30 November 2013
22 November 2013
Dr Andy Hamilton (Durham University, philosophy) will be speaking at the Staff-Postgraduate seminar on Wednesday November 27.
Dr Andy Hamilton (Durham University, philosophy) will be speaking at the Staff-Postgraduate seminar on Wednesday November 27. The title of his paper is: “The
Autonomy of Art and the Heteronomy of Entertainment: Louis Armstrong,
Charles Dickens, and Howard Hawks” and he has supplied the following
abstract:
Louis Armstrong
was a very great musical artist, who always thought of himself first as
an entertainer: “My life has been music, it’s always come first, but the
music ain’t worth nothing if you can’t lay
it on the public”. But he knew that his clowning and crowd-pleasing
were compatible with being an artist: “…it’s got to be art because the
world has recognised our music from New Orleans, else it would have been
dead today”. This lecture argues that, like
the modern Western system of the arts, the modern system of
entertainment – music-hall, circuses, professional sport… – did not
assume definite shape till the 18th or 19th century, though its
ingredients were found in classical, medieval and Renaissance periods.
It argues that the highest humane art seeks a broad audience, in a way
often deemed unique to entertainment. The examples of Louis Armstrong,
Charles Dickens and Howard Hawks are contrasted with the more hermetic
high art of Lennie Tristano, Marcel Proust
and Andrei Tarkovsky.
21 November 2013
Dr Marilynn Richtarik (Georgia State University) at Staff PG seminar
Just a reminder that
Dr Marilynn Richtarik (Georgia State University) will be speaking at
the Staff-Postgraduate seminar today on the subject: Northern Irish
drama in the context of the political 'Troubles’.
Dr Richtarik was
educated at Harvard and Oxford University and has been an Associate
Professor at Georgia State University since 2001. She has teaching and
research interests in Modern and contemporary
Irish literature, twentieth-century English literature, drama, world
literature. Her most recent publication,
Stewart Parker: A Life
(Oxford UP, 2012), won the 2013 SAMLA Studies Book Award from the South
Atlantic Modern Language Association and the 2012 Robert Rhodes Prize
for Books on Literature from the American Conference
for Irish Studies.
9 November 2013
Dr Tom Mole (University of Edinburgh; IAS Fellow, Durham), ‘Scattered Odes’ in ‘Shattered Books’: Romantic Poems in Victorian Anthologies
On Wednesday 13 November,
Dr Tom Mole (University of Edinburgh; IAS Fellow, Durham), will address
the Staff and Postgraduate Research Seminar. The title of his paper
his:
‘Scattered Odes’ in ‘Shattered Books’: Romantic Poems in Victorian Anthologies
Tom
Mole is currently Reader in English Literature and Director of the
Centre for the History of the Book at the University
of Edinburgh. From 2005 until July 2013 he was Associate Professor and
William Dawson Scholar in the Department of English at McGill University
in Montreal. He specializes in the Romantic period in Britain,
especially Lord Byron. His research focuses on three
areas: the cultural history of celebrity, print culture and book
history, and reception history. His monograph,
Byron's Romantic Celebrity (Palgrave, 2007), won the Elma Dangerfield prize from the International Byron Society. Professor Mole edited
Romanticism and Celebrity Culture (Cambridge University Press,
2009, paperback 2012), which brings together twelve contributors to
assemble the most complete account of Romantic celebrity available.
Arguing that celebrity emerged in several areas of
cultural production almost simultaneously, the book includes case
studies from literature and the theatre, music and visual culture,
fashion and boxing.
The seminar will be chaired by Professor Michael O’Neill and take place in Hallgarth House seminar room at 4:30, followed by drinks in The Victoria.6 November 2013
23 October 2013
Change of Programme: October 31st
Unfortunately Professor Francis O'Gorman's talk on the 31st October has been cancelled due to unforseen circumstances. However, Inventions will still go ahead, and we look forward to a very exciting paper from Dr Alistair Brown. Please note the seminar will take place in Elvet Riverside 146, but at the usual time of 5.30.
16 October 2013
14 October 2013
Staff Student Seminar: A. C. Spearing: What is a Narrator? Narrator Theory and Medieval Narratives, 16th October
Announcement: Staff Student Seminar Series
On Wednesday 16 October,
Professor A. C. Spearing (University of Virginia), will address the
Staff and Postgraduate Research Seminar. The title of his paper his:
What is a Narrator? Narrator Theory and Medieval Narratives
A. C. Spearing is
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of English at the University of
Virginia, specializing in medieval literature. He is perhaps most widely
known for his books on the Gawain-Poet and
Medieval Dream-Poetry and for his translation of The Cloud of Unknowing
and several works on Geoffrey Chaucer. Titles of books by Professor
Spearing include: Criticism and Medieval Poetry (1964, 2 edn 1972); An
Introduction to Chaucer (with Maurice Hussey
and James Winny, 1965); The Medieval Poet as Voyeur (1993); Textual
Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Romances and
Lyrics (2005).
12 October 2013
23 September 2013
The programme for Autumn 2013. Inventions 1, 2, 3 & 4.
W E A R E E X T R E M E LY E X C I T E D T O
A N N O U N C E O U R A U T U M N 2 0 1 3
P R O G R A M M E
20 September 2013
Inventions 1: Emily Ridge: Biographical Beginnings: The Anatomy of the Woman’s Bag 03.10.13 5.30pm Hallgarth House Seminar Room
W E A R E D E L I G H T E D T O A N N O U N C E O U R
F I R S T S P E A K E R F O R 2013-2014
26 August 2013
7 June 2013
Inventions of the Text: Call for
Convenors (academic year 2013/14)
Applications are now being accepted for a team of three Inventions of the Text 2013/14 series organisers. The vacancies are open to all Postgraduate Researchers in the Department of English Studies. We will accept applications from teams or individuals.
Applications are now being accepted for a team of three Inventions of the Text 2013/14 series organisers. The vacancies are open to all Postgraduate Researchers in the Department of English Studies. We will accept applications from teams or individuals.
Prospective seminar convenors will be
responsible for planning and organising a schedule of seminars, publicity and
budget management.
To apply, please submit a short statement expressing your interest in running the series and outlining your ideas for the 2013/14 Inventions of the Text series by emailing the outgoing team (Amy, Natasha and Nicoletta) at inventionsofthetext@gmail.com. Deadline for applications: Sunday, 30th June 2013. The new convenors will take over responsibility for the series from July 2013, and one or more of the successful applicants should be available to attend a handover meeting at the beginning of July.
To apply, please submit a short statement expressing your interest in running the series and outlining your ideas for the 2013/14 Inventions of the Text series by emailing the outgoing team (Amy, Natasha and Nicoletta) at inventionsofthetext@gmail.com. Deadline for applications: Sunday, 30th June 2013. The new convenors will take over responsibility for the series from July 2013, and one or more of the successful applicants should be available to attend a handover meeting at the beginning of July.
If you have any questions, feel free
to email us at the address above.
About Inventions of the Text:
Established in 2008, Inventions of the Text is a fortnightly staff-student forum run by postgraduate students from the Department of English Studies at Durham University. It is an opportunity for postgraduate students and staff from Durham University and other institutions to present their research in the form of a 45-minute paper, and to contribute to lively discussion on key issues raised.
15 May 2013
Literature & the Intermedial Gaze: Cinematic Configurations of Literary Process
Please join us for the next seminar of Inventions of the Text 2012/13
Literature & the Intermedial Gaze: Cinematic Configurations of Literary Process
Professor Judith Buchanan
University of York
***
Wednesday 22nd May 2013
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room
***
Speaker: Dr. Judith Buchanan, University of York
Recent years have seen a proliferation of films about writers, real and
fictional, and an enhanced interest in acts of writing as a filmed
subject. In the first half of my talk, I ask how filmmakers have
narratively and iconographically configured writers’ lives and acts of
writing, and how they have reflected upon the material, imaginative and
commercial operations of literary processes. In the second half, I will
take one example of a fairly recent film in which (in this case,
fictional) acts of writing are narratively and iconographically central.
Von Donnersmarck’s Das Leben der Anderen/ The Lives of Others (2006)
is anchored in two politically and aesthetically opposed acts of writing
emerging from two comparably opposed authors. As the film identifies
and then tracks the incremental erosion of this opposition, the
suspicions that attach to author figures in the literarily censorious
GDR before 1989 come under scrutiny. The self-preserving imperative to
anonymise a dissenting piece of work is here shown to be matched by the
comparably insistent institutional imperative to deanonymise such a
work. And the series of counterposed quests to discover the author of a
work – the Stasi operative’s desire to know the playwright, the state’s
desire to know the dissident writer, the playwright’s desire to know the
writer of his surveillance report – illustrate, in hyperbolised form, a
psycho-social ‘desire’ for the author that arguably informs every act
of reading.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Judith Buchanan is Professor of Film and Literature in the Department
of English and Related Literature and Director of the Humanities
Research Centre at the University of York. Publications include the
monographs Shakespeare on Film (Longman-Pearson, 2005) and Shakespeare
on Silent Film: An Excellent Dumb Discourse (Cambridge University Press,
2009), the edited collection The Writer on Film: Screening Literary
Authorship (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and numerous articles on
literature and silent cinema, and early cinema's relations to the other
arts. Current projects include work on The Tempest in performance, on
murderous women in film and literature and on cinema and the machine.
She speaks regularly in arts cinemas as well as to academics.
For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com
24 April 2013
Literature and the Book Trade
Please join us for the next seminar of Inventions of the Text 2012/13
Literature and the Book TradeProfessor David Duff
Trinity College Dublin
***
Wednesday 1st May 2013
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room
***
Speaker: Dr. Clemens Ruthner, University of Aberdeen
A
significant feature of the Romantic book world is the ‘prospectus’, a
type of printed flyer (typically between one and four pages long) used
to announce a projected book, series, journal or newspaper. Associated
particularly with subscription publishing and with expensive,
large-scale ventures such as encyclopaedias and other multi-volume
series, the genre acquired new visibility in this period as the
publishing industry expanded, periodicals proliferated, and pre-selling
techniques became more common. In the revolutionary 1790s, prospectuses
took on an increasingly polemical tone, often becoming a form of
pamphlet or manifesto, as in Coleridge’s ‘flaming Prospectus’ to The
Watchman and the much-cited Prospectus to The Anti-Jacobin, while also
heralding an ever-widening range of publications (and lecture series)
across literature, science and other fields. At once preview and
overview, foretaste and rationale, the prospectus shares with other
paratextual devices like the ‘preface’ an anticipatory and explanatory
function, but differs in its more speculative emphasis, since the
announced work may not (and often did not) appear, its realisation being
dependent in part on the response of prospective readers/investors to
the announcement itself. The incorporation of the prospectus into the
metalanguage and generic repertoire of literary Romanticism, most
famously in Wordsworth’s description of a seminal passage from his
unfinished philosophical poem The Recluse as ‘a kind of Prospectus of
the design and scope of the whole poem’, thus raises a number of
interesting questions. On the one hand, it epitomises the provisional,
preparatory quality of Romantic writing, interpretable positively in
terms of a Schlegelian poetics of the fragment or sketch (and as an
especially confident form of theoretical self-reflection), or negatively
along the lines of Peacock’s Paper Money Lyrics, which satirise
contemporary poetry, with its over-ambition and dismal record of
completion, as a series of worthless promissory notes. On the other hand, it offers further evidence of what Andrew Piper calls the
Romantic ‘bibliographic imagination’, the saturation of Romantic
aesthetic discourse in the language and logic of book-making,
notwithstanding writers’ problematic relationship to publishers and
deep- seated mistrust of the reading public. My paper will explore these
questions, charting the development of the genre and term, and treating
a wide range of prospectuses and prospectus-like writings from the
period 1770 to 1820.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
David Duff is Professor of English and Research Coordinator for English
Literature in the School of Language & Literature. A graduate of
the University of York, from where he holds a doctorate, he taught in
Poland at the Nicholas Copernicus University of Torun and the University
of Gdansk before joining the staff at Aberdeen. He has also been a
visiting professor at the College of William and Mary in Virginia, USA,
and a guest lecturer at other American and European universities. He is a
founding member of the English Department's Centre for the Novel and a
contributor to the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies. His
professional affiliations include membership of the British Association
of Romantic Studies, the North American Society for the Study of
Romanticism, and the European Society for the Study of English. He is
Chair of the Council for College and University English and a Fellow of
the English Association.
For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com
4 March 2013
When a Narrative Really Sucks: Literature & Vampires
Please join us for the next seminar of Inventions of the Text 2012/13
When a Narrative Really Sucks: A Brief Historical Survey of Vampirism in Culture, Literature, and Film (18th-21st c.)
Dr. Clemens Ruthner
Dr. Clemens Ruthner
Trinity College Dublin
***
Tuesday 12th March 2013
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room
***
Speaker: Dr. Clemens Ruthner, Trinity College Dublin
Vampirism not only thematizes 'undead life', it also sucks the life out of other texts and thus becomes the epitome of intertextuality. This talk will lead you through the different stages of the cultural appropriation of the vampire as viral mask of the Other: from the demonic "proto-vampires" of Antiquity to the spectacular historical cases of vampire mass hysteria in Serbia (1725-32) and their 'media' aftermath, and then further to the first literary texts, until the narrative of vampirism as a secular cultural phantasma is fixated by Stoker's Dracula in 1897, and its current, postmodern format by Anne Rice, not to forget the various 'young adoslecent' versions of vampire who is also used as a trope of immigration lately.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Dr Clemens Ruthner is Assistant Professor of German and European Studies and Director of Research at the School of Languages, Literatures and Cultural Studies of Trinity College, Dublin. His research /publications focus on Austrian literature and culture from the 19th to the 21st century, Central European Studies, constructions of identity and Otherness, imago logy, Imperial and Postcolonial Studies (Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1878-1918) and literary/cultural theory. He is one of the leading vampire experts in German Studies and working on a comprehensive literary and cultural history of the phenomenon in the German-speaking world.
For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com
18 February 2013
Imagined States: Literature and Law
Please join us for the next seminar of Inventions of the Text 2012/13
Imagined States: Literature and Law
Dr. Katherine Baxter
Northumbria University
***
Tuesday 26th February 2013
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room
***
Speaker: Dr. Katherine Baxter, Northumbria University
ABSTRACT
This paper will introduce my current monograph project, Imagined States: Law and Literature during Nigerian Decolonization. This project explores the presentation of the law in popular and canonical literature from and about Nigeria between c.1910 and 1966. I proceed from the observation that law and literature both attempt to delimit the human world in distinct yet similar ways. Laws, in prescribing boundaries to human action, reflect the ideals of the social institutions they intend to uphold. Likewise fiction, whether it endorses or challenges legal and social norms, is ineluctably conditioned by the ideals and ideologies of those institutions. Law and literature thus can be seen as privileged sites of imaginative and ideological construction. By examining how such imaginative constructions play out in both popular and canonical fiction this project offers a new approach to, and an important reconsideration of, late colonialism and decolonization in Nigeria.
The paper will introduce the project as a whole before providing specific examples of the textual analyses I am developing.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Following Dr. Baxter's first degree in English and Hebrew, she was awarded a Ph.D. from the University of Glasgow in July 2003. She then worked for several years in London both as a lecturer and as a cataloguer and curator at the British Library. In 2007 Dr. Baxter was appointed as Research Assistant Professor in Cross-Cultural Studies in English at the University of Hong Kong. She then moved, in 2010, to the United States where she was a lecturer at Stanford University before joining Northumbria University in 2011. Dr. Baxter's work is characterized by my longstanding interest in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary scholarship. British and West African twentieth-century literature form the main focus of my research. She is also interested in literary bilingualism as well as archival issues.
For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com
30 January 2013
Please join us for the sixth
seminar series of Inventions of the
Text
2012/13
Life-writing at the limits: dementia in
contemporary autobiographies and life-
writing projects
***
Wednesday, 13th
February 2013
5:30 – 7:00
pm
Department of
English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room
***
Rebecca Bitenc,
Durham University
Dementia, due to
world-wide increasing incidence rates, has come to the fore of public awareness.
Its alleged loss of self raises a number of ethical and thus social and
political issues. Etymologically denoting a person who is “out of mind”,
dementia today designates a specific syndrome and, together with other mental
disorders, has undergone a process of medicalization, which influences the way
we understand it. At the same time, a growing number of cultural representations
have flooded the literary market – from novels, dramas and films to
autobiographies by care-givers and people with dementia.
This paper will look
at a number of autobiographies by people with early-onset Alzheimer’s as well as
the published output of two arts projects by writers in residence in care homes,
to analyse how these texts and their authors and co-authors negotiate and
challenge the issue of selfhood and its loss in dementia.
About the
speaker:
Rebecca Bitenc is currently reading for a PhD in
English Literature at Durham University. Her thesis on "Losing One's Self:
Dementia in Autobiography, Biography and Fiction" (working title) explores how,
in contemporary literature, the alleged loss of self in dementia is expressed
across different genres - with particular focus on the ethics of literary form.
Her PhD project is funded by the AHRC and supervised by Professor Patricia Waugh
and Professor Corinne Saunders. She completed her M.A. at the
Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, Germany in English, French and Psychology
in January 2011.
Please join us for the sixth seminar series of Inventions of the
Text 2012/13
Life-writing at the limits: dementia in
contemporary autobiographies and life-
writing projects
Rebecca Bitenc, Durham University
Dementia, due to world-wide increasing incidence rates, has come to the fore of public awareness. Its alleged loss of self raises a number of ethical and thus social and political issues. Etymologically denoting a person who is “out of mind”, dementia today designates a specific syndrome and, together with other mental disorders, has undergone a process of medicalization, which influences the way we understand it. At the same time, a growing number of cultural representations have flooded the literary market – from novels, dramas and films to autobiographies by care-givers and people with dementia.
This paper will look at a number of autobiographies by people with early-onset Alzheimer’s as well as the published output of two arts projects by writers in residence in care homes, to analyse how these texts and their authors and co-authors negotiate and challenge the issue of selfhood and its loss in dementia.
About the speaker:
Rebecca Bitenc is currently reading for a PhD in English Literature at Durham University. Her thesis on "Losing One's Self: Dementia in Autobiography, Biography and Fiction" (working title) explores how, in contemporary literature, the alleged loss of self in dementia is expressed across different genres - with particular focus on the ethics of literary form. Her PhD project is funded by the AHRC and supervised by Professor Patricia Waugh and Professor Corinne Saunders. She completed her M.A. at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat Freiburg, Germany in English, French and Psychology in January 2011.
12 January 2013
Literature and Children
Please join us for the fifth seminar of the academic year:
Literature and Children:
Poetry for Play Hours:
Victorian Poets & the Culture of Children's Verse
Professor Kirstie Blair
University of Stirling
***
Wednesday, 23rd January 2013
5:30 – 7:00 pm
Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room
***
Speaker: Professor Kirstie Blair, Stirling University
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Professor Kirstie Blair has just moved to a Chair at the University of Stirling, after working for seven years at the University of Glasgow. She has also recently been employed as a visiting professor by the Armstrong Browning Library in Texas. Professor Blair is the author of two monographs on Victorian poetry, "Form and Faith in Victorian Poetry and Religion", which came out in 2012, and "Victorian Poetry and the Culture of the Heart". She has published a variety of articles and book chapters on Victorian literature, particularly in the fields of poetry and poetics, literature and religion, and literature and medicine.
ABSTRACT
This talk provides an introduction to the new project I am starting, which will consider transatlantic poetry for children in the Victorian period, with particular focus on the involvement of major ‘canonical’ poets – primarily Tennyson, Browning and Longfellow – in writing for a child audience and participating in the emerging publishing culture of children’s literature. I will consider some of the possible directions that this research might take and highlight the peculiar investments of major Victorian writers in poetry for children. The talk concludes with a more in-depth consideration of Tennyson, and a reading of ‘The Brook’, in terms of its ambiguous status as a ‘children’s’ poem.
For more information, find us on
facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog:
inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com
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