Transnationality, Internationalism and Nationhood

European Avant-Garde in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Edited by H.F. van den Berg Edited by L. Gluchowska

Book cover: Transnationality, Internationalism and Nationhood

Extent: 277 pages

Publisher: Peeters Publishers

Subjects: Communications, Film, & Media Studies, Twentieth- & Twenty-First- Century History

Series: Groningen Studies in Cultural Change

Series volume number: 48

Language: English

Hardback (Published)

(April 2013)

ISBN: 9789042927568

Price: $68.00

In stock

This collection of essays focuses on the transnationality and inter-nationalisms in the European avant-garde as well as on conflicts, paradoxes and debates in the avant-garde as genuinely transnational configuration of artistic movements, which possessed nevertheless many nationalist edges. The book presents a panorama of the historical avant-garde oscillating and operating between transnationality, internationalism and nationalisms of different kinds, both in national cultural fields and a transnational European arena – from Iceland to Greece and from the Pale of Settlement to the Atlantic.


New means of transport and communication allowed unprecedented mobility of people, goods and ideas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, which contributed to far-reaching economic, social and political changes in a first wave of globalisation. In its genuine transnationality, the European historical avant-garde can be seen as a product of this development. Cosmpolitanism, internationality and internationalism became emblems of the avant-garde in its pursuit of a ‘new’, modern international culture trangressing ‘old’ borders and limitations dictated by conceptions of nationhood, linguistic restrictions, and state boundaries. Simultaneously, national and nationalist reflexes can be traced in the avant-garde as well – in a European context marked by a plethora of competing nationalisms. This collection of essays focuses on the transnationality and inter-nationalisms in the European avant-garde as well as on conflicts, paradoxes and debates in the avant-garde as genuinely transnational configuration of artistic movements, which possessed nevertheless many nationalist edges. The book presents a panorama of the historical avant-garde oscillating and operating between transnationality, internationalism and nationalisms of different kinds, both in national cultural fields and a transnational European arena – from Iceland to Greece and from the Pale of Settlement to the Atlantic.

  • Edited by H.F. van den Berg
  • Edited by L. Gluchowska