You are warmly invited to attend the ISSS’s first virtual event of 2023. Join us to celebrate the recent publication of The Routledge Companion to Surrealism and hear from the editor, Kirsten Strom.

Sunday, January 29, 2023, 1:30 PM EST (Please check your own time zone)

Register through Eventbrite here.

You can purchase The Routledge Companion to Surrealism here.

This book provides a conceptual and global overview of the field of Surrealist studies. Methodologically, the companion considers Surrealism’s many achievements, but also its historical shortcomings, to illuminate its connections to the historical and cultural moment(s) from which it originated and to assess both the ways in which it still shapes our world in inspiring ways and the ways in which it might appear problematic as we look back at it from a twenty-first-century vantage point. Contributions from experienced scholars will enable professors to teach the subject more broadly, by opening their eyes to aspects of the field that are on the margins of their expertise, and it will enable scholars to identify new areas of study in their own work, by indicating lines of research at a tangent to their own.

The companion will reflect the interdisciplinarity of Surrealism by incorporating discussions pertaining to the visual arts, as well as literature, film, and political and intellectual history.

Kirsten Strom is Professor of Art History at Grand Valley State University.

Table of Contents:

Introduction – Kirsten Strom

Part One: Concepts and Practices

Exploratory Themes

1. Dreams and Humor – Natalya Lusty

2. Play, Games and Chance – Susan Laxton

3. The Marvelous and the Uncanny – Andrea Gremels and Kirsten Strom

4. Convulsive Beauty and Mad Love – Gavin Parkinson

5. The Occult, Magic and Alchemy – Rachael Grew

6. Toward a Total Animism: Surrealism and Nature – Kristoffer Nohedon

Protestations

7. Capitalism and Colonialism – Michael Richardson

8. Limits Not Frontiers: Surrealist Resistance to Nationalism, Patriotism, and Militarism – Krzysztof Fijalkowski

9. Catholicism and Family Values – Miguel Escribano

Creative Applications

10. Verbal Techniques – Madeleine Chalmers

11. Visual Techniques – Elliott King

12. Buñuel and Dalí, Un Chien andalou – Elza Adamowicz

Part Two: Lessons from Paris

Tensions and Dissensions

13. “Anarchy”…or Anarchism?: Dada in Paris and the Shifting Politics of Irreverence – Theresa Papanikolas

14. Georges Bataille, André Breton and the Culture of Surrealism – Raymond Spiteri

15. Surrealism and the French Communist Party – Mikkel Bolt Rasmussen

Public Interfaces

16. Surrealism’s Publics – Rachel Silveri

17. Surrealism on Display: American Reception and Expansion – Sandra Zalman

Part Three: Situated Contexts: Adaptations and Translations

18. Surrealism in the Arab World – Riad Kherdeen

19. Surrealism and Australia – Gavin Yates

20. Surrealism in Belgium: A Never-Ending Story – Pierre Taminiaux

21. Surrealism in the Caribbean in the 1940s: Transnational Encounters – Paulina Caro Troncoso

22. Surrealism in Chicago – Penelope Rosemont

23. Surrealism in China – Lauren Walden

24. Surrealism in the Czech Lands – Malynne Sternstein

25. Surrealism in England – Christina Heflin

26. Surrealism in Greece – Victoria Ferentinou

27. Surealis Yogya and other Surrealist Moments in Indonesia in the Twentieth Century – Tessel Bauduin

28. Surrealism in Japan – Chinghsin Wu

29. Surrealism in Mexico – Melanie Nicholson

30. Romanian Surrealism – Cosana Eram

31. Scandinavian Surrealism – Kerry Greaves

32. Surrealist Dialogues in South America – María Clara Bernal

33. Surrealism and Spain – Maite Barragán

34. Surrealism and Post-War West Germany – Patricia Allmer

Part Four: Critical Dialogues

The Politics of Collecting

35. L’élan surréaliste: Surrealist aspirations and the power and primacy of Oceanic Art – Maia Nuku

36. The Surrealist Experience of Indigenous North America: A Second “Discovery” of the Americas – Marco Polo Juarez Cruz

Gender and Sexuality

37. Feminist Encounters with Surrealism: Revisiting the Formative Critiques – Anna Watz

38. Visions of Androgyny – Abigail Susik

39. Radical Muses – Catriona McAra and Jonathan P. Eburne

40. Dismembered Muses and Mirrors that Bite: A Trans Perspective on Gender Variance in Surrealist Art – Jordan Reznick

Part Five: Further Reaches

41. The Intellectual Resonances of Surrealism – Bruce Baugh

42. Surrealist Resonances in Contemporary Art – Craig Adcock

43. The Hybrid and Surreal Memoirs of Tameca Cole, Raymond Towler, Shay Youngblood and Steve Cormany – Rochelle Spencer 44. Inquiry on Surrealism in 2024 – Jonathan P. Eburne, Krzysztof Fijalkowski, Andrea Gremels, Melanie Nicholson, Michael Richardson, Penelope Rosemont, Rachel Silveri, Rochelle Spencer, Abigail Susik, Pierre Taminiaux