After Katrina
Dr Anna Hartnell (Department of English & Humanities) is currently funded by an AHRC Early Career Fellowship, entitled After Katrina: Projecting Racial, Transnational and Environmental Futures Beyond the 'American Century'. The grant runs from September 2013 to February 2015. While undertaking this research project, Anna is maintaining a blog to record her thoughts about the material. Anyone interested in following her work can find the blog here. Tweet Image courtesy of Gilbert Mercier. All Rights...
Colours of Memory
11 July 2014 In July 2014 the Centre for Contemporary Literature will host a conference dedicated to the writing of Geoff Dyer — novelist, essayist, art and photography critic and travel writer. Particular attention will be given to the place of photography and of photographic criticism in Dyer's work. The event is organized by Dr Bianca Leggett. Geoff Dyer will be in attendance throughout the day and for a Q&A session at the end of proceedings. Dyer is an interstitial figure: his blending of memoir, essay and fiction ('creative criticism’) and use of intertextuality and sampling in his writing work together to challenge established generic boundaries and cultural hierarchies. His interests take in everything from film, photography, travel, jazz and Modernist literature to drugs, doughnuts, rave music and the poetics of procrastination. His playful, personal and sometimes meandering style expands our understanding of how criticism relates to its subject, but also amounts to a commentary on the contemporary itself, specifically questions of uncreativity, 'reality hunger' and exhaustion in the information age. This conference aims to bring together scholars with expertise in this important author for the first time, but also to use Dyer’s work as a way of accessing some of the most urgent debates in literary and photographic criticism. The event is also supported by the Centre for Research into the History and Theory of Photography, and by a grant from the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities. For further information email geoffdyerconference2014@gmail.com or follow @gdyerconference on Twitter. PROGRAMME 9.30 Open for Registration 10.00 Welcome 10.10 Keynote Amitava Kumar, Vassar College: Academic Interest 11.00 Coffee 11.20 PANEL 1: This Imaginary Republic A consideration of how we place Dyer in relation to his peers, his precursors and his experiments with genre. Alexander Williamson, Birkbeck Lines of beauty: Cocaine and the English – representations of class, consumerism and drug culture in contemporary British fiction Shreepad Joglekar, Kansas State University Mining the Nonfiction 'Work' of Art Jonathan Gibbs, University of East Anglia But funny: Geoff Dyer and comic writing 1.00 Lunch A video piece entitled Vita Contemplativa by speaker Shreepad Joglekar will be on display. 2.00 PANEL 2: A Way Of Joining In In this panel, speakers discuss the relationship between readers and writers in Dyer's writing, and explore the position of their own work in relation to his books. Elizabeth Minkel, University College London Transformative Works James Hilton, freelance writer Geoff Dyer and the Laws...
Flying
30 May 2014 School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London Supported by the Feminist Review Trust Keynote: Victoria Hesford (SUNY Stony Brook University), author of Feeling Women’s Liberation (Duke UP, 2013) Kate Millett became an iconic figure of second wave feminism after the publication of Sexual Politics in 1970. However, arguably, Millett has since largely disappeared from both the public eye and contemporary feminism. In aiming to reflect on/account for/address/redress some of this silence, this conference is compelled on the one hand, by recent calls in feminism to re-engage with the second wave (see Hemmings’ Why Stories Matter, Duke, 2011) and to re-visit foundational feminist texts (see Merck and Sanford’s Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex, Palgrave, 2010). The conference thus aims to: consider new frameworks for approaching Millett’s past or ongoing work; interrogate the politics and possibilities of the second wave; explore the politics of memory, forgetting, and citation in feminism; critically reflect on the potential difficulties of some of Millett’s past work travelling into the present; and to consider whether and how (despite her ongoing feminist work) Millett might be produced as 'untimely' in the feminist present. The conference invites proposals for individual papers, panels, or artistic responses from any discipline and theoretical perspective. Submissions are welcome from students, activists, artists, academics, and unaffiliated researchers. Please send a title and 300 word abstract for a 20 minute paper along with your name, affiliation (if applicable), and 100 word bibliography to s.mcbean@bbk.ac.uk by 28 February 2013. The conference is organized by Dr Sam McBean (Birkbeck, University of London) and is being supported by the Feminist Review Trust. Select papers will be sought for publication as part of an edited collection. For further information please email Sam at s.mcbean@bbk.ac.uk More information can be found on the conference website: flyingkatemillettconference.wordpress.com Tweet Image by Joel Polowin under a CC BY-NC-ND...
Invisible Circus
21st and 22nd March 2014 School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London Invisible Circus is the world's first academic conference dedicated to the writing of Jennifer Egan. Winner of multiple awards, including the 2011 Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction for the novel A Visit from the Goon Squad, Egan has developed a distinguished body of writing since the publication of her first book, the story collection Emerald City in 1995. Alongside her four major novels Egan has published a substantial amount of non-fiction writing, and won multiple awards for her journalism. The conference will take place on Saturday 22nd March 2014, with a screening of The Sopranos (a series that Jennifer Egan cites as inspiration for A Visit from the Goon Squad) to take place on Friday 21st March. In addition there will be a separate event on Saturday evening, when Jennifer Egan will read from new work. The screening and Saturday conference are free to attend but registration is compulsory; the Saturday evening reading is a separate ticketed event. Further details are on the programme below. Please email invisiblecircus2014@gmail.com for further information, or follow @jeganconference on twitter. The conference is supported by Birkbeck's Centre for Contemporary Literature, the University of Birmingham, and Constable & Robinson. The Saturday evening event, Jennifer Egan in conversation with Professor Sarah Churchwell, has been jointly organised with the Institute of English Studies and Constable & Robinson. Programme Friday 21st March 2014 Free to attend, but advanced registration compulsory. Email: invisiblecircus2014@gmail.com Room B20, Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street 18.00 – 20.00 Screening of The Sopranos (a selection) with introduction by Jennifer Egan, in conversation with Richard House, author of The Kills Saturday 22nd March 2014 Free to attend, but advanced registration compulsory. Email: invisiblecircus2014@gmail.com Room B35, Birkbeck Main Building, Malet Street 09.00 – 09.30: Registration 09.30 – 10.30: Keynote Dr Stephen J Burn (University of Glasgow), “An Echo. Or an Outline”: Time and Design in Egan’s Post-Postmodern Fiction 10.30 – 11.50: Panel 1: “Stories that Cycle” Valerie O’Riordan (University of Manchester), Jennifer Egan's A Visit From The Goon Squad: Time as a Structuring Device in the Short Story Cycle Mary Holland (SUNY), Technology, Time and Realism in Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and “Black Box” Adam Kelly (University of York), Fiction in an Age of Artifice: Jennifer Egan’s New Sincerity Alicia J. Rouverol (University of Manchester), A Visit from the Goon Squad, Altermodernism, and the Literary Experiment 11.50 – 12.10: Break 12.10 – 13.30: Panel 2: “Looking at You” Rachael McLennan (University of East Anglia), Bird-Watching: Age and Ageing in Invisible Circus and A Visit from the Goon Squad Nathalie Aghoro...
Digital Metaphors
The December issue of our Birkbeck-run open access journal on 21st-century literature and literary criticism, Alluvium, featured original articles by leading international scholars researching the function of digital metaphors in the 21st century. The special issue on "Digital Metaphors" was guest edited by former Birkbeck PhD student Dr Zara Dinnen, who now works as Lecturer in Modern & Contemporary Literature at the University of Birmingham. As Zara writes in her Editor's Introduction: Thinking of computing as a substantiated metaphor for a human-machine interaction pervades the way we talk about digital culture. Most particularly in the way we think of computers as sentient — however casually. We often speak of computers as acting independently from our commands, and frequently we think of them ‘wanting’ things, ‘manipulating’ culture, or ourselves. In addition to Zara's Editor's Introduction, this issue features articles on women's labour and the history of computing by Birkbeck's own Sophie Jones, the proliferation of metaphors of computers as a sentient metaphor by Daniel Rourke (Goldsmiths) and spatial metaphors in virtual game environments by Rob Gallagher (Concordia). Tweet Image by Christian under a CC BY-NC-ND...
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