Organic Systems: CHASE workshops
CHASE – the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts in South-East England – is an AHRC funding body which provides funding for events hosted at its member institutions, directed at the enhancement of skills and scholarship of postgraduate research students. Birkbeck and Goldsmiths, both colleges of the University of London and members of CHASE, have collaborated to put together a series of workshops for PGR students, around the theme: Organic Systems: Science Fiction & Ecology Today. The title draws on the work already done by the London Science Fiction Research Community, a PGR-led group based primarily at Birkbeck who have also played an important role in advising on this new series of CHASE workshops. The four workshops are scheduled as follows (all dates are 2019): Thursday 2 May: SF and Critical Ecologies (Goldsmiths) Thursday 23 May: SF and Ecology on Screen (Birkbeck) Thursday 4 July: Ecologies of Gender (Birkbeck) Thursday 12 September: Science Fiction/Fiction Science (Science Museum) The programme is intended for doctoral students, and priority will be given to those studying at institutions that are members of the CHASE consortium. If space allows, then other scholars and members of the public will also be welcome. Please register here on the CHASE website. Blog reports on each event will be posted here on the Centre for Contemporary Literature website. There follows a more detailed description of the series, including the current list of speakers and timings. * This series of four CHASE training events will explore the relation between science fiction (SF) and ecology as the nexus of an emergent set of interdisciplinary research interests. Much recent research and theory has pointed to the complementary nature of these two prominent areas of contemporary thought, often highlighting the creative and critical power of the science-fictional imagination for addressing ecological questions and concerns that are necessarily difficult to think within established epistemological frameworks – by virtue of their novelty, futurity and scales. These same factors mean that, despite a growing body of relevant work emerging in particular in critical science fiction studies and what have been called environmental humanities and posthumanities, there remains a shortage of obvious methodological resources and training for research students working at or wanting to engage in this area of crossover. Each event will comprise (1) a dedicated training session for PGR students, which will include practical components (e.g. on accessing archives, applying for fellowships, or discussion of the experience of research and issues arising from it), (2) a roundtable event with expert speakers on a particular theme, and (3) a semi-formal reception to promote the formation of collaborations and networks. Dates (all 2019), themes and venues for the four...
Nocturnes
The Centre for Contemporary Literature is glad to announce that a new MA student-led reading group called Nocturnes is to start this January. It will be held on four dates (listed below) during Spring term 2019. Nocturnes will be hosted by Orla Cubitt, a second-year, part-time student on the MA Contemporary Literature and Culture, and Azad Ashim who is a first year, part-time student on the MA Creative and Critical Writing. The theme broadly connecting the selected texts is Contemporary Traumas, and covers issues including isolation, war, race and loss. This group is open to MA students across the Arts and Humanities programmes so will benefit from a broad range of student voices beyond our individual seminar groups. We think this will be a really good opportunity to meet students from other courses and to share ideas and learning. Please find the dates and texts listed below. All are to be held on Mondays at 7pm-8pm and with only two meetings either side of reading week, has been mindful of existing course loads. Mon 21st Jan: Bluets by Maggie Nelson Mon 4th Feb: The Corpse Exhibition by Hassan Blassim Mon 25th Feb: Exit West by Moshin Hamid Mon 11th March: A Little Dust on the Eyes by Minoli Salgado Week One on Monday 21st Jan will be held in Room 218, 43 Gordon Square. Locations for the following dates are TBC. For a PDF of Week Two's short story 'The Corpse Exhibition', please contact the organizers at: orla.cubitt@yahoo.co.uk. We hope to see you there! Best wishes, Orla and Azad. Image by Rory MacLeod, used under a CC BY 2.0...
Transitions 8
Saturday 10th November 2018 Main Building, Malet Street Birkbeck, University of London The Centre for Contemporary Literature is delighted to announce the programme for Transitions 8: our eighth symposium dedicated to comics and graphic narrative. Details follow. They can all be viewed as a PDF here. * Transitions was originally conceived and launched by Tony Venezia in 2010, while writing his PhD at Birkbeck. The symposium is organised with support from the Centre for Contemporary Literature and the Department of English and Humanities. Since 2010, Transitions has become an important fixture in the landscape of UK comics studies, and increasingly also attracts participants from further afield. Our aim has been to maintain the spirit of inclusivity and support for emerging research that informed the original ethos of this event. After a brief absence in 2017, the current team: Hallvard Haug (Birkbeck), Nina Mickwitz (University of the Arts London) and John Miers (Kingston) are pleased to welcome you to Transitions 8. We are also delighted to welcome Dr. Maggie Gray (Kingston), author of Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance and Dissent (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) as this year’s keynote speaker. You will need to make your own arrangements for refreshments and food during the day, but beyond the coffee shop just inside the Torrington Square entrance to the building, there are also various shops and cafes in the close vicinity of Birkbeck. Thanks to the generosity of the Centre for Contemporary Literature there will be a small wine reception at the end of the day, as per tradition. This event is free of charge and open to all, but in order to gauge numbers we ask that you register your attendance in advance, using this link at EventBrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/transitions-8-new-directions-in-comics-studiestickets-50783275143 TRANSITIONS 8 PROGRAMME 9.30 – 10.00 Registration 10.00 – 10.20 (B20) Brief Welcomes Joe Brooker and Hallvard Haug (Birkbeck) 10.20 -11.20 Keynote by Dr. Maggie Gray (Kingston) + Q&A. Chair: John Miers. Break 10 minutes 11.30am – 1.00pm PANELS 1A AND 1B 1A Speculative fictions (532) Chair: Joe Sutliff Sanders Barbara Chamberlin (University of Brighton): ‘What Lurks Beneath: the spectral reader and the witch in comics’ Kevin Hoffin (Birmingham City University): ‘Magick as Transgression through DC/Vertigo’s “John Constantine”: An ultra-realist approach to the discussion of comics as cultural criminology’ Corinna Lenhardt (University of Münster): ‘The Final Frontier: Futurism and survivance in Indigenous sci-fi comic book stories’ 1B Maternity and comics (B20) Chair: Nicola Streeten Roundtable discussion convened by Sarah Lightman (Birkbeck). Speakers to include: Camille Aubry (Toddler Moments, A Journey to Motherhood); Francesca Cassaveti (The Most Natural Thing In The World); Dr Isabel Davis (Birkbeck) and Anna Burel (Conceiving Histories); Dr Hattie...
Sublime Cognition
Sublime Cognition: Science Fiction & Metaphysics Friday 14th – Saturday 15th September 2018 School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square The Centre for Contemporary Literature is glad to be supporting the London Science Fiction Research Community’s Sublime Cognition conference, taking place 14–15 September at 43 Gordon Square, London. The conference will explore science fiction’s lost history of engagement with the mythical, magical and mystical, via papers and discussion panels featuring nearly 40 speakers. There will be keynote addresses from Roger Luckhurst and Helen De Cruz, and a roundtable discussion featuring SF authors Jeff Noon, Justina Robson and Fiona Moore. The programme is now available for viewing here. Please go here to register. What follows is a fuller description of the conference theme and programme. * Many SF critics have understood science fiction to be specifically guided by a rational empiricist epistemology, and have thus disregarded the important presence of magical, religious, spiritual and metaphysical phenomena in science fiction. Deploying the broad catch-all of ‘metaphysics’, this conference will explore SF’s lost history of engagement with the mythical and mystical. Central areas of focus will include an assessment of what role (if any) metaphysical phenomena have played in science fiction, and to what degree SF can be distanced from the spiritual, supernatural and numinous concerns of other literatures of the fantastic. Assessing SF’s complex relationship with the metaphysical opens into many other productive areas of inquiry as well: How can science fictional texts help us understand broader cultural processes of knowledge formation and paradigm shift? To what degree does SF act as a protected space for ideas that have been proposed within empiricist frameworks, but disproved and/or rejected by established scientific networks? In what way have references to religious cultures and institutions been used to reinforce or undermine normative gender roles in SF texts? How do treatments of metaphysical phenomena in Western SF differ from those which originate in other areas of the globe? How important are the symbols, tropes and imagery of an array of global religious traditions to the quality of enchantment that is as vital to SF as any other fantastic genre? The conference will feature keynote addresses by Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck) and Helen de Cruz (Oxford Brookes), as well as a roundtable with authors Justina Robson, Jeff Noon and Fiona Moore (Royal Holloway), moderated by Jim Clarke (Coventry) Conference Organisers: Rhodri Davies (PhD, Birkbeck), Aren Roukema (PhD, Birkbeck), Francis Gene-Rowe (PhD, Royal Holloway) Schedule: Friday 14th September 9.30 – 10.00 Registration 10.00 – 10.15 Conference Introduction 10.15 – 11.15 Keynote 1 (Roger Luckhurst) 11.15 – 11.30 Break 11.30 – 12.30 Parallel Panels 1 12.30 – 13.30 Lunch 13.30 – 14.30 Parallel Panels 2 14.30 – 15.30 Parallel Panels 3 15.30 –...
Call For Papers: Transitions 8
CALL FOR PAPERS: TRANSITIONS 8 – new directions in comics studies 2018 Birkbeck, University of London Saturday 10th November 2018 After a year’s hiatus we are delighted to announce this call for papers for the interdisciplinary Transitions 2018 symposium. Originally convened by PhD students in 2010, Transitions at Birkbeck is a platform for emerging research that is free to attend and participate in. This event is focused towards postgraduate and early career speakers, and usually draws a diverse crowd of both new and more established researchers, as well as creators, aficionados and other interested parties. Our aim is to build connections between comics scholars working in diverse academic departments and contexts, to provide a platform for productive debate, and to create a space from which further collaborations can emerge. Keynote speaker: Dr Maggie Gray (Kingston University, London), author of Alan Moore, Out from the Underground: Cartooning, Performance, and Dissent (Palgrave 2017) Respondent: Professor Roger Sabin (University of the Arts London) Rather than adopting a narrow theme, the shape and identity of the programme will emerge from the submitted papers. We thus welcome abstracts for 20-minute papers, or pre-constituted panels of three, on topics including (but not limited to): Comics, comix, comic strips, graphic novels, manga, manhwa, bande dessinée Superheroes, adventure, war, horror, fantasy, crime, romance, humour & other genres; documentary/historical/journalistic comics, autobiographical/biographical modes , graphic medicine Politics of representation in comics, formal approaches, transgressive comics, educational and didactic comics, comics for young adults & children Readers and fandoms, creators, comics & the law, publishing histories, web-comics & comics exhibitions, transnational circulation, political economy of comics You can apply by email to transitionssymposium@gmail.com. Please attach your abstract of 250-300 words plus a short biographical note (preferably as a Word document), indicating ‘abstract’ in the email subject line and your name in the file’s title. The deadline for submissions is Friday August 24th 2018. We aim to notify applicants by Monday September 17th. With best wishes, The Transition Team Image from Terry McCombs, used under a CC BY-NC 2.0...
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