Research
Books
2024
(Ed.) Hawkes, Joel. Mary Butts: Necessary Contradictions and Feminist Reconstructions. London: Bloomsbury.
Chapters and Articles
Forthcoming
Hawkes, Joel “Letters to Robin Skelton: Implements of an Archive Poetic; Or, Letters to the Archive.” Reading W. S. Graham, Ed. Edward Allen. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Forthcoming
Hawkes, Joel; Madison Robinson; Vanessa Funk; Katie Crowdy; Ella McQueen-Denz; Samantha Burt; Maya Smith; Marcus Tisot; Sam Oosterman; Alistair Corp; Devan Gillard; Emily Coldwell; Sean Godwin; Noah Brandon; Thomas Nienhuis, “‘The Freud Game’; or, Connecting the Mary Butts Letters in the Modernist Classroom,” Future Pasts Blog, Modernism/modernity Print Plus.
2023
Hawkes, Joel. “Hotel Performance and its Remains: Jean Cocteau and Mary Butts at the Welcome,” Hotel Modernisms. Ed. Anna Despotopoulou, Vassiliki Kolocotroni, and Efterpi Mitsi. New York: Routledge, 2023: 49-64.
2022
Matthews, Scott. “Broken Continuity”: Cubist Interpretation from Mary Butts’s Letters in the Archive,” Future Pasts Blog, Modernism/modernity Print Plus, 2 November. https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/matthews-broken-continuity-cubist-interpretation-mary-butts-archive
2019
Hawkes, Joel. “In and Out of the Archive with the Letters of Mary,” Future Pasts Blog, Modernism/modernity Print Plus, 29 March, https://modernismmodernity.org/forums/posts/archive-letters-mary-butts.
Talks
2022
Lima, Alexander. “Mary Butts Parties and isolation: Mary Butts, ‘The House Party’ and ‘Look Homeward Angel’,” English 201: Introduction to Literary Modernism, 24 October.
2020
Hawkes, Joel. “Archival research, and remembering to enjoy the uncertainty of sex.” Secrets in the Archive: Sexuality, Gender, and Recovering Lost Voices, Humanities Literacy Week, 17 Jan 2020, University of Victoria.
2018
Hawkes, Joel. “The Mary Butts Letters Project: Mapping and Creating Transnational Spaces and Community.” Forum for Your Ideas, 30 Nov 2018, University of Victoria.
2018
Hawkes, Joel. “Working in the Archives with Mary Butts,” “English 500: Textual Studies and Methods of Research,” 29 Oct 2018, University of Victoria.
2018
Hawkes, Joel. “Connecting Voices, Mapping Stories: The Letters of Mary Butts,” Treasures and Tea, UVic Special Collection and Archives lecture series, 19 Mar.
Conference Papers
2023
Hawkes, Joel. “W.S. Graham and a precarious archive poetic,” Precarious Archives, MSA, New York, 25-28 October.
2023
Hawkes, Joel. “The Rhythms of Spectral Intertextuality in Mary Butts’s High Modernist Imaginary,” Gothic Modernisms, neMLA Conference, Niagara, US, 23-26 Mar.
2022
Hawkes, Joel. “Mary Butts and Modernity’s Garden: English Rites of Gardening, Literature, and Social Engineering,” MSA, Making Modernism, 1922: 100 Years On, Portland, 27-30 Oct.
2019
Hawkes, Joel. “Lines of Flight: The Letters of Mary Butts,” Lost Women Modernists: Decrypting the Originals and their Reconstruction, MSA, Upheaval and Reconstruction, 17-20 Oct.
2019
Hawkes, Joel. “The Hotel Welcome: A 1920s Group Performance of Place,” Placing Mary Butts and Other International Modernists,” neMLA Conference, Washington DC, 21-24 Mar.
Panels
2019
Hawkes, Joel, Jane Garrity, Alex Christie. Lost Women Modernists: Decrypting the Originals and their Reconstruction, MSA, Upheaval and Reconstruction, 17-20 Oct.
2019
Hawkes Joel, Stephen Ross, Jenna Marco. Placing Mary Butts and Other International Modernists, neMLA Conference, Washington DC, 21-24 Mar.
Roundtables
2022
Hawkes, Joel, Danny Israel, Tim Hopkins, Jenna Marco, and Leigh Rocha. Mary Butts, BAMS conference, Hopeful Modernisms, Bristol, UK 23-25 Jun
2020
Joel, Rachel Cleves, Christine Walde, and Lara Wilson. Secrets in the Archive: Sexuality, Gender, and Recovering Lost Voices, Humanities Literacy Week, 17 Jan 2020, University of Victoria.
Exhibits
2023
(Curator) Hawkes, Joel. Exhibit: “A Modernist Performance of Letters,” UVic Libraries’ Special Collections, 20 March-22 May.
2021
(Curators and performers), Armstrong, Thomas, Cameron Bolduc, Joel Hawkes, Taira Hunter, Eric Kwakernaak, Alex Lima, Anika Luteijn, Devon MacLean, Harleen Palmer, Isabelle Rakusan, Cian Shepherd, and Keileigh Stander. “My dear Douglas, Mary Butts and a performance of letters,” 20 October 2022, 2pm-Christmas Eve, 5pm. https://exhibits.library.uvic.ca/spotlight/marybutts
Available May 2, 2024
Mary Butts: Necessary Contradictions and Feminist Reconstructions
Edited by Joel Hawkes. Published by Bloomsbury Academic.
A scholarly and experimental collection that offers fresh insight-with a feminist focus-into the often overlooked modernist writer Mary Butts and the contested processes of recovering such an author.
Scholars instrumental in the recovery of Mary Butts, along with newer writers, publishers, printers, and artists, enter into conversation exploring the work of the British author, whose body of work plays between high modernist forms and more popular genres-writing that can be described as occult, Gothic, queer, proto-environmental, and feminist. Taking its cue from Butts’s experimental, rhythmic writing and the transnational artistic communities within which Butts participated in the 1920s, the collection is a non-linear exchange rather than a collection of isolated arguments-a conversation constructed from “classical” academic chapters, “knight’s move” non-academic reflections, and short responses to these.
This conversation lies at the intersection of “feminism” and “reconstruction”: Chapters range between Butts’s writing techniques and forms, her position in the modernist canon, contested sites of feminism in her work, critical reception of that work, queer and post-critical readings, and the success of, and the need for, a feminist recovery of the author. The collection aims to be a feminist engagement, while asking questions of what this might look like, why it is needed, and how such an approach offers fresh insight into an erudite, playful, difficult, contradictory, and experimental body of work. Ultimately, the collection asks, how should we reconstruct the author and her work for the contemporary reader?
