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

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Tuesday 26th February 2013

5:30 – 7:00 pm

Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room

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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

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

 

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Wednesday, 13th February 2013

5:30 – 7:00 pm

Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room

 

 

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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.

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

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Wednesday, 23rd January 2013

5:30 – 7:00 pm

Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room

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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

Literature and the Secret State

Please join us for the fourth seminar of the academic year:

Literature and the Secret State:

On the Secret State, Government and Propaganda in Literature

Dr. James Smith 

Durham University

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Wednesday, 5th December 2012

5:30 – 7:00 pm

Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room

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Speaker: Dr. James Smith, Durham University

ABSTRACT

Writers have had a long and complicated relationship with the covert arms of the British government: some major authors have been the subjects of state surveillance, others have been employed to undertake secret work, and a few managed to combine both roles at the same time. This is an issue that has come into particular focus over the past decade, with the declassification of a range of previously restricted files from Britain's intelligence and propaganda agencies (mainly covering the period from the early twentieth century through to the early stages of the Cold War). These files have revealed not only the extent of the dossiers compiled on key individuals and organisations, but also other aspects of how the secret state interacted with British culture during the twentieth century, ranging from the censorship of films to the recruitment of authors as covert propagandists.

In this paper, I shall talk about the resources that have recently become available in the National Archives, discuss some of the more interesting documents and issues that have emerged from these files, and speculate on the potential for future research.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

 James Smith is a lecturer in English Studies at Durham, and his book British Writers and MI5 Surveillance, 1930-1960, will be appearing soon.

For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com

Literature & Law in Some Medieval Narratives

Please join us for the third seminar of the academic year:

Literature and Law

in some Medieval Narratives 

Professor Elizabeth Archibald

Durham University

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Wednesday, 21st November2012

5:30 – 7:00 pm

Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room

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Speaker: Professor Elizabeth Archibald, Durham University

ABSTRACT

Many medieval narratives include a legal scene, suggesting that readers/audiences were keenly interested in matters of justice and legal procedure. Often such scenes are connected to adulterous love affairs or to treason, or to both combined, but hunting is also a significant concern. In this talk I will discuss texts including Marie de France’s Lanval and the Middle English version Sir Launfal; the Latin Arthurian romance Historia Meriadoci; the Wife of Bath’s Tale and some analogues; and Malory.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Elizabeth Archibald is Principal of St Cuthbert’s Society and Professor of English; she arrived in Durham from Bristol in September 2012. Her research is interdisciplinary and focuses on reception, particularly in relation to the classical tradition and medieval romance (especially the Arthurian legend); she is also very interested in the interface between literature and social history. Her publications include Apollonius of Tyre: Medieval and Renaissance Themes and Variations (1991); A Companion to Malory (1996), co-edited with A.S.G. Edwards; Incest and the Medieval Imagination (2001); and The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (2009), co-edited with Ad Putter. She is currently working on a study of baths and bathing in the Middle Ages, and co-editing collections of essays on the reception of the Troy story, and on Shakespeare and the Middle Ages. She is the co-editor of the journal Arthurian Literature.

For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com

Literature & Medicine: Where Does It Hurt, Exactly? Medicine, Metaphor, & Speaking to Doctors in the Middle Ages

Please join us for the second seminar of the academic year:

Literature & Medicine: 

Where Does It Hurt, Exactly? 

Medicine, Metaphor, & 

Speaking to Doctors in the Middle 

Ages

Dr. Jamie McKinstry

Durham University

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Wednesday, 7th November2012

5:30 – 7:00 pm

Department of English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room

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Speaker: Dr. Jamie McKinstry, Durham University

ABSTRACT

Medicine and metaphor are undoubtedly intertwined: when we are ill we often employ emotive imagery and appropriate comparisons to express the scale and severity of pain and discomfort to others, or even to understand our own condition.

This paper examines the expression of illness in the Middle Ages and, subsequently, the responses of doctors to their patients. The medical profession was advertised in a way that appealed to real experiences of patients through a combination of emotive, but authoritative, language. Chaucer’s “Physician’s Prologue” explores the power of such language and metaphor in the diagnosis of disease whilst the importance of the suffering, bleeding, breathing body is emphasised in a poem by William Dunbar about the alchemist John Damian. These works highlight the relationship between mind, body and affect and the literary depictions will be compared to medieval medical scholasticism and recent work in the fields of neurobiological dynamics.

The paper then considers the abilities of literature to exaggerate a corporeal state as explored in the Middle English romance of Sir Orfeo and Dunbar’s “Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins.” This discussion will conclude by asking what literature can contribute to medicine, examined
through another poem by Dunbar about a headache. This piece underlines the significance of metaphor, corporeal sensitivity, and physical expression, but also highlights the important relationship between literature and medicine. The medieval works implicitly recognise the crucial dialogue that exists between disciplines and which, here, produces a more organic, accurate impression of human life, illness, and suffering.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

 Dr. Jamie McKinstry holds a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Durham University. His Ph.D., awarded in July 2012, examined the creative uses of memory in Middle English romances. Jamie is a member of the Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Centre for Medical Humanities at Durham and a former Chairman of the postgraduates in the IMRS. His current research is based in medical humanities and focuses on the corporeal experience of ‘depression’ in the Middle Ages. He has presented papers on a wide range of medieval and Renaissance literary topics including memory, the body, elegy, and medieval medicine and has also published in these areas. His most recent article, on memory and trauma in medieval romances, was published in the international BMJ journal Medical Humanities in Autumn 2012.

For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com