Associate professor studies links between Mexican revolution, modernist literature

Geneva Gano, an associate professor in the Department of English at Texas State University, has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for her project, Revolutionary Forms: U.S. Literary Modernism and the Mexican Vogue, 1910-1940.       

This is the first grant Gano has received from the NEH.

The $60,000 grant will support Gano’s efforts to research and write a book showing how the arts of the Mexican revolution (1910–1920) influenced modernist literature in the United States. Revolutionary Forms is a transnational expansion of ideas first developed in her first book, The Little Art Colony and US Modernism: Carmel, Provincetown, Taos, published in 2020 by Edinburgh University Press.

“I am so thankful to the NEH for recognizing my scholarship with this award and to Texas State University for helping to make it possible for me to concentrate on my research for the upcoming year,” Gano said. “With the time that this substantial award will provide, I believe I can transform my research into a really wonderful book. 

“This book argues that the novels, plays and poetry written by a diverse group of authors including Langston Hughes, Katherine Anne Porter, Lynn Riggs, D.H. Lawrence, and John Reed were profoundly influenced by the artistic responses to the Mexican Revolution,” she said. “Most scholars who study modernist literature and culture have looked almost exclusively to Europe as a source for inspiration for U.S. authors. This study locates some of the most important catalysts for radical literary experiments just across the border in Mexico.”

Gano has served as the Jesse H. and Mary Gibbs Jones Professor of Southwestern Studies (2018-2021) and received support for her research from the TXST Center for the Study of the Southwest. She has also received a Research Enhancement Program Award and additional funding from Project NEXT, both at Texas State.

Gano received her grant in the Awards for Faculty category, which supports advanced research in the humanities by scholars at Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-Serving Institutions and Tribal Colleges and Universities. Texas State was designated a Hispanic Serving Institution in 2011. The NEH grants awarded a total of $28.1 million for 204 humanities projects in 42 states, territories and the District of Columbia.