On March 20th, Dr. Nan Zhang, Associate Professor in English Studies at the University of Hong Kong, delivered a speech entitled "Modernism and the Observant Eye" at UIC. As introduced by Dr. Xi XU, Dr. Zhang, with a dual background in International Finance and Literature, is a scholar with a unique perspective. Deeply fascinated by Virginia Woolf's writings, she wholeheartedly immersed herself in the study of modernism. In this lecture, she led the audience into a different world of modernism in a fresh new way.

In the first part of the lecture, Dr. Zhang illustrated that modernism is essentially an innovative experiment, drawing on Pericles Lewis's explanation. She emphasized that Modernists continuously raised "how" questions instead of "what" questions to seek "new methods of representation appropriate to live in an urban, industrial, mass-oriented age." Unlike the Victorian era's focus on marital and gender relations, modernism focused on how to present everything happening around us and our current thoughts to readers. Dr. Zhang elaborated with examples from James Joyce's Ulysses and Finnegans Wake to demonstrate how modernists play with language to create infinite possibilities of content and interpretation to reflect the great technological and intellectual shifts in contemporary society. Additionally, she showcased the differences between modernism and modernity, indicating that the emergence of modernism is closely intertwined with the changes of the times. Modernists are sensitive to these external changes and encode their thoughts into their works. Their imagination of all the new phenomena and technological advancements embodies modernism. Thus, the emerging creativity and the desire to embrace global changes also prompt modernists to place this innovation above language to reflect their observation of the world.

Dr. Zhang giving her talk

In the second part, Dr. Zhang turned to the modernists’ Observant Eye. She mentioned a prominent feature of modernist language, the use of pun to create a game of language and imagination. Not only is there innovation in the form of language expression, but modernism also presents a turn towards inner thoughts. As showed in stream-of-consciousness novels, life is much within the consciousness in our mind. The inward turn also indicates innovative representations of intensified subjectivity. What’s more, Dr. Zhang deepened her viewpoint by introducing the stories of Woolf, Roger Fry, and the Bloomsbury Group to elucidate "the observant eye". The communication and exchange among these modernists are collections of pairs of eyes mapping the world. Everyone introspects themselves in the process of observation and being observed. This also leads to subsequent global modernism, as modernity covers the globe, every cultural body will respond. In this stage, similarities and differences contribute to the development of modernism, accommodating more dimensions of observational perspectives.

Dr. Zhang asking student audience’s question

In the final sections on "What can we do with our eyes?" and the Q&A session, Dr. Zhang also highlighted the importance of extensive reading in understanding the works of modernist writers. Because their texts are filled with so many puns and details, readers need a certain level of proficiency to interpret them. To achieve this, readers need to accumulate and comprehend through extensive reading, and finally find the links and produce their thoughts through repeated readings of the texts. After the lecture, Dr. Zhang patiently gave advice and response on issues such as applying for overseas study and choosing a master's and doctoral study direction with ELLS students.

Dr. Zhang taking a photo with staff from the ELLS programme

John Berger once mentioned in Ways of Seeing, people are now viewing everything in an unprecedented way. Understanding different views and the reasons behind them can help us understand ourselves and the era we live in. Likewise, the writing of modernists is an entwined way of observing the world and seeing human beings’ existence.

Reporter: Liu Zilin

Photographer: Sun Yimin

Editor: XU Xi