The paper explores some longstanding definitional problems in literary modernism with specific reference to studying modernism on a global scale: What counts as modernism once we start to look for signs of it across the globe? The author examines the question in the context of his recent editorial project, Global Modernisms, which draws together multiple international and disciplinary perspectives in order to create a discursive space in which a wide range of foreign language productions can be brought into productive dialogue. Raising the question of whether a distinction between “modern” and “modernist” can be sustained, he suggests the need for continuing efforts of recursive definition as the field expands in order to maintain a viable object of study
