Monthly Archives: May 2016

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Cinema Screening: Michael Crichton’s COMA – Wednesday 11th May

Four films exploring our darkest fears about objectification, fragmentation and intersection

Session 1:

Michael Crichton’s COMA (1978)

Weds 11 May, 6pm, Birkbeck Cinema

All welcome, no registration, admission free

The film will be introduced by Lisa Mullen and notes will be provided.

Review of the film:

“Crichton’s excellent adaptation of Robin Cook’s novel is one of the most intelligent sci-fi thrillers in years. Bujold is the doctor who, after a series of mysterious and fatal mishaps with patients going into coma for no clear reason, begins to suspect that something evil is being covered up at the hospital. A simple enough story, but one told in such chilling fashion that visitors to hospitals will never feel the same again. Careful to establish an authentic atmosphere, Crichton only slowly lets events spiral off into nightmarish Hitchcockian fantasy, while the fact that nobody will believe Bujold, attributing her suspicions to female hysteria, only serves to point up the patriarchal nature of the medical profession. See it and worry.”

– Geoff Andrew, Time Out

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18th Century Reading Group: Criminal Conversations 17th May 2016

Criminal Conversations

The third session of the London 18th-century postgraduate reading group on the theme ‘Resentment and Regard’ will be at 12.30 on Tuesday 17 May in Room 112, School of Arts, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H OPD.

‘Conjugal infidelity is become so general that is hardly considered as criminal; especially in the fashionable world […] this publication may perhaps effect what the law cannot: the transactions of the adulterer and the adulteress will, by being thus publickally circulated, preserve others from the like crimes, from the fear of shame, when the fear of punishment may have but little force’

Trials for Adultery, or, the History of Divorces (1779)

‘Definite rules can never apply to indefinite circumstances’

The Wrongs of Woman (1798)

‘Criminal conversation’ – a writ of trespass enabling a husband to sue his former wife’s lover for compensation – generated a body of literature which explored and exploited a conflicted relationship between sex and discourse, fact and fiction, right and freedom. This week’s reading, selected by Marianne Brooker (English & Humanities, Birkbeck),  presents two divergent responses to this aspect of tort law in the 1790s.

We will be discussing:

  • ‘Crim. Con. A Narrative of a Late Trial […] To which is Subjoined a Poetical Descant on Modern Incontinency; or, The Mysteries of Coaching Developed’ (1796), available from ECCO here https://goo.gl/hINh98 (pdf available on request).
  • Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman: or, Maria, A Fragment (1798), available from the LSE Digital Library http://goo.gl/xkfnhb (vol. I) and http://goo.gl/Qr9fj6 (vol. II). We’ll focus the editor’s and author’s prefaces in volume one, and then on volume two, particularly passages at pp. 1, 28-69, 76-79, 81, 91, 112-128, 143-167.
  • Tilottama Rajan’s ‘Whose Text? Godwin’s Editing of Mary Wollstonecraft’s The Wrongs of Woman’, in her Romantic Narrative: Shelley, Hays, Godwin, Wollstonecraft (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2010), pp. 174-214. Please get in touch with the organisers for a pdf of this chapter.

Participants are also welcome (but not required) to browse contemporary trial reports and bring along extracts to read and consider.

Topics for discussion might include: the civil and criminal, public and private; crime and punishment; speculation, observation and voyeurism; representation, advocacy, ventriloquism; uses and abuses of silence and eloquence; omission and excess; suffering and reparation; alienation and affection; participation and exclusion; textuality, typography and embodiment; sexuality, seduction and repulsion; epistolarity and the vehicular; influence and authority; curiosity and gratification.

For a pdf of Rajan’s chapter  – and of ‘Crim. Con.’, if you cannot access the pamphlet online through an institution – please contact the organisers, Robert Stearn (rstear01@mail.bbk.ac.uk) and James Morland (james.morland@kcl.ac.uk).

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Discovery Early Career Researcher Award – Western Sydney University (WSU) Deadline 12th May 2016

Call for Expressions of Interest:
Discovery Early Career Researcher Award applications in

Cultural and Social Research Institute for Culture and Society

The Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) within Western Sydney University (WSU) was launched in 2012. ICS is a major national and international Institute for the pursuit of engaged interdisciplinary cultural and social research. Rated 5 (“well above world standard”) for Cultural Studies and 4 in Human Geography (“above world standard”), in the 2015 Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA <http://www.arc.gov.au/excellence-research-australia>) rankings, the Institute coordinates interdisciplinary cultural research across the humanities and social sciences and connects Australian cultural and social research to relevant research internationally, particularly in Asia.

With the continuation of the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) scheme in 2018 (see: http://www.arc.gov.au/discovery-early-career-researcher-award), ICS is investing in leading cultural and social researchers from Australia and overseas by supporting innovative and outstanding DECRA proposals from applicants who will be 4 to 5 years post-PhD at March 2017.

ICS Research Program

ICS’s research program is currently organised into the following areas:

– Cities and Economies <http://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/research/program/cities_and_economies>

*         Diversity and Globalization <http://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/research/program/diversity_and_globalisation>

*         Digital Life <http://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/research/program/digital_life>

*         Heritage and Environment <http://www.westernsydney.edu.au/ics/research/program/heritage_and_environment>

ICS Research and Researchers

ICS researchers approach culture as a vital dimension of social, political, and economic life. Their practice-oriented, interdisciplinary research produces cutting-edge work in and across the fields of cultural studies, cultural and human geography, media studies, sociology, cultural economy, Asian studies, education studies, digital humanities, environmental humanities, and museum and heritage studies. The Institute hosts WSU’s role in the Young and Well Cooperative Research Centre.

Academic staff in the Institute include:

Professor Paul James (Director), Professor Brett Neilson (Research Director), Distinguished Professor Ien Ang, Emeritus Professor Bob Hodge, Professor Kay Anderson, Professor James Arvanitakis, Professor Gregory Barton, Professor Tony Bennett, Professor Katherine Gibson, Professor Gay Hawkins, Professor Dick Hobbs, Professor Karen Malone, Professor Donald McNeill, Professor Greg Noble (Director of Higher Degree Research), Professor Ned Rossiter, Professor David Rowe, Professor Tim Rowse, Professor Margaret Somerville, Professor Deborah Stevenson, Professor Stephen Tomsen, Professor Margaret Vickers, A/Professor Robyn Bushell, A/Professor Hart Cohen, A/Professor Alana Lentin, A/Professor Juan Salazar (Deputy Research Director), A/Professor Amanda Third, A/Professor Megan Watkins, A/Professor Emma Waterton, Dr Sarah Barns, Dr Denis Byrne, Dr Brett Bennett, Dr Fiona Cameron, Dr Philippa Collin, Dr Louise Crabtree, Dr Ann Dadich, Dr Ben Dibley, Dr Nichole Georgeou, Dr Sheree Gregory, Dr Chong Han, Dr Stephen Healy, Dr Justine Humphry, Dr Kate Huppatz, Dr Jorge Knijnik, Dr Girish Lala, Dr Abby Lopes, Dr Liam Magee, Dr Timothy Neale, Dr Tanya Notley, Dr Anna Pertierra, Dr Catherine Phillips, Dr Felicity Picken, Dr Emma Power, Dr Shanthi Robertson, Dr Dallas Rogers, Dr Teresa Swist, Dr Jessica Weir, Dr Jessica Whyte

Expressions of Interest

ICS will offer expert assistance to DECRA applications where these fit closely with one or more aspects of its research program. Please consult the Institute’s website (http://westernsydney.edu.au/ics) for further details of the Institute’s research program.
To be considered eligible candidates should:

*         Hold a PhD awarded in the 4-5 years prior to March 2017

*         Have a strong and extensive track record

*         Be working in a field closely related to one or more of ICS’ research programs

Please note that applicants seeking the endorsement of ICS need to submit a CV in the first instance to

icsro@westernsydney.edu.au<mailto:icsro@westernsydney.edu.au

by 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time on Thursday 12 May 2016.

Candidates with competitive track records will then be invited to submit an Expression of Interest. Please note that EOIs will be due by 9am Australian Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday 7 June 2016, so please register your interest as soon as possible.
Prospective applicants with further questions may contact Dr Kristy Davidson at icsro@westernsydney.edu.au<mailto:icsro@westernsydney.edu.au>

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CILAVS: Public Tears and Secrets of the Heart: Political Emotions in a State of Crisis 11th May 2016

The Centre for Iberian and Latin American Visual Studies (CILAVS) and the Comparative Research in European Cultures and Identities (CRECI) Centre

warmly invite you to the talk by

Professor L. Elena Delgado (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)

Public Tears and Secrets of the Heart: Political Emotions in a State of Crisis

Wednesday 11 May 2016, 6.00pm

Room 112, School of Arts

Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1H 0PD

http://www.bbk.ac.uk/cilavs/events/

In a society of hyper-communication, compulsive transparency and prescribed positivity, who can make claims, express political grievances and “speak from the heart” in the public sphere? How does the study of political emotions, particularly at a time of economic and social crisis, illuminate current notions of democratic citizenship and social justice?

This talk will start by analyzing the ubiquitous presence of heart-centered images and rhetoric in the “Spain of crisis” (as it has come to be known in Spanish), something quite remarkable considering that its prevalence coincides with the rising public visibility of fraud and corruption scandals, in all segments of society. I will continue by examining the contradiction implicit in the exigency of a transparent heart when the visceral truths that are exposed to the public unsettle and stir, rather than soothe and patch up.

I will then focus on recent movements that have successfully mobilized social and political activism, and in doing so have been accused of stirring visceral (and therefore irrational) reactions: secessionism in Scotland and Catalonia and the movement of the Outraged (Indignados) in Spain. I will show how through the deployment of both “negative (outrage or anger) and “positive” (hope, joy) emotions, those movements have contested the orchestration of neoliberal psycho-politics in times of crisis and managed to reclaim their space in the democratic public sphere.

Elena Delgado is Professor of Spanish Literature and Cultures, Criticism and Interpretive Theory and Gender and Women’s Studies at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign). She is also affiliated with the Center for Global Studies and The European Union Center.

The focus of her current research and teaching is the construction of a Spanish national cultural identity in the democratic period, aesthetics and ideology in modern and contemporary Spanish literature, and emotions and affects in/as culture. Her most recent authored book is La nación singular.  Fantasías de la normalidad democrática española  (1996-2011) [Siglo XXI, 2014, The Singular Nation: Fantasies of Spanish democratic normalcy] for which she was a finalist for the National Book Award in Spain, in the category of essay.

She has recently completed a co-edited book entitled Engaging the Emotions in Spanish History and Culture (from the Enlightenment to the Present) published by Vanderbilt UP (2016). She has written numerous articles and given presentations and keynote lectures all over the world. She is the editor of a book series on contemporary Hispanic and Lusophone Studies for Liverpool University Press, and a permanent member of the editorial team of the Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies.

She is currently working on two projects: one a cultural history of modern Spanish literature, co-authored with Jo Labanyi (Polity Press) and another, tentatively entitled “The Transparent Heart: Political Emotions in a state of crisis”, on which she will be working on next year thanks to a fellowship from the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities.

All welcome, no booking is required

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