#3 Inventions - Seminar for Selected Papers

The 3rd seminar is coming soon (on the coming WEDNESDAY 2 December 5:30-6:30pm, seminar room of Hallgarth House)! This is the Seminar for Selected Papers of Michaelmas Term, and we are delighted to have two speakers!

The first speaker, Dr Clara Dawson is one of our alumni of Durham and also a former convener of Inventions; whereas the second speaker, Abeer Al-Mahdawi is a PhD candidate of Durham!

Please join the seminar and come to support them!

#2 Special Seminar - Professor Patrick Cheney | NOV 26

The second Inventions of the Text event will be a seminar co-arranged with Centre for Poetry and Poetics! 

We are grateful to Centre for Poetry and Poetics and Professor Michael O'Neill for inviting Professor Patrick Cheney (Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Pennsylvania State University) as the speaker of their inaugural seminar. 

The title of his talk is 'Elysian Poetry: A Short History of Immortality, Homer to Heaney'.

* This seminar will be on 26 November 2015 at the Seminar Room of Institute of Advanced Study, Palace Green. All are welcome!

#1 Inaugural Seminar | Speaker: Professor Michael O'Neill | NOV 4

Title: 'Stories Somehow Lengthen': Narrative and Play 

in Beppo and The Witch of Atlas

Date & Time: Nov 4 5:30-6:30pm

Venue: Seminar room, Hallgarth House

1st CALL FOR PAPERS - Michaelmas Term

Abstract · 300 words

Submission · inventionsofthetext@gmail.com
DEADLINE · 15 OCT 2015

• Any chosen topic at any stage of research
• All fields of English Literature / Interdisciplinary
• Theme: ‘Religion, Secularisation, Transcendence’ 
• The theme is a suggested, though encouraged, direction for participants to formulate their paper. It is optional whether you address this theme, lest it is unsuitable for your chosen topic.
• 20 mins individual paper / 25 mins collaborative presentation
• Post-paper Q&A and discussion

Department of English Studies · Durham University

Wednesday afternoon · Date to be confirmed

Inventions 3 - 'Dickens's Nightwalking', Dr Matthew Beaumont (UCL), 19.11.2014, 5.30pm. Hallgarth House

Dr Anthony Howe (Birmingham City University) - Finding Gloucester’s Eyeballs: Keats’s Letters and their Poetry (Wednesday 5th Nov 2014, 5.30pm, Hallgarth House, Department of English)

This paper will ask what it means to make literary critical, as opposed to biographical or other-paraphrastic, use of Keats's letters. I will discuss the generic extensiveness of Keats's epistolary writing -- its writerly fullness -- and the problems of traditional category in this respect. In particular I will consider the losses incurred when we isolate Keats's poetry from the letters into which, in many cases, they were placed. You may wish to (re-) read the short poems 'On the Sea' and 'The Eve of St Mark' in preparation. 

Broadcasting Beckett: Adaptations from the BBC Written Archives Centre Prof. Matthew Feldman 15 Oct 2014, 5:30pm, Hallgarth House, Department of English

Broadcasting Beckett: Adaptations from the BBC Written Archives Centre 

Prof. Matthew Feldman 

15 Oct 2014, 5:30pm, Hallgarth House, Department of English (see attachment)

This paper will reconsider Beckett's relationship with the BBC through recourse to neglected files held at the Written Archives Centre in Caversham. Collectively, these materials - covering a range of aspects concerning Beckett's work for the BBC - including contracting, correspondence, negotiation over content and so on - reveal a far greater engagement with radio broadcasting than has been previously acknowledged. During the crucial years between 1957 and 1962, this not only included his five oft-discussed radio plays, but extended adaptations of most of his major works (including the Trilogy, Waiting for Godot with a narrator (!), and other surprises), debates over musical accompaniment and BBC framing and much more, bearing out Donald McWhinnie's prophetic, internal BBC memorandum from 1957: ‘if he is to write at all in the near future it will be for radio, which has captured his imagination’. While an overview of these materials will be offered, consideration of these key five years will be included insofar as they may have contributed to a change in Beckett's poetics toward 'abstract drama' and writing.

For more information, contact inventionsofthetext@gmail.com.