Critical Solace
Nov29

Critical Solace

5 December 2016 6pm-7:30 Room 103, 28 Russell Square The Centre for Contemporary Literature is delighted to welcome David James to give a special visiting lecture entitled 'Critical Solace'. The talk relates to work that David has recently been undertaking into the consolotary powers of literature, funded by a Leverhulme Research Prize. After his talk, there will be a opportunity to ask questions and discuss the issues raised by his recent work. David James is Reader in Modern & Contemporary Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. He is the author of Contemporary British Fiction and the Artistry of Space: Style, Landscape, Perception (London: Continuum, 2008), Modernist Futures: Innovation and Inheritance in the Contemporary Novel (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Discrepant Solace: Contemporary Writing and the Work of Consolation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). He has acted as editor of The Legacies of Modernism: Historicising Postwar and Contemporary Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), Andrea Levy: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, co-edited with Jeanette Baxter (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), The Cambridge Companion to British Fiction since 1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), and Modernism and Close Reading (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming).     Image by Shawn Nystrand, used under a CC BY-SA 2.0...

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Book Launch: Contemporary Writers
Nov29

Book Launch: Contemporary Writers

8 December 2016 6:30-9pm, Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square The Centre for Contemporary Literature is glad to announce a book launch for three volumes in the series Contemporary Writers, published by Gylphi under the general editorship of Dr Sarah Dillon (University of Cambridge). Gylphi is launching three brand-new titles in the Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays series this winter: Adam Roberts: Critical Essays (edited by Christos Callow Jr. and Anna McFarlane), Rupert Thomson: Critical Essays (edited by Rebecca Pohl and Christopher Vardy) and Tom McCarthy: Critical Essays (edited by Dennis Duncan). We would be delighted if you would join us on 8th December 2016 at the Keynes Library, Birkbeck for drinks to celebrate with the editors and contributors, as well as the three featured novelists themselves. The event will also feature a prize raffle, with Gylphi books to be won, and proceeds going to English PEN. Book your free place at the event here. Click here for a poster for this event, and here for more information about Gylphi's book series....

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Online access to Birkbeck’s Contemporary research
Nov25

Online access to Birkbeck’s Contemporary research

Birkbeck Institutional Research Online (BIROn) is a repository of research by staff, hosted by our college library. Staff are strongly encouraged to provide the metadata (citation details) for their publications, which can be searched from here. In many cases, staff have also uploaded the full text (prior to typesetting) of their research. Therefore, much of our recent research in the Contemporary field can be accessed online from anywhere in the world, either via open access or via an initial request for a copy which will be automatically processed by the library. If you are interested in the research that staff have been doing in this field, try searching BIROn via staff names or search via our Department. Here are just a few examples: Caroline Edwards on Sam Taylor – an example of Caroline's work on temporality on contemporary fiction. Heike Bauer on Alison Bechdel – open access to an article about the celebrated graphic memoirist. Mpalive Msiska on Bernadine Evaristo – request a copy of this article about transcultural identity in Black British writing. Roger Luckhurst on architecture and utopia – you can request a copy of this interdisciplinary article via that page. Martin Paul Eve on divergent versions of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas – open access to an article which received coverage in the national press. Esther Leslie on Marxist criticism – open access to a wide-ranging series of reflections on intellectual history. Grace Halden on Pretty Little Liars – request a copy of an essay on this teen fiction series. Mark Blacklock on J.G. Ballard – request a copy of this reading prompted by the film adaptation of Ballard's work. Joseph Brooker on David Peace – request a copy of this essay on a novel that looks back at the Miners' Strike of 1984-5. An entire new monograph of contemporary scholarship is also available for reading via this BIROn link: Martin Paul Eve's book Literature Against Criticism (2016).   Image by Paul Stainthorp, used under a CC BY-SA 2.0...

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