Wonder and Decay: Djuna Barnes's New York

Katherine Biers, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, discusses Djuna Barnes’s illustrated journalism from the period covered by Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913–1919, addressing the question of how Barnes, a female reporter in an overwhelmingly male profession, got others to take her seriously in early twentieth-century New York. This talk will explore Barnes’s self-presentation, ornate illustrations, and writing style, which used a light touch to address weighty topics such as women’s suffrage and the dangers of tenement life, as well as more “frivolous” topics including the Ziegfeld Follies.