Who were the pioneers who first thought of radio as an art form, who debated how to write and perform for radio, who discussed radio's social and political dimensions? Spanning from 1924 to 1938, this anthology brings together long-forgotten texts on sound, listening and writing by radio enthusiasts, journalists, actors, radio producers and literary authors who conceptualised the new radio aesthetic between the two world wars and reflected on radio's future, as a medium requiring the invention of a new literature, new modes of performance and new ways of listening. The texts included here, drawn from British, French, German and Italian radio cultures, are representative of important pan-European debates about radio's potential at a critical moment in its history. Together, they shed light on ideas that shaped not only the emergence of radio drama, sound art and reportage, but radio as we know it today.
About the Author: Emilie Morin is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of York, UK. Her interests revolve around transnational modernisms, forms of political writing, literatures of exile and migration, and the intersections between literature and technology. Her most recent monograph is Beckett's Political Imagination (2017).
Emilie Morin is Professor of Modern Literature at the University of York, UK. Her interests revolve around transnational modernisms, forms of political writing, literatures of exile and migration, and the intersections between literature and technology. Her most recent monograph is Beckett's Political Imagination (2017).
Marielle Sutherland is a freelance translator (German to English). Her key areas are contemporary literature, arts and humanities. Her recent translations include Rainer Maria Rilke's Selected Poems, with Susan Ranson (2011), Bauhaus Architecture 1919-1933, by Hans Engels (2018), and Rulantica: Hidden Island, by Manuela Hanauer (2021).
Nicoletta Asciuto is Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of York, UK. A passionate linguist with knowledge of ten languages, she specialises in comparative literature, and has particular interests in modernism and technology. She is currently completing a monograph entitled Brilliant Modernism: Cultures of Light and Modernist Poetry, 1909-1930.
