Past Events

Please note: For events from 1999 to September 2005 you will need to view our Events Archive.

History of Libraries Research Seminar
Seminar
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Michelle Johansen (University of East London, Bishopsgate Institute, Birkbeck), 'An "unglamorous" profession?: the public librarian in late-Victorian London'
A variety of occupational identities were available to the first generation of chief librarians working in London's rate-assisted libraries ca. 1900. The identities these quasi-professionals adopted and `performed' (in their modes of leadership and methods of library management, in their inter-institutional allegiances and enmities and in the journal articles and correspondence they wrote) tell us much about late-Victorian public library history. They also shed light on wider historical issues relating to such themes as gender, family, location and social class.

London Nineteenth Century Studies Seminar
Seminar
Time: 11:00 - 13:00

'Photography' Poems. Led by Professor Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck College). PLEASE NOTE ROOM CHANGE.  Copies of the poems are available via the following webpage: http://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/seminars/19C/index.htm

EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination)
Seminar
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Speakers: William Poole, Richard Serjeantson and Rhodri Lewis, 'Early Modern Heterodoxies'

Dean's Seminar - How do you solve a problem like Edmund Curll?
Seminar
Time: 12:30 - 14:00
Speakers:

Professor Pat Rogers, School Visiting Professorial Fellow

Biography

Ezra Pound Cantos Reading Group
Seminar
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Eric White (Oxford Brookes University), Canto 32

The Charles Peake Ulysses Seminar
Seminar
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Djuna Barnes Research Seminar
Seminar
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Speakers: Professor Daniela Caselli (Manchester), presenting from "Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes' Bewildering Corpus", followed by [weather permitting] picnic in Russell Square Gardens.

Djuna Barnes Research Seminar
Seminar
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Speakers: Dr Daniela Caselli (University of Manchester), 'Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes's Bewildering Corpus'. Chair: Laura Salisbury (Birkbeck College)
Click here for abstract.  NB: PLEASE NOTE THE TIME AND DATE!

Comics and Medicine: Medical Narrative in Graphic Novels
Conference / Symposium
Time: 09:30 - 18:00
Speakers: Paul Gravett, Brian Fies, Marc Zaffran
This one-day interdisciplinary conference aims to explore medical narrative in graphic novels and comics. Although the first comic book was invented in 1837 the long-format graphic narrative has only become a distinct and unique body of literary work relatively recently. Thanks in part to the growing Medical Humanities movement, many medical schools now encourage the reading of literature and the study of art to gain insights into the human condition. A serious content for comics is not new but representation of illness in graphic novels is an increasing trend. The melding of text and visuals in graphic fiction and non-fiction has much to offer medical professionals, students and, indeed, patients. Among the growing number of graphic novels, a sub-genre exploring the patients' and the carers' experiences of illness or disability has emerged. CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION AND MORE INFORMATION.

Senate House Library Friends Talk cancelled
Seminar
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Bill Simpson, 'Bringing together two cultures: Library vision and development at the British University in Egypt'

LOMERS annual conference: Studies in Cotton Nero a.x (the Gawain-Manuscript)
Conference / Symposium
Time: 00:00
Speakers: include Alcuin Blamires, Helen Cooper, Tony Davenport, Rosalind Field, Susanna Fein, Julian Harrison, Derek Pearsall, Ad Putter
The 10th Annual LOMERS Conference is dedicated to a study of the material and contents of British Library Manuscript Cotton Nero A.X.  This unique and precious codex is the sole witness to four late fourteenth-century poems which modern scholars have entitled Pearl, Cleanness (less often Purity), Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.  The works are thought by most scholars to be by the same poet, most often known as ‘the Gawain-poet’ or ‘the Pearl-poet’.  The language of poet(s) and scribe is decidedly northern in character.  Pearl is composed in stanzaic alliterating iambic tetrameter, the other three poems in the strong-stress alliterative, metre; there are solid structural features in all four poems.  We hope in this conference to update cutting edge scholarship on palaeography, illustrations, codicology, patronage and provenance, reception, history and context, texts, authorship(s), literary contexts, metrics, textual editing and digitisation. CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION AND MORE INFORMATION.

Inaugural Lecture by Professor Michelle Brown
Lecture
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Michelle Brown (Professor of Medieval Manuscript Studies, Institute of English Studies, University of London), 'Manuscripts from Anglo-Saxon Mercia: the Staffordshire hoard, other recent finds and the 'new materiality' in book history'
Mercia has long been the lost kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England for, despite its political prominence, material and written evidence from this important area of the Midlands has been slight. A generation ago no manuscripts had been securely attributed to Mercia, but the speaker's research has argued for a small but significant corpus which casts important light upon relations between Northumbria and Southumbria, upon female patronage and upon the benefits of applying a synthetic, inter-disciplinary approach to the material culture of the early Middle Ages. This lecture will explore the implications of Mercian manuscripts for the 'new materiality' in book history and examine the impact of recent archaeological finds, such as the inscription from the stunning Staffordshire Hoard of metalwork and the painted stone angel from Lichfield Cathedral.

Free and open to the public, and followed by a wine reception.  If you would like to attend please contact Jon Millington at the Institute of English Studies; tel. +44 (0)207 664 4859.

Patrick White: Modernist Impact / Critical Futures
Conference / Symposium
Time: 00:00
Speakers: Tim Armstrong, Simon During, Elizabeth Schafer, David Marr (2010 Menzies Lecturer)
This international conference will forge new perspectives on the work of Patrick White, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. Invited speakers from around the world will explore White's impact in Australia, America, Britain, Europe, and Asia and speculate on critical futures for White and for literary modernism. CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION AND MORE INFORMATION.

The Menzies Lecture by David Marr
Lecture
Time: 18:00 - 19:30
Speakers:

David Marr, author of Patrick White: A Life (1991). Respondent: Professor Robert Dixon (Sydney)

The Menzies Lecture is one of two public lectures hosted every year by the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London. A distinguished Australian speaker is invited to give the lecture and usually reflects upon the continuing relationship between Britain and Australia. Past speakers include Professor Graeme Davison (Monash University), Professor Glyn Davis (Vice-Chancellor, University of Melbourne), arts festival director Robyn Archer AO, and Robert Thomson (Editor of The Times).  More information on the other activities of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, King’s College London can be found at: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/humanities/depts/menzies/ 

Free and open to the public.  If you would like to attend please contact Jon Millington at the Institute of English Studies; tel. +44 (0)207 664 4859.

History of Communication: Seminar 8
Seminar
Time: 17:00 - 19:00
Speakers:

Professor Michael Clanchy: 'I'm OK; you're OK' a letter to Thomas Becket in 1162'; Professor Simon Eliot: 'Living with censorship: Hotten and pornography 1868-73'

'Bloody Sunday and the Saville Inquiry': The London Irish Studies Seminar Annual Symposium, 2010
Conference / Symposium
Time: 10:00 - 17:00
Speakers: Paul Bew, Aileen McColgan, Kieran McEvoy, Thomas Hennessey, Graham Dawson, Niall O Dochartaigh

The symposium aims to situate the events of Bloody Sunday in their historical context, to analyse the politics of memory in Northern Ireland since the 1990s adn the debate over ways of "dealing with the past".  the symposium is open to graduate students, faculty and others. 

Venue: Department of History, King's College London (Room 8.08, 8th floor, Strand Building).  Places are limited, and there will be a conference fee of £10. For further details please contact Ian McBride (Ian.McBride@kcl.ac.uk).  Attendees must RSVP by 11 June.  Places are limited.

Supported by the British Association for Irish Studies, Goldsmiths, Queen Mary and King's College London.

Finnegans Wake Research Seminar
Seminar
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Women Writers of the fin de siècle
Conference / Symposium
Time: 09:00 - 17:00
Speakers: Linda Peterson (Yale University), Lyn Pykett (Aberystwyth University)
Exploring women's writing across a wide range of genres and from a variety of aspects, the Women Writers of the Fin de Siècle International Conference focuses on British women's writing in the period 1880 to 1900. CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION AND MORE INFORMATION.

Wyndham Lewis Reading Group
Seminar
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Anthony Paraskeva (Dundee University), 'Garbo, Nabokov and The Revenge for Love'

John Coffin Memorial Lecture in the History of the Book
University Trust Fund Event
Time: 18:00 - 19:00
Speakers: Professor John Barnard, 'Presence and Absence in Keats's Letters'

The distinguished Keats scholar, Professor John Barnard, editor of the Penguin Keats Complete Poems, will talk the material ‘presence and absence’ of Keats’s letters. He will discuss their original manuscript composition, the sometimes misleading processes of transmission, the mysteries of missing letters to and from Keats, and the inadequacies of the translation of manuscript into print. FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. If you would like to attend please contact Jon Millington at the Institute of English Studies; tel. +44 (0)207 664 4859

John Coffin Memorial Lecture in the History of the Book
Lecture
Time: 18:00 - 19:00
"Presence and Absence in Keats's Letters" by Professor John Barnard.  For details see: http://www.sas.ac.uk/events/list/ies_university