Liesl Olson | The Newberry Library (original) (raw)

I specialize in twentieth-century literature and culture, especially poetry and the visual arts, and my most recent work has focused on the modernist movement in Chicago. I have also begun to write about dance.

My latest book is about the literary and cultural centrality of Chicago in the first half of the twentieth century, Chicago Renaissance: Literature and Art in the Midwest Metropolis (Yale, 2017). It won the the 2018 Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation for best book of poetry criticism, and the 2019 Mid-America Award from the Society for the Study of Midwestern Literature.

My book Modernism and the Ordinary (Oxford, 2009) examines a broad range of twentieth-century writers and how their works present the habitual and unselfconscious actions of everyday life.

I received my PhD in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University, and my BA from Stanford University. I taught for four years as a Harper-Schmidt Fellow at the University of Chicago, and I have received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Newberry library, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Along with three of my Newberry colleagues, I received the 2020 Outstanding Public History Project Award from the National Council on Public History for the year-long set of programs "Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots."

I am currently working on an exhibition and catalog called "Chicago Avant-Garde," which will will explore the radical, experimental culture that emerged in Chicago across a range of artistic disciplines during the first half of the twentieth century. Opening in Fall 2021 at the Newberry, the exhibition will focus on six women who were connected through personal and creative networks in the city.

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