The Centre for Museum Cultures Reading Group – 13 November 2018 6pm

The Centre for Museum Cultures was launched at Birkbeck on 19 October 2018.

Based in the School of Arts, it involves academics from across the College in various disciplines, including museology, history of art, media and culture studies, history, English and humanities. It will provide a hub for intellectual exchange and debate relating to all aspects of museology, curation and heritage. It will host an annual programme of seminars, lectures and conferences involving academics and a wide range of museum professionals.

Do have a look at the Centre’s website here http://www.bbk.ac.uk/museum-cultures/ and sign up to their mailing list to receive occasional updates regarding events.

The Centre has established a new Museum Cultures Reading Group, whose aim is to explore readings and key ideas in the field. The group welcomes participation from colleagues, museum professionals and PhD students interested and engaged in museum-related research.

The Museum Cultures Reading Group will meet for the first time in room 106 at the School of Arts (43 Gordon Square) on Tuesday 13 November at 6pm:

If you wish to come please rsvp to Mark Liebenrood on m.liebenrood@gmail.com.

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Art History Sessional Tutors required  – London Region

Art History Sessional Tutors required  – London Region

£24.50 per hour + Benefits

Can you help Britain’s leading adult education charity change people’s lives?

We are the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA), a unique charity and the UK’s largest voluntary sector provider of adult education. We were recently rated “Good” in all categories by Ofsted and we aspire to be outstanding. Since 1903, we have been offering disadvantaged adults the opportunity to return to learning – inspiring them to realise their full potential and become active, engaged citizens. We deliver courses to 50,000 people in 2,300 locations across England and Scotland. Our focus is on social purpose and change and we achieve this by bringing great teaching to local communities. We run courses in community venues such as workplaces, schools, libraries and even the local pub!

We currently require sessional tutors in our London Region to deliver History of Art courses.

We need tutors with:

  • a subject specialism
  • experience of working in community settings with diverse students
  • a strong understanding of adult learning and a belief in its importance
  • a teaching qualification at least at Level 3 or you will be keen to work towards a teaching qualification
  • excellent interpersonal and organisational skills
  • a desire to share and improve teaching practice
  • Up to date CPD

WEA assumes you will be excited by using digital technology both in the classroom with the student and to manage course administration and communication.

You will be required to have a basic or enhanced DBS check to teach in certain venues or with certain student groups. Because we serve people from all walks of life, we’re keen to develop a diverse workforce and particularly welcome applications from members of minority groups.

Interested? Please visit http://www.wea.org.uk/tutors/work-us and apply directly by sending your CV to rrobshaw@wea.org.uk

If you have any specific questions, please email them to rrobshaw@wea.org.uk

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CFP: Aesthetics of Kinship and Community Graduate Symposium deadline 30 October 2018

Aesthetics of Kinship and Community Graduate Symposium

Birkbeck, University of London

Friday 30 November 2018 – afternoon

Call for Papers

Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community (BRAKC) is a research centre based in the School of Arts. We study the artistic representation of human belonging, of the human bond, in literature, film, photography, paintings, and other art forms. How is this bond presented across time and cultures, how is it analysed, deconstructed, reinvented?

We are inviting postgraduate students to present their current research within the field of aesthetics of kinship and community for a roundtable event at Birkbeck on 30 November 2018 in the afternoon. The idea is to bring together the wealth of research being accomplished on the artistic representation of the familial, the social, the political, its criticism and re-conceptions. Papers can be on any period in history and all cultures are relevant. Issues upon which papers are welcome include but are not limited to:

  • Racism
  • Sexual belonging
  • Familial configurations
  • Nationalisms and Brexit
  • Diasporas
  • Utopia(s)
  • Community and commonality
  • Anticapitalism
  • Revolutions

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to Dr Nathalie Wourm, Director of BRAKC, by 30 October 2018. Selected papers will be announced shortly after that.

Email: n.wourm@bbk.ac.uk

Website: http://www.brakc.bbk.ac.uk/

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Satellite – School of Arts digital education subcommittee: Call for Proposals

Dear School of Arts,

Satellite – the School of Arts digital education subcommittee – is pleased to announce a Call for Proposals for exploratory events to take place in academic year 2018-19.

These exploratory events are an opportunity to explore more subject-, disciplinary- or problem-specific developments, innovations and issues related to digital education, and more generally the implications of new technologies for pedagogy and learning. You may, for instance, want to organise an event around alternative approaches to assessment that make use of techniques such as mobile video, social media or blogging. Or an event which considers innovative ways in-class learning experiences can be blended with online activities in-between sessions. Or the ways in which the digitalisation of our research objects or methods might shift how we teach and assess our subject areas. These examples are not exhaustive, and there are many other possibilities.

Exploratory events can be proposed by School academics, teaching and scholarship staff, administrative staff, as well as postgraduate research students. We are particularly keen to see more proposals from research students this year, so could doctoral supervisors please forward this on to their students – it’s a good opportunity for professional development.

Proposals are accepted on a rolling basis, through funds are limited. Your proposal must include the following:

  • Event Title
  • Event Convenor(s) (name and short bio / link to web profile)
  • Event Description (no more than 300 words)

Requested funding amount and its purpose(s) (e.g. catering costs – please specify if Satellite funding will be complemented by other funds, e.g. from department or research centre)

Please submit your proposal to Scott Rodgers at s.rodgers@bbk.ac.uk. Feel free to get in touch with Scott should you have any questions, or if you would like to discuss a potential idea further.

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CFP: Nineteenth Century Research Seminars – Submissions Deadline Sunday 1 December 2018

Nineteenth Century Research Seminars
Call for Papers – Spring 2019

The Nineteenth Century Research Seminars (NCRS) invites proposals for twenty-minute papers from postgraduate and early career researchers that address any aspect of nineteenth-century literature, history, art, and culture.

The seminar series is designed to be a cross- and inter-disciplinary forum where
postgraduate and early career researchers can meet, form connections, debate, and
collaborate on all issues pertaining to the long nineteenth century.

We accept abstracts addressing any aspect of research on the 19th century, but would
particularly welcome those addressing any of the following themes:
● Philosophy from Hegel to Nietzsche
● Empire, War, and Politics
● Religion and Society
● Ecology, Environment, and Industrialisation
● Travelling and Exploration
● Gender and Sexuality
● German Classicism and German Idealism
● Art, Architecture, and Aesthetics

Monthly seminars take place at the University of Edinburgh, on the first Thursday of the
month: 7 February, 7 March, 4 April, 2 May, and 6 June 2019 at 16:30-18:30. Each seminar will consist of 2-3 twenty-minute papers, with at least one paper from a University of Edinburgh-based researcher and the other(s) from a researcher based in another institution, followed by discussion and refreshments.

Abstracts of up to 250 words along with a brief biography and institutional affiliation should be submitted in the body of an email to edinburgh19thcentury@gmail.com . The closing date for submissions is Sunday 1 December 2018 ; speakers will be notified of a decision by mid-December. If for any reason you are not available for any of the dates listed above for the 2019 seminars, please let us know in your email submission; this will help us to pair papers and schedule more effectively.

For those travelling from outside of Edinburgh, reimbursement of travel expenses (up to
£40) is available.

More details, and programmes from previous years are available at:
edinburgh19thcentury.weebly.com. Follow us on Facebook to stay updated:
@EdinburghNCRS .

The NCRS is supported by the University of Edinburgh’s Student-Led Initiative Fund.

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CFP: Imagining the Apocalypse Saturday 12 October 2019

IMAGINING THE APOCALYPSE: CALL FOR PAPERS

12 October 2019, The Courtauld Institute of Art

Shaped by different religious traditions, the apocalypse has been called upon throughout history to articulate collective anxieties, act as a warning, or a yearned-for spiritual salvation. These contradictory and competing aims behind imagining the end of the world in specific cultural moments make it a fertile ground for analysis. This conference will ask: what are the politics of picturing annihilation, from the early Christian Church to climate change today? This call for papers welcomes submissions from all historical periods and geographic regions. From medieval mosaics to Hieronymus Bosh, Albrecht Dürer’s woodcut The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1498) to Keith Piper’s critique of Thatcherite-era racism, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1984) – culture has played a crucial role in imagining the apocalypse.

 

Claiming the end is nigh has always been political. The Democratic Unionist Party’s 1970s ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’ campaign, for example, invoked the threat of Biblical floods: “The legalising of homosexuality would open the floodgates of immorality … The consequences of such a deluge would be grim”. What does this nightmarish vision tell us about the way we direct violence at others when fearing for our own survival? Rather than call for a saviour and salvation, could there also be an opportunity to contemplate and perhaps even come to terms with feelings of powerlessness in the face of our own annihilation? If the apocalypse is employed as a metaphor – a framework for conceiving reality, rather than a faithful portrait of it – it is regularly used to describe situations that are not literally the end of the world.

 

If we scratch under the surface, doomsday is often evoked time and time again to articulate a worldview of ‘us’ versus ‘them’: the desire to re-establish a sense of mastery over those perceived to be threatening. In 2017 The Sun claimed Jeremy Corbyn “would be a disaster in No10” – printing 1970s photographs of warehouses filled with coffins and rubbish piled high in the streets; while The Guardian wondered “How soon will the ‘ice apocalypse’ come?” and “are we sleepwalking towards a technological apocalypse?” – telling readers to look out for “Seven signs of the neoliberal apocalypse”. In January, online blogs asked “Is the fatberg apocalypse upon us?” – and in June The Sunday Times reported a UK government “Doomsday” plan for Brexit. By August, The Times reeled in horror at the “End of days feel in Westminster”.

 

Twenty-four hours later, historian David Olusoga warned: “Just as today’s historians are struck by the parties and general joviality that characterised the long hot summer of 1914, future scholars might wonder how we remained so calm as we approached the edge of the cliff”. The fear that underscores these catastrophic accounts may be sincere, but if we take a step back from the immediate sense of dread they provoke – how can we unpack the politics and psychoanalytic stakes at play? Can we look across time and space to make sense of how such anxieties are intimately bound up with their specific historical moments, and that considering them comparatively can throw into relief how power and violence often fuel these fantasies of disaster? This interdisciplinary conference welcomes proposals that consider imaginative representations of the end of the world from antiquity to the present day.

 

Potential topics might include (but are not limited to):

  • Gender studies, LGBTQ+ politics, heterosexuality
  • Migration, racism, empire, whiteness
  • Industrial Revolution, fossil fuels, nuclear meltdown/war, climate change
  • Food, eating, starvation, stockpiling
  • Financial crisis and disaster capitalism
  • Religious art
  • Technological change (e.g. the invention of telecommunication/artificial intelligence)
  • The Gothic, nightmares, monsters, magic, zombies, contagion, disease, the occult, spiritualism
  • Nationalism, conflict, civil war, group identity and collective violence, terrorism, anti-war activism
  • Generational change and inter-generational conflict
  • Visions of the future and science fiction
  • Moral panics, addition as metaphor, fears of societal collapse
  • Dark tourism and the entertainment industry

Please send a short bio with proposals of no more than 300 words for 20-minute papers to edwin.coomasaru@courtauld.ac.uk by 14th January 2019.

 

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Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group – Contested Conditions: 25 October 2018, 3.00-4.30 pm

Thursday 25th October 2018, 3.00-4.30 pm

Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group – Contested Conditions

The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group will meet on 25th October 2018, 3.00-4.30 pm, in the Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD, to consider contested, chronic, and invisible health conditions.

Prior reading

Anna Mollow, ‘No Safe Place’, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 1/2, SAFE (Spring/Summer 2011), pp.188-199

Johanna Hedva, ‘Sick Woman Theory’, Mask Magazine (January 2016). Available at: http://www.maskmagazine.com/not-again/struggle/sick-woman-theory

Email sophie.jones@bbk.ac.uk for a copy of the Mollow article (include your Dropbox-linked email address if you have one).

Everyone is welcome at the reading group. There is no need to book.

The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group aims to create a space in which academics, clinicians and students can come together to explore key readings, ideas and materials in the field of medical humanities. Our endeavour is to find ways of talking across the different disciplines of the humanities and medicine, and we welcome participation from colleagues and students interested and engaged in these areas.

For details of previous sessions, please click here.

Please get in touch with Sophie Jones (sophie.jones@bbk.ac.uk) if you have any queries.

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Murray Seminars Autumn Term 2018-19

I’m writing with details of this term’s Murray Seminars on Medieval and Renaissance Art at Birkbeck. These advanced research seminars are open to all, and attract interested members of the public, staff and students from other London colleges and beyond.  They are an opportunity to hear and contribute to cutting-edge research, often at the very early stages of work in progress.

All this term’s seminars take place in the History of Art Department at Birkbeck (43, Gordon Sq., London WC1H 0PD) in Room 114 (The Keynes Library) at 5pm.  Talks finish by 5.50pm (allowing those with other commitments to leave) and are then followed by discussion and refreshments.  We hope to see you there.

This term’s seminars are:

16 October, Lisa Monnas

Vestments and Textiles in Hans Memling’s ‘God with Singing and Music-making Angels 

Three large panels in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, painted by Hans Memling in the 1480’s, represent a heavenly scene framed by clouds, which part to reveal the central figure of God attended by sixteen singing and music-making angels. Thye once formed the top of the high altarpiece of the Benedictine Abbey of Santa Maria la Réal in Nájera, in Spain. In the central panel, God is depicted vested as priest and ruler, and the angels in this and in the flanking scenes wear clerical dress. The work has been interpreted as relating to the Good Friday liturgy and the Exaltation of the Cross, but since the panels originally formed the top of an altarpiece whose main subject was the Assumption of the Virgin, this is open to doubt. This paper will re-examine the vestments and textiles in the newly conserved panels, assessing their ‘realism’ and their contribution to the heavenly scene. It will also consider them in the wider context of some of Memling’s other works.

14 November, Jana Gajdosova

Sculpted Genealogies: The Effigies of Bohemian rulers in Prague Cathedral  

With the death of Wenceslas III, the Přemyslid dynasty, which had ruled Bohemia for over four centuries, came to an end. The murder of the young king created chaos in the kingdom for several decades; however, after the marriage of Elizabeth of Přemyslid and John of Luxembourg and the subsequent birth of Charles IV (1316 – 1378), Bohemia reached the height of its political and cultural power in Europe. Charles IV saw himself as a bridge between two Bohemian dynasties – the Přemyslids of the past and the Luxembourgs of his envisioned future. This link was communicated with painted genealogies in at least three of Charles’ castles, and with staged genealogies across Prague. The fascination that Charles had with re-imagining and visualizing his role within the dynastic shift that occurred also found expression in the sculpted genealogies which are the subject of this paper—specifically the effigies of Přemyslids rulers commissioned by Charles IV for Prague Cathedral, which were made to communicate these ideas in sculpture and across real space.

5 December, Marie-Louise Lillywhite 

Blood is Thicker than Water: Artists, Friends and Family Alliances in Seventeenth-Century Venice

How did Venetian artists forge alliances to advance their interests and ensure the continuation of their workshops? Focusing on the painter Palma il Giovane, this paper explores his concerted efforts to continue his family name through strategic marriages, and safeguard his success through advantageous friendships. This study will demonstrate how these potentially positive relationships impacted artistic production in Venice for better, or indeed worse.

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School of Arts Research Student Writing Sessions 2018-19

The School of Arts Writing Sessions will be running again this year, on Mondays and Fridays from 10am to 1pm. All research students and staff are welcome to attend: the sessions are designed to give researchers at all levels some time, space and peer support for focused work on extended writing projects.

You can attend as often as you like: if you think you would like to come at any point, email Sophie Jones to be added to the mailing list. Every Friday, Sophie will send out a sign-up sheet for the following week with details of the room.

More information about the structure of the sessions is available on the group’s web page.

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Vacancy: BBK Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies seeks a Postgraduate Intern Deadline Extended 5th October 2018

Vacancy: BBK Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies seeks a Postgraduate Intern Deadline 5th October 2018

Vacancy: Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies:

Postgraduate Intern

Deadline Extended to 5th October 2018

The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies seeks a Postgraduate Intern

The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies invites applications from postgraduate research students studying at Birkbeck for an Internship to support and develop the activities of the Centre:

The Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

The Centre was first established in 1997 under the directorship of Professor Isobel Armstrong originally to bring together researchers in English, History of Art and History.  It has since developed a reputation for its diverse events that attract national and international scholars. It hosts the Birkbeck Forum for Nineteenth-Century Studies, which sees speakers coming to Birkbeck throughout the year; it runs the successful annual Dickens Day; and organizes and hosts major conferences, workshops and symposia. The Centre also supports Postgraduate students wishing to organise and run their own events.

THE POSITION

  • This Events Officer internship for the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies trains a student to develop, advertise, run, archive and curate a programme of public events:

PLANNING:

  • Collect and generate ideas about speakers, emerging questions, and formats for events (Nineteenth-Century Forum, workshops, day conferences, etc);

IMPLEMENTING:

  • Timetabling and scheduling, including liaising with Centre staff and speakers
  • AV/IT: identifying speakers’ needs, liaising with relevant school AV/IT staff, booking and setting up IT
  • Helping setting up speaker events in the Keynes Library and ensuring that it is returned to its original seating after the talk;
  • helping to organise refreshments where appropriate;
  • administering speaker expenses.

CENTRE’S WEBSITE:

  • Overseeing and updating the website on a weekly basis; ensuring that all events are listed with appropriate links and any other relevant material;
  • team-working skills: coordinating website updates with the editorial interns on the online journal 19 to ensure that the Centre and Journal websites support reach
  • developing a dedicated PG /postdoc area of the website to showcase/advertise p/g activities(entering student’s activities in the website, such as the 19th reading group, conferences, blogs, etc.).
  • Producing, archiving, and curating materials related to events and research activities

NETWORKS/PUBLICITY:

  • Developing and overseeing strategies for the Centre’s profile on social networks (twitter, Facebook, etc);
  • Producing, coordinating, and editing the Centre’s Blog, including commissioning and overseeing blog submissions, and liaising with relevant staff.
  • Networking and linking researchers at different stages in their career
  • Fostering and coordinating links between staff and the postgraduate community within the centre and its research clusters
  • Developing a publicity strategy (sending information of Centre’s activities to other nineteenth-century websites; identifying and contacting other communities of practitioners to enhance interdisciplinary reach of the Centre’s activities).

INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS:

  • Centre meetings – Attend and take minutes at termly Centre meetings; liaise with Centre Director/s about minutes/actions.

ELIGIBILITY:

  • We invite applications from postgraduate research students from across the College with interests in the nineteenth century. Applicants should expect to be enrolled as students at Birkbeck until end of September 2019

SELECTION CRITERIA

Essential

  • Research interests in Nineteenth-Century Studies
  • Organizational and clerical skills
  • Independence and initiative

Desirable but NOT essential

  • organization of research activities such as Reading Groups, Seminars or Conferences
  • Involvement in the activities of the Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies
  • Social media skills

REMUNERATION:

£16 per hour. The hours will be agreed on a flexible basis with the Centre Directors (spread across three terms to work out at an average of 3.5 hours per week for 35 weeks)

APPLICATION:

Please email a letter of application, outlining your reasons for applying for the post, and a CV, together with the name of your supervisor, from whom we will require a reference, to Dr Victoria Mills (v.mills@bbk.ac.uk) in the School of Arts by 5.00pm on Friday 5th October 2018

Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed shortly thereafter (date tbc but likely to be Tuesday 9 October)

Please direct any enquiries to Dr Victoria Mills (v.mills@bbk.ac.uk).

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