The book, and the series as a whole, is useful for both beginning students and advanced scholars of modernism. It approaches its topic through the critical theories of modernism, grounding it in academia, and provides an extended bibliography of the major critical works. The broad rather than deep approach makes Modernism in a Global Context an excellent beginner's guide to the movement.

Journal of Modern Literature

In range and scope, this is an ambitious and comprehensive book ... One of its most laudable achievements is achieving such breadth without sacrificing depth, nuance of argument, or readability ... The book is accessible to undergraduates without flattening out complicated questions that will challenge all scholars of modernism ... Modernism in a Global Context provides a thoughtful and compelling view of global modernism at a key moment in this developing field.

Review of English Studies

[T]he ambitious re-mapping of Modernism, especially in the cosmopolitan and postcolonial contexts, provides a fascinating arena for further thought and discussion.

Virginia Woolf Bulletin

In this hearty work, Kalliney (Univ. of Kentucky) examines modernism in the context of 20th- and 21st-century globalism. Taking modernism beyond the shores of Europe and North American, Kalliney offers chapters on media (Marshall McLuhan et al.), cosmopolitanism, cultural Institutions (UNESCO), and imperialism. Of these the last makes the most significant contribution. Here the author tackles such usual suspects as Joseph Conrad and Elizabeth Bowen but also focuses on Indonesian writer Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Canadian M. G. Vassanji (who was raised in Tanzania but emigrated to Canada), and others. Particularly interesting is Kalliney's understanding of anticolonial modernism as expansive in nature. For him, the tools of modernism allow for a broad understanding and construction of community, which he argues is “asymmetrical in nature" and crosses temporal and spatial boundaries. This much-needed study allows for ownership of modernism beyond the traditional hegemony. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above.

CHOICE

A very effective, very accessible and remarkably even-handed survey of the existing, highly complex landscape of new modernist studies.

English Studies

Engagingly written and keenly aware of the enormity of its topic, Kalliney's book maintains an enviable blend of scholarly rigor and accessible introduction, making it one of the most ideal teaching tools in a series devoted to that audience … Kalliney proceeds to move through a provocative range of examples of how one might conceive of modernism as a global phenomenon while remaining attentive to textual specificity.

Modernism/modernity