentecostal Modernism: Lovecraft, Los Angeles, and World-Systems Culture - Paperback

by Stephen Shapiro (Author), Emma Mason (Editor), Philip Barnard (Author)

Bringing together new accounts of the pulp horror writings of H.P. Lovecraft and the rise of the popular early 20th-century religious movements of American Pentecostalism and Social Gospel, Pentecostal Modernism challenges traditional histories of modernism as a secular avant-garde movement based in capital cities such as London or Paris. Disrupting accounts that separate religion from progressive social movements and mass culture, Stephen Shapiro and Philip Barnard construct a new Modernism belonging to a history of regional cities, new urban areas powered by the hopes and frustrations of recently urbanized populations seeking a better life. In this way, Pentecostal Modernism shows how this process of urbanization generates new cultural practices including the invention of religious traditions and mass-cultural forms.

Author Biography

Stephen Shapiro is Professor of American Literature at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author or editor of 11 books, including How to Read Marx's Capital (2008) and The Wire: Race, Class, and Genre (2012).