Conference Report: Rupture, Crisis, Transformation
Dec09

Conference Report: Rupture, Crisis, Transformation

by Pippa Eldridge and Alex Williamson Rupture, Crisis, Transformation: New Directions in US Studies at the End of the American Century, Birkbeck, 22 November 2014 Listen to the conference podcasts here. Has the American exceptionalist road-trip hit a dead-end, or is it merely at a crossroads? This was one of the key questions posed at Birkbeck’s Centre for Contemporary Literature’s recent conference, Rupture, Crisis, Transformation. At a conference rich with imagery of twenty-first-century America as a debased, petrochemical wasteland, traversed by the indefinitely disenfranchised, the problematic spectre of 'disaster tourism' loomed large. Still, while many of the papers uncovered a paradoxical, melancholic attachment to life lived under the panopticon of American power, they did not simply dwell at the site of loss. Nor was the exposure of America's geo-political and social flaws the focus of the day. Rather, the very 'ongoingness' of narrative, and the resilience and adaptability of ‘networks of feeling’ in the face of disaster, degradation and precarity, bolstered a fragile optimism. Or perhaps, with a nod to Lauren Berlant, something more akin to a kind pessimism.    Professor Wai Chee Dimock Image credit: Alex Williamson   In the opening keynote address, Professor Wai Chee Dimock (Yale University) persuasively argued that cultural networks of people 'brought low' by defeat, poverty and marginalisation might successfully transcend territorial and sovereign boundaries, to generate global affective networks. In endeavouring to reclaim Faulkner – long considered part of the American literary elite – as a regional and trans-Pacific writer, Professor Dimock intimated that the American literary field, whilst heavily disciplined dialectically, has never been watertight or entirely unified. Instead, it represents a domain open to renegotiation, connected by 'intersecting pathways continually modified by local inflections'. Peace and reconciliation might remain only theoretical in Faulkner's domain, but his exposure of resilient, low-bar but non-trivial emotional networks provides a hopeful counterpoint to displacement, destitution and loss. And, as Professor Dimock concluded, 'if people are too successful for too long, something dries up'; disaster has long been considered generative. The notion that humiliation might offer an antidote to the hubris of exceptionalism was examined in several of the papers. Delivering her paper on HBO's 'anti-humanist' True Detective against the backdrop of wide-angle shots of oozing refineries and lifeless genuflecting bodies, Professor Georgiana Banita (University of Bamberg) considered the series' environmental humbling and existential debasement as evidence of a 'nation confronting the limits of its own making.' By languishing in the 'petromelancholia' of the loss of energetic supremacy and the integrity of illusions, True Detective refuses to convert humiliation into a new triumphalism. Nevertheless, Professor Banita suggested that its sordid focus on decay might represent...

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Supposedly Fun Things
Dec09

Supposedly Fun Things

Supposedly Fun Things: A Colloquium on the Writing of David Foster Wallace 7th February 2015 Birkbeck, University of London Organisers: Dr Antonio Venezia and Xavier Marco del Pont Presentations from: Simon de Bourcier, Xavier Marco Del Pont, Martin Eve, Jen Glennon, Clare Hayes-Brady, Edward Jackson, Daniel Mattingly, Erin Reilly, Joel Roberts, Matt Sangster, Tony Venezia, Iain Williams Respondent: Professor Geoff Ward (Homerton, Cambridge; presenter of Radio 4 documentary on DFW, Endnotes) Following his death in 2008, David Foster Wallace's literary reputation has been firmly consolidated. We can now talk about a distinct sub-discipline called Wallace Studies as evidenced by the growing number of books, conferences, and journal articles on the writer, and enhanced by the publication of a posthumous novel and the opening up of an archive of his papers at the Harry Ransom Centre. Wallace's writing, both fiction and non-fiction, has helped to map the critical territory for debates on contemporary literature that have been taking place in both academic and non-academic settings. This colloquium will contribute to these ongoing conversations. We are pleased to present a series of short presentations covering Wallace's novels, short stories, journalism, and readers. Professor Geoff Ward (Homerton College, Cambridge) will act as respondent. Attendance free. Registration essential. Refreshments possibly. For further information contact Tony and Xavier at: infinite.reading@outlook.com    Tweet   Banner image by Theen Moy under a CC BY-NC-SA...

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Conference Report: Stage the Future
Dec08

Conference Report: Stage the Future

by Dr Christos Callow Jr. Stage the Future: the first conference on science fiction theatre took place in Egham, UK, on April 26-27, 2014, sponsored by the English Department of Royal Holloway and the Centre for Contemporary Literature in Birkbeck’s School of Arts. I’m excited to announce that due to its success, we’re currently planning a second Stage the Future in the US; you can find our more about the conference at the Stage the Future website, the conference page on facebook or on twitter (@stagethefuture) to keep up-to-date. Stage the Future 2014 was an unprecedented gathering of sf and theatre academics, writers, actors and directors; there was a mix of performances, video presentations and talks. The first day started with an enthusiastic keynote speech by classicist and awarded sf critic Dr. Nick Lowe who focused on the history of sf theatre and made references to Ken Campbell’s Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool, the plays of Ray Bradbury and Ralph Willingham’s study Science Fiction and the Theatre (1994). The first panel had a mostly historical approach too; Dr. Claire Kenward talked about the history of lunar exploration in English theatre, covering a period of time from 1590 to 1905, Glyn Morgan on Noel Coward’s alternate history 1946 play Peace in Our Time and Monica Cross on the jukebox musical Return to the Forbidden Planet based on Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. Next, Brittany Reid spoke on Inflatable Frankenstein, Radiohole’s stage adaptation of Frankenstein, Christina Scholz spoke on the film Deep State, directed by Karen Mirza and Bradb Butler and written by China Miéville, in the context of Augusto Boal's “Theatre of the Oppressed”, and Jo L. Walton gave a paper on Chris Goode’s plays Hippo World Guest Book and Monkey Bars. Kelley Holley, the literary manager of the Science Fiction Theatre Company in Boston, started the next panel, giving a paper on sf theatre and memory. John Hudson’s paper was on writing sf for the stage, using Bella Poynton’s work as an example (to quote twitter, Glyn Morgan tweeted: “Fascinating parallels between Shakespeare's career and Bella Poynton's Models of Space and Time.”) The panel concluded with a talk by Tom Hunter, director of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, who presented his theory of Replicant Theatre, arguing that all theatre is sf since theatre is “a man in space.” The first day’s final panel started with Carol Steward’s skype presentation on theatre monsters and the theatrical tradition of Japan, including the visually rich work of contemporary theatre-maker Yukio Ninagawa, followed by Whole Hog Theatre’s talk on their stage adaptation of Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke (reminding us all that nothing is...

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Conference Report: Transitions 5
Dec04

Conference Report: Transitions 5

by Jenna Johnston In its 5th year, the Transitions symposium is a unique element of The London International Comics Festival—Comica. As Paul Gravett, one of the Directors of Comica, noted in his introduction, there is no other conference of this kind that is free to attend, and the scale, breadth and distinction of content all highlight what a special event this is. The only problem was that this very diversity and abundance of panels to choose from presented the agonizing task of deciding between the events. As I learned in the closing comments and from the #transitions5 Twitter feed, I missed the quote of the day: 'Everyone likes a bit of tentacled porn'. Any of my conjecture on the context only reinforces my disappointment for all the panels I missed and so unfortunately I cannot do credit to the abundance and depth of content of the day. Fortunately, for the keynote speakers there was no difficult timetabling decision to be made and Dr Jason Dittmer and Dr Antonio Lázaro Reboll were as fascinating as they were diverse in their subject matter. This became a theme of the day in the extraordinary range of disciplines, backgrounds and focus of each event and speaker. They both drew attention to the fact that comics are not their primary field, confirming the way that comics have infiltrated so many disciplines and become an increasingly important branch of enquiry across the academic and cultural spectrum. This evolution could be seen not only in the topics and speakers but also in the audience and the range of media discussed at the conference. These included presentations of web comics, hypercomics installations and commercial utilisation in infocomics. Those attending the conference had backgrounds in illustration, production, technology and marketing as well as, of course, comics fandom. As well as the heterogeneity, there were also fortuitous connections and patterns that emerged throughout the day. Beginning with Jason Dittmer’s opening keynote, he raised the discussion of comics as assemblages, citing Joseph Cornell’s sculptural boxes in the early twentieth century. Particularly vivid was the detail that some of these works were created as gifts for people whose friendship Cornell hoped to attain. This reinforced the fundamental temporal dimension in the anticipation of a relationship still to come, as well as the human relationships that emerge from the material and visual. Dittmer surmised from this that ‘You’re transformed by the things and objects you’re in assemblage with’. These projected meanings and fluid notions of time were a key thread across the series of discussions. This thread was revisited in the Comics and Mental Health panel in the assemblage of the personal,...

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Andrea Brady Symposium
Dec01

Andrea Brady Symposium

13 December 2014 "A copia of words": On Andrea Brady A symposium supported by the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at Birkbeck, University of London Venue: Keynes Library, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD Keynote speaker: Professor Carol Watts (Birkbeck) The symposium will be followed by a reading by Andrea Brady. In one of the prose sections of her 2012 book, Mutability, Andrea Brady notes her surprise when her first child, Ayla’s milk teeth just ‘happened’, arriving along with ‘a copia of words’. Ayla’s new, inventive and exploratory babblings tumble out with abundance or ‘plenty’ as the Latin copia has it. Brady is now surrounded by Ayla’s restlessly evolving reach for words. In his 1512 De copia, Erasmus describes copia as a form of rhetorical exercise in eloquence, a playful gymnastics producing linguistic plenitude, ‘surging along like a golden river, with thoughts and words pouring out in rich abundance.’ The wordcopia – plenty, from copis, well supplied – also contains within itself opis, meaning wealth, power or resources. In a rich and diverse poetic career, Brady has produced her own ‘copia of words’, not as mechanical exercise, but as a rhetorically and stylistically challenging body of chapbooks, collections and long sequences characterised by restless interrogation of wealth, excess, power and resources; the shadowy opis immanent in the language of capitalism and abundance. Always inventive, always interrogative, Brady’s poems come in a variety of forms, but all of her work tries to capture that poetic space which, as she puts it in a piece on Mutability, holds ‘against the failed and limited reality which the bounty of language constitutes.’ Like the metaphysical poets whose words dapple her work, Brady’s intellectually rigorous poems mine all the resources of language and poetic technique to bear lyric witness and to provide the means by which to comprehend, constitute and critique the material and ideological forces of our contemporary world and its cultural industries. Symposium Schedule 9:15 – 9:45 Arrival and coffee 9:45 – 10:00 Welcome remarks 10:00 -11:00 Plenary: Professor Carol Watts 11:00 – 11:15 Coffee 11:15 – 12:45 Panel 1 Chair: Gareth Farmer (Bedfordshire) ·      Kristin Grogan (Oxford): ‘“Into which it all disintegrates”: History, Preservation, and Destruction in Wildfire' ·      Dan Eltringham (Birkbeck): ‘Law promethean […] / bound not binding': freedom and constraint in Wildfire and Liberties' ·      El Careless (Sussex): The “milky dialectic” of Andrea Brady’s Mutability 12:45 – 1:45 Lunch (supplied by individuals) 1:45 – 3:15 Panel 2 Chair: Kristin Grogan (Oxford) ·      Jennifer Cooke (Loughborough) ‘Poetry and Knowledge (2): Andrea Brady’s Mutability: Scripts for Infancy' ·      Robin Purves (Central Lancashire) ‘Delivered from prose: on Andrea Brady’s Mutability' ·      Josh Robinson (Cardiff): ‘The Threshold of Excess’ 3:15 – 3:30 Coffee 3:30 – 5:00...

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