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Please note: For events from 1999 to September 2005 you will need to view our Events Archive. |
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01 May 2011 |
Medieval and Renaissance Close Reading Group
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02 - 06 May 2011 |
Medieval Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age
The Institute of English Studies is pleased to offer again this AHRC-funded training programme on the analysis, description and editing of medieval manuscripts. Organised in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, the Warburg Institute, and King's College London, and held jointly in Cambridge and London. The course stresses the practical application of theoretical principles and gives participants both a solid theoretical foundation and also 'hands-on' experience in the cataloguing and editing of original medieval manuscripts in both print and digital formats. CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS AND REGISTRATION.
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03 May 2011 |
History of Libraries Research Seminar
Sandra Cumming (Banff): 'False leads, puzzles, and the occasional revelation: the Dunimarle Library'.
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03 May 2011 |
Wyndham Lewis Reading Group
Holly Emblem (Westminster): 'Wyndham Lewis and his Experiments with Satire: Phenomenology and The Apes of God'. In Satire & Fiction, Lewis suggested that “no book (before The Apes of God) has ever been written that has paid more attention to the outside of people. In it their shells, or pelts, or language of their bodily movements, come first, not last.”[1] Throughout The Apes of God, there is an emphasis on “the outside” of its characters, and it is Lewis’s descriptions and its effects which, according to Ian Patterson, in ‘Beneath the Surface: Apes, Bodies and Readers’ forms “the basis of the technique Lewis uses to attack engrained habits, short-lived fashions and other forms of being which he regarded as characteristic of the time-obsessed modernity”.[2] In ‘Beneath the Surface: Apes, Bodies and Readers’, Patterson examines Lewis’s satire in The Apes of God alongside the work of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty and, in particular, his book, Phenomenology of Perception.[3] Working from Patterson’s ‘Beneath the Surface: Apes, Bodies and Readers’, this paper examines passages from The Apes of God and explores the relationship between Lewis’s satire and Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. Specifically, this paper focuses on the links between The Apes of God and Merleau-Ponty’s examination of the body and its relationship to other bodies, as well as his account of phenomenological reduction in the Preface to Phenomenology of Perception. This study also aims to provide an evaluation of how a phenomenological analysis of The Apes of God helps address what Paul Edwards and Richard Humphreys have called the “disparity” between Lewis’s “linguistic imagination” and his paintings.[4] [1] Wyndham Lewis, Satire & Fiction (Arthur Press: London, 1930), p.46. [2] Ian Patterson, ‘Beneath the Surface: Apes, Bodies and Readers’, Volcanic Heaven: Essays on Wyndham Lewis’s Painting and Writing, ed. Paul Edwards, (Black Sparrow Press: California, 1996), p.124. [3] Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (Routledge: London, 1994 edition). [4] Paul Edwards, Richard Humphreys, Wyndham Lewis Portraits (National Portrait Gallery Publications: London, 2008), p.15.
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04 May 2011 |
Institute of English Studies Director's Seminar
Lewis M. Dabney (Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Roma Tre): 'An American Critic Among the English: Edmund Wilson's Attachments and Antagonisms'. Wilson loved English literature and knew it well. He was a journalist-critic in the British (and French) line, uncomfortable in American academe, unimpressed by either the close reading of New Critics of the 40s and 50s or the theorists who succeeded them. At times he had an Anglophobic tendency, on account of Britain's imperial politics and what (after Evelyn Waugh snubbed him) he took to be "British manners". He had many friends in the British literary establishment including two who judged him the best critic of the century, Isaiah Berlin, the Russian intellectual, and Auden, who became an American citizen. See my biography, Edmund Wilson: A Life in Literature (FSG, 2005; paperback John Hopkins, 2007). Part of a long interview with Sir Isaiah appeared in The Wilson Quarterly, Winter l999, and an excerpt of this was published in The New York Times Book Review as 'The Philosopher and The Critic.'
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05 May 2011 |
Medieval Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age Lecture
Simon Tanner (Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London): 'On Planning Digital Projects'. All welcome. Followed by a wine reception. If you would like to attend please contact jon.millington@sas.ac.uk | tel. +44(0)207 664 4859.
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06 May 2011 |
Finnegans Wake Research Seminar
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07 May 2011 |
Modernism Research Seminar Series
Everyday Modernism
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07 May 2011 |
EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination)
Anna Maria Roos (Oxford): 'Spiderman: Dr. Martin Lister (1639-1712) and early modern theories of insect vectors and disease'
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09 - 12 May 2011 |
British Academy Literature Week
(see the day-by-day itinerary below) Leading writers, academics and practitioners come together in a series of events which make up the British Academy's second Literature Week. Three of the Academy's established literary lectures are being brought together in an expanded programme which also features panel discussions, readings and "in conversation" events.
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09 May 2011 |
Djuna Barnes Research Seminar
Robert Kiely (Birkbeck): 'Effing the ineffable: Barnes and Beckett'. Beckett and Barnes were known to each other. Both authors exhibit similar concerns in Watt (written during WW2) and Nightwood (1936): concerns about ‘effing the ineffable’, animality, lowness, and madness. Why are such similar techniques employed? These parallels are shared despite the almost polar-opposition between the styles employed. Barnes’ ornate, baroque prose, and Beckett’s autistic, combinatorial and repetitive text. What do these divergences and affinities point to? Can we talk about modernism? Do these texts shed any light on each other? Texts: Nightwood and Watt. Robert Kiely is a first-year MPhil/PhD student at Birkbeck. His thesis is tentatively titled Mysticism, Astrology, and Science in the Writing of Samuel Beckett, and his other research interests include Menippean satire, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Joyce, and Swift.
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09 May 2011 |
British Academy Literature Week
6.00pm: 'Shakespeare Poetry Hour': readings by actors from Shakespeare's Globe. Philip Bird, Bill Buckhurst, Frances Marshall, Vivien Heilbron, directed by dr Elsabeth Dutton, introduced by Professor Jonathan Bate FBA (Warwick). What is an audience? When do individuals become a group? How do (or should) audiences behave? This arrangement of episodes from plays by Shakespeare and others explores the ways in which audiences respond, interpret, interact, interrupt – and occasionally disrupt – plays. Dr Elisabeth Dutton directs actors from Shakespeare’s Globe in a creative piece that will make you rethink the relationship between actors and spectators. These extracts from Shakespeare’s plays will be brought to life by Globe actors in the perfect setting of the UnderGlobe exhibition space. Venue: The Underglobe, Shakespeare's Globe, Bankside, London SE1 9DT. If you would like to attend, click here for the online registration forms. ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.
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10 May 2011 |
British Academy Literature Week
6.00pm: 'Contemporary Satire - Part of a Great Tradition?': Professor John Mullan in conversation with Craig Brown and Posy Simmonds. Is contemporary satire any more biting and cruel than the satire of the Elizabethans or the Augustans? John Mullan leads a discussion on the nature of modern satire with the acclaimed parodist and Private Eye diarist Craig Brown and the cartoonist and illustrator Posy Simmonds. 7.15pm: 'Pope's Ethical Thinking': The 2011 Chatterton Lecture, by Dr Christopher Tilmouth (Cambridge). Alexander Pope discerned in his verse satires ‘more of morality than wit’, yet his work has been thought antipathetic to some of 18th-century Britain’s most enduring strains of ethical reflection. Reappraising Pope’s often noted complicity with those whom he otherwise attacked, this lecture asks what part Shaftesbury’s polite wit, Mandeville’s cynicism, and Augustan sentimentalism played in the poetry of England’s greatest satirist. What, too, can Pope teach us about the relationship between literature and ethics?
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11 May 2011 |
British Academy Literature Week
6.00pm: 'Phantasmagoria': Professor Marina Warner FBA (Essex) in conversation with Professor Hermione Lee FBA (Oxford). This ‘in conversation’ event takes as its starting point Marina Warner’s book Phantasmagoria, which she discusses with Hermione Lee. Reviewing it in 2006, Hilary Mantel described it as an exploration of: “the words we find for the things that aren’t quite there... the ways that the dead live: on film, in wax, in those Victorian spirit photographs, so clumsy that nowadays they wouldn’t fool a child. It takes us from Dante to JK Rowling, Peter Pan to Jean-Paul Marat, Aristotle to Magritte. It is about fog and smog and celestial clouds, doppelgängers and vampires, magic lanterns and Rorschach blots...” They will explore these technologies of the invisible and their presence in fairy tale and magical literature.
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12 May 2011 |
British Academy Literature Week
6.00pm: 'Shakeaspeare's Cultural Impact': Professor Kate McLuskie (Shakespeare Institute) and Dr Catherine Bunting (Arts Council England) in conversation with Professor Russ McDonald (Goldsmiths). No figure in English literature has had greater impact than William Shakespeare. Kate McLuskie and Catherine Bunting analyse with Shakespeare expert Russ McDonald the Shakespeare phenomenon, how it can be measured and what it tells us about our modern culture and its relationship with the past. Venue: The Beveridge Hall, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. If you would like to attend, click here for the online registration forms. ADVANCE REGISTRATION IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.
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12 May 2011 |
University of London Joyce Seminars in Memory of Blanche Levenkind
The University of London Joyce Seminars celebrate the life of Blanche Levinkind. The evening will consist of readings and other contributions. Anyone who would like to offer please contact Andrew Gibson on A.Gibson@rhul.ac.uk with proposals and approximate timings. It would be good to have reminiscences, anecdotes, music etc. as well as readings.
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13 May 2011 |
BARS Early Career and Postgraduate Conference: Romantic Identities Selves in Society, 1770-1835
Political and military conflict, the proliferation of print culture, and the diverse aesthetics espoused by competing authors all served to make the Romantic period one in which creating, assuming and redefining different kinds of identities was of critical importance. Increased interest in the lives and characters of writers, particularly in periodicals, constrained certain authors while provoking others to develop new forms of self-expression. Effectively manipulating identities was also critical to the period's burgeoning theatrical culture, in debates about hierarchies of forms and genres, and in the works and reception of female and working-class writers. The interplay of these competing self-presentations has had wide-ranging and continuing consequences, including the posthumous canonisation of certain writers of the period as Romantics while others remain neglected. CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION AND MORE INFORMATION.
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13 May 2011 |
Ezra Pound Cantos Reading Group
Mick Sheldon (independent scholar): Canto 78
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16 May 2011 |
Senate House Library Friends Talk
Senate House Library Friends Book Club: Bestsellers 1 Minna Vuohelainen (Edge Hill University) on Dracula, Bram Stoker. The recommended edition is the Norton Critical Edition, ed. by Nina Auerbach and David J. Skal, but any edition will be acceptable. I will be focusing on the following points: Study questions for readers: All welcome. Attendance free. 5.30 for 6.00pm. If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
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20 May 2011 |
The Charles Peake Ulysses Seminar
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22 May 2011 |
Medieval and Renaissance Close Reading Group
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24 May 2011 |
Senate House Library Friends Talk
Senate House Library Friends Talk. Wim Van Mierlo (Institute of English Studies): 'T. Sturge Moore: Man of Letters'. The poet, dramatist, art critic, engraver and illustrator T. Sturge Moore (1870-1944) was a seminal figure in the literary and artistic circles of London in the early decades of the twentieth century. His prolific creative and artistic output, sitting on the cusp between nineteenth-century aestheticism and twentieth-century modernism, can most effectively be classed as post-symbolist. An innovator, though no radical, Sturge Moore was well-respected by his contemporaries and exerted a strong influence on the course of the artistic and literary movements of his time. http://www.ull.ac.uk/specialcollections/SturgeMoore.shtml All welcome. Attendance free. 5.30 for 6.00pm. If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
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25 May 2011 |
Institute of English Studies Director's Seminar
Paul Arthur (Australian National University): 'Australian Dictionary of Biography and Obituaries Australia'
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25 May 2011 |
Literary and Critical Theory Seminar
Emer O'Toole (Royal Holloway) on 'Interculturalism'. For details and reading see: http://www.21stcenturytheory.blogspot.com/ NB: DATE CHANGE: (NOT 24TH!!)
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25 May 2011 |
Contemporary Innovative Poetry Research Seminar
Dr Agnieszka Kluba (Polish Academy of Sciences and Humanities): 'Theory of a (Non)genre: The Prose Poem as the Act of Experience' The prose poem is very often described as a literary form that avoids definite characteristics. It is sometimes claimed to be a subversive quasi-genre that not only tries to dodge any systematic description but also tends to undermine the very idea of the generic system. Agreeing with this nonsystematic motivation I argue that proclaiming the prose poem an elusive, amorphous object often creates a suspicion of mercenary, ideological interest... Even though nonsystematic, the prose poem could still be discussed as a way of writing that discloses some typical, recurrent features, which distinguish it from other seemingly akin literary conventions like free verse or poetic prose.
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26 May 2011 |
The Poetry Society Annual Lecture 2011
C.K Williams: "On Being Old" For the first time, the event is also presented in two other UK cities, in partnership with Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts (25 May) and University of Liverpool's Kenneth Allott Lecture (13 October) when Williams returns with an expanded meditation on his theme. This is a key occasion in the Society's calendar, and early booking is recommended.
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