Modern Literature & Culture Research Centre & Gallery

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Julian is a proud MLC Alumnus and no longer with the Centre.

Julian Smith is in the MA program in Communication and Culture at York University. His research interests are in games, play and improvisation. Under the supervision of Dr. Irene Gammel, he is researching and writing a master’s thesis entitled “Reunion: Duchamp, Cage, and Ludology.” This little-researched avant-garde event occurred in 1968 at the Ryerson Theatre as part of the SightSoundSystems Festival. The event involved Marcel and Teeny Duchamp, John Cage, four experimental composers, a modified chess board and a bottle of wine.  Julian has presented his MA research at many conferences (see listing below).

Scholarly Presentations

"Playing a Different Game: Cheating and Interpretation in Games and Literary Theory." Lying, Cheating and Dissimulation: Theorizing Deceit, English Graduate Students' Association, YorkUniversity. Toronto, ON, 1-2 May 2009.

"Reunion: Play and the Avant-Garde." The Artfulness of Play: Bridging Creative and Theoretical Discourses. Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism, University of Western Ontario.  London,ON, 25-27 Sept. 2009.

"Reunion: Play and Game in the Art of Marcel Duchamp and John Cage." Modernity Unbound: Ryerson's Inaugural Literatures of Modernity Symposium. Ryerson University, Toronto,Ontario. 29 March 2010.

"Avant-Garde Games: Marcel Duchamp, John Cage and Ludology." Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association National Conference, Game Studies Area. St. Louis,Missouri. 31 March - 3 April 2010.

"Everyday Play: Games, Autonomy and the Avant-Garde." The Everyday: Lived Realities and Other Fictions, Art History & Communication Graduate Conference, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. 22-23 April 2010.

Personnel Index

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The Great War in Literature and Visual Culture

MLC Themes

The Great War in Literature and Visual Culture

Amid the unprecedented social change of World War I, women renegotiated their identities by dramatically changing the way they engaged with the arts. But how did they do so? And how did everyday citizens engage with the war?
Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

MLC Themes

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, considered by many to be the mother of Dada, was a daringly innovative poet and an early creator of junk sculpture. “The Baroness” was best known for her sexually charged, often controversial performances.
Modernism in the World

MLC Themes

Modernism in the World

Recent research has departed from the Euro-centric and national view of Modernism to include approaches and methods studying Modernism across national boundaries and across different art forms to include fashion, dance, performance, technology, and visual culture.
Lucy Maud Montgomery

MLC Themes

Lucy Maud Montgomery

L.M. Montgomery is perhaps Canada's most important literary export. She was prolific writer of over 500 short stories and poems, and twenty novels, including the beloved Anne of Green Gables.
Canadian Modernism

MLC Themes

Canadian Modernism

The works of numerous Canadian authors who lived during the modernist era may well constitute the most central and experimental articulation of Canadian modernism in prose, allowing authors to stage cross-cultural, controversial, and even conflicted identities.
Modernist Biography and Life Writing

MLC Themes

Modernist Biography and Life Writing

Life writing, including autobiographical accounts, diaries, letters and testimonials written or told by women and men whose political, literary or philosophical purposes are central to their lives, has become a standard tool for communication and the dissemination of information.