Posted on August 21, 2019 by ubashe02

BRAKC presents Michaël Ferrier at Birkbeck: Mémoires d’outre-mer, or Over Seas of Memory – 18th September 2019

Based loosely on the author’s life, Mémoires d’outre-mer recounts the life of Ferrier’s Mauritius-born grandfather, Maxime, who in 1922 abruptly boarded a boat bound for Madagascar and never returned. Maxime’s adventurous and romantic life in Madagascar, which included a stint as a diver, an artist, and an acrobat in a travelling circus, is bound up with the island’s history, including its period as a Vichy-governed territory at the centre of what was called ‘Project Madagascar’, the Nazi plan to relocate Europe’s Jewish population to the island. This story in turn is interwoven with the larger story of colonialism and its lasting and complicated impact on French national and cultural identity today. Join us at Birkbeck on 18^th September 2019 for a discussion of this novel and its translation, as well as of Ferrier’s other works.

Michaël Ferrier is professor of French at Chuo University in Tokyo, Japan; he is also an essayist and the award-winning author of several novels. Mémoires d’outre-mer, his most recent work, has been translated into English as Over Seas of Memory by Martin Munro, Winthrop-King professor of French and Francophone Studies at Florida State University.

And here is the link: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/remote_event_view?id=6709

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community, BRAKC, Cultures and Languages, French, Michaël Ferrier

Posted on June 7, 2019 by ubashe02

UNREST screening 14 June 2019 and Medical Humanities Reading Group 4 July 2019

Contested Conditions Screening: Unrest (Jennifer Brea, 2017)

Friday 14th June, 18:00-21:00, Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square

Suddenly afflicted with a debilitating illness, director Jennifer Brea is eventually diagnosed with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). Frustrated by doctors’ insistence that her condition is psychosomatic, Brea makes contact from her bed with an activist community engaged in lobbying for further research into the disease. Spanning the categories of documentary, personal testimony and activist intervention, Unrest offers insight into a little-understood chronic illness, and explores what role the movie camera might play in giving image and voice to people living with the condition.

The film will be followed by a panel discussion with Louise Kenward, Raju Rage and Daniella Valz Gen. Book your place here.

This event, part of the Contested Conditions screening series, is funded by an ISSF grant from Birkbeck and the Wellcome Trust, and organised in collaboration with the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image.

Medical Humanities Reading Group: Exploring deaf ways of seeing through film-making techniques and visual media technologies

Thursday 4th July 2019, 14:30-16:00, Room 106, 43 Gordon Square

Are there deaf ways of seeing? And if so, what might this mean for filmmaking by and for the deaf? In this session led by Dr Rebekah Cupitt, we will explore these questions through the following readings:

Anu Sharma and Hannah Glick, “Cross-Modal Re-Organization in Clinical Populations with Hearing Loss”, Brain Sciences, 2016, 6, 4.
Patricia Durr, “Deconstructing the Forced Assimilation of Deaf People Via De’VIA Resistance and Affirmation Art”, Visual Anthropology Review, 15.2 (Fall/Winter 1999-2000)

The readings for each session are held in a shared Dropbox folder. If you need access, email sophie.jones@bbk.ac.uk (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.

. . Category: Archived Events, Archived Reading Groups . Tags: Anu Sharma, chronic fatigue, Hannah Glick, Jennifer Brea, ME, medical humanities, Patricia Durr, Rebekah Cupitt, Unrest, ways of seeing

Posted on June 6, 2019 by ubashe02

Murray Seminar: Luca Palozzi, The Holy-Water Basin of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia, – 12 June 2019 5pm

On Wednesday, 12^th June, Luca Palozzi will be speaking about his latest research on a strange and little-known work by Giovanni Pisano. We’ll return to our usual location in the History of Art Department at Birkbeck (43, Gordon Sq., London WC1H 0PD) in The Keynes Library (Room 114) at 5pm. The talk will finish by 5.50pm (allowing those with other commitments to leave) and will then be followed by discussion and refreshments.

Luca Palozzi

The Holy-Water Basin of San Giovanni Fuorcivitas in Pistoia,

c. 1270: Petrography, Materiality and Function

Giorgio Vasari writes in his Lives of the Artists that Giovanni Pisano “carved in marble the holy-water font of the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pistoia,” and that this work, “by reason of its having then been held very beautiful, was placed in the centre of that church as a remarkable thing (come cosa singolare).” Despite Vasari’s mention in his Lives, the Pistoia holy-water basin remains little-known. The scant literature focusses on issues of style, date and authorship, failing to address the reasons why contemporary observers considered the Pistoia holy-water basin a truly beautiful and remarkable object. This paper explores this object’s surprising materiality, considering Nicola and Giovanni Pisano’s daring technical and artistic experimentations with stones and minerals scarcely used in monumental sculpture from the period. Their knowledge of materials, as well as their awareness of liturgy, crucially informed the making of this extraordinary object. The basin casts light on the ‘material turn’ of the 1260s and 1270s in Italian sculpture–a phenomenon whose magnitude and importance still await to be assessed.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: History of Art, Luca Palozzi, Murray, Murray Seminar

Posted on May 29, 2019 by ubashe02

CFP: Limits of Cinema / Cinema Limited? – 27-28 Sep 2019

University of Pittsburgh

Film and Media Studies Graduate Conference CFP
Limits of Cinema / Cinema Limited?

September 27-28, 2019
Keynote: Jeffrey Sconce (Northwestern University)

The cinematic medium has been historically shaped through several negotiations with its own limits and those imposed on it. Regulatory scrutiny of the moving image began as early as the peepshows of the Kinetoscope parlors. Formal censorship was soon implemented in many countries as a legal infrastructure serving in the moral guidance of youth and other demographics deemed vulnerable to irresponsible depictions of crimes and sex, as well as political propaganda.

Over the past decade scholars of film and media have signposted the materiality and mobility of media images and objects by resituating the question of the juridical in the contemporary media landscape. The seemingly unlimited proliferation of images across media platforms raises questions as to whether anything and everything can now be shown, and what means are acceptable in identifying, evaluating, and constraining various forms of harm that media inflict. How do regulatory practices simultaneously threaten to bound media and generate new praxes that hoodwink and overwhelm all frameworks of ordered statecraft and corporate ownership? We encourage applicants to engage with the materiality and affects of the sensory infrastructure of cinema past and present. `Limits of Cinema / Cinema Limited?’ hopes to bring together scholarship that builds on existing interdisciplinary approaches to paradoxes of law and media.

The 2019 edition of the University of Pittsburgh’s Film and Media Graduate Student Conference invites papers that examine the limits of cinema and cinema as a limited object and image in a broad sense, from the powers of censorship to the practices of media piracy and the traffic in contraband, from policies of preservation and access to new forms of media activism, from the formation of media publics and counter publics to the algorithms of social media.

Proposals might include but are not limited to the following topics:
 Legal Gaze as Infrastructure and Institutions
 Film Rating Systems: MPAA (USA), National Centre for Cinema (France), British Board of Film Classification (United Kingdom), Central Board of Film Certification (India), etc.
 Contemporary Censorship Debates (re. gore, extreme cinema, porn)
 Auteurs and Controversy (Lars Von Trier, Gaspar Noé, Michael Haneke, Takashi Miike, Larry Clark, Quentin Tarantino, Anurag Kashyap, Deepa Mehta, etc.)
 Control of Film, Television and Media Images
 Debates on Obscenity, Sleaze, Transgression and Taboo
 Theorizing Affect, Desires, Guilt, Pleasures, and the Sensory Infrastructure
 Actors of Non-Official Censorship (parental and/or religious associations)
 Pre-Code Hollywood
 Hollywood Censored
 Non-theatrical Networks of Distribution and Circulation (streaming platforms, festivals, fandom and cult venues)
 Keepers of Morality (moralizing in cinema and gatekeeping)
 Limits of the Body (figurations and images)
 Copyright and Fair Use vs Creative Commons
 Histories of Contraband and Bootleg
 The Modern Media Pirate
 The Cinephile as the Technophile
 Archives and the Collector
 Bastard Films and Web-Based Orphan Media Files
 Fantasies of unlimited cinema

Interested graduate students may submit abstracts (maximum 300 words)- along with institutional/departmental affiliations and current email- to pittfilmgradconference@gmail.com by May 30, 2019. For more information, please contact the FMSGSO by email at the above address.

. . Category: Archived Call for Papers . Tags: Cinema Limited, Film and Media Studies, Graduate Conference, Jeffrey Sconce, Limits of Cinema, Northwestern University, University of Pittsburgh

Posted on May 21, 2019 by ubashe02

Symposium: Conversations on Care and/in the Community – 6 June 2019

Conversations on Care and/in the Community

Keynes Library, 6th June 2019, 12.30-6.30pm

Experiences and practices of care have changed dramatically in the past three decades. Since the passing of the NHS and Community Care Act (1990), healthcare, social care and short-term psychiatric care have been increasingly decentralised and delivered ‘in the community’. This shift has been both practical and discursive: altering the pathways by which care is accessed and the sites in which it is received; and changing perceptions surrounding the role of those receiving care in wider society. In the case of mental healthcare for example, it has led us to move from the ‘mental patient’ to the ‘service user’ as labels that define the relationship between persons receiving care and those providing it.

Thirty years on, community care continues to be a fraught subject. On the one hand, it has been seen as having a democratizing influence, opening up the possibility for greater patient choice, and of integrating patients’ and service-users’ voices into care provision. On the other, it continues to be viewed as a chaotic cost-cutting exercise which leaves vulnerable people to fall through the cracks.

‘Conversations on Care and/in the Community’ symposium invites researchers to engage in a series of conversations surrounding these new social and spatial conditions of care in the twenty-first century.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: Conversations on Care, healthcare, keynes library, NHS, twenty-first century

Posted on May 20, 2019 by ubashe02

MIROnline Workshop – 25 May 2019: Fran Lock and Simon Coltman

MIROnline’s next workshop, poetry and meditation with Fran Lock and Simon Coltman, takes place on Saturday, May 25th. This is a free event but places are limited. You can book your place on our Eventbrite page:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/poetry-and-meditation-with-fran-lock-and-simon-coltman-tickets-60940146619

Exploring ways to improve focus, access new images and ideas, and turn those ideas into poetry, this afternoon will provide you with the tools you need to use meditation and free writing in your own poetic pursuits. Writing and editing poems will also be of great use to prose writers due to the focus on the lyric nature of language.

The workshop will begin with a mindfulness meditation session and will involve shorter and more focused mediation throughout the afternoon. There will be a series of exercises aimed at generating, structuring and editing poems. Editing meditations will provide the opportunity to view your writing as a reader would.

The afternoon will culminate in a feedback session facilitated by Fran and Melanie. All participants will be offered the opportunity for more detailed feedback via email after the session. Work produced may also be considered for publication on our website or performance at one of our live events.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: English and Humanities, Fran Lock, MIROnline, poetry, Simon Coltman

Posted on May 10, 2019 by ubashe02

CfP – CHASE PG Journal Brief Encounters (deadline: 17 June)

The editors of Brief Encounters are pleased to open a call for papers for the journal’s fourth issue and warmly invite research students and staff to submit a short article, review or creative piece of work for publication. Submissions deadline: Monday, 17th June 2019.

Brief Encounters is an open access, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed, postgraduate journal organised by CHASE. All postgraduate research students, regardless of their funding status, are welcome to submit to the journal as are staff.

For students in particular, publishing in the journal offers the opportunity to experience the peer-review process, to give their research exposure, and to build their publication record.

……………………………………………………………………………..

Call for Papers – Brief Encounters – Issue 4

URL: http://briefencounters-journal.co.uk/BE/pages/view/call-for-submissions

Brief Encounters is now open to submissions from research students and staff at CHASE-affiliated institutions (see below for the list). We welcome submissions in the form of academically rigorous and original articles (500–4,000 words), reviews (500–1,000 words) and creative works.

The deadline for submissions is Monday, 17th June 2019.

Brief Encounters welcomes submissions from any field. The journal’s aim is to improve the exchange of ideas between geographical or disciplinary boundaries. The journal provides a space where researchers can publish short articles and share findings which might not be long enough for publication in another journal. We also aim to help students in creative disciplines share their work and engage with other researchers (see below for more information about this).

There is no theme and all submissions will be considered on their own merits. In the past, articles have reflected the academic diversity of our author-base, with work touching on concepts like belonging, embodiment, sustainability, change, identity, space, deviation and division.

Submitting to the journal provides a valuable opportunity for authors to experience the peer-review process in a constructive environment – something especially valuable for postgraduate students and early-career academics.

What is Brief Encounters?

Brief Encounters is an open access peer-reviewed postgraduate journal, run by doctoral researchers from the CHASE doctoral training partnership to showcase the work of research students, staff and alumni of CHASE-affiliated institutions (see here for the list).

About reviews

Reviews can cover new publications, films, theatre productions, documentaries, and major exhibitions engaging with any aspect of the arts and humanities. Reflecting the ethos of CHASE, we are particularly interested in emerging scholarship and innovative interdisciplinary publications and productions.

About creative works

The editorial board is especially keen to receive submissions for its creative section; potential submissions could include (but are not limited to): video essays, creative writing, documentaries, posters, musical interpretations, and photography. These must be accompanied by a critical commentary of no fewer than 500 words.

Who can submit?

CHASE-funded students (see a list of institutions)
Postgraduate students at CHASE institutions (regardless of funding status)
Alumni of CHASE institutions
Individuals employed by CHASE institutions
Individuals employed by Non-HEI CHASE partners

Submission guidelines

Submission should be made by the deadline, Monday, 17th June 2019, through the Brief Encounters on-line submission process (see our step-by-step guide).

All submissions will follow MHRA style guidelines (footnotes and bibliography). Please see our style guide for further details.

Authors need to register with the journal prior to submitting or, if already registered, can simply log in and begin the five-step process.

Along with your article, please submit an abstract (max. 300 words), and a list of key words (max. 5). When you register as an author on the website, please provide a brief bio statement (max. 200 words).

If you have any queries please contact journal@chase.ac.uk

. . Category: Archived Call for Papers . Tags: AHRC, Brief Encounters, Call for Papers, CFP, Chase, CHASE Consortium, Creative Writing, open access, reviews

Posted on May 7, 2019 by ubashe02

In-Jokes and outsiders: Considering internet memes as displaced performances’: GRiT (Graduate Research in Theatre) event. 8 May 2019

All are welcome to attend this year’s fourth and final GRiT (Graduate Research in Theatre) event.

Film, Media and Cultural Studies doctoral student Hannah Barton’s talk ‘In-Jokes and outsiders: Considering internet memes as displaced performances’ will take place on Wednesday, 8 May (4-5 pm) in Room 106 (43 Gordon Square). We look forward to seeing you there!

In-Jokes and outsiders: Considering internet memes as displaced performances’:

From LOLcats to Distracted Boyfriends, Galaxy Brain to SpongeBob, internet memes have been described as the lingua franca of social media. Commonly conceptualised as ephemeral visual (and sometimes aural) artefacts, memes tend to be ‘read’ in terms of form and content. However, memes are not simply proliferated artefacts; they are highly contextual and associative communicative events; shared as performances between creators and audiences, and mediated by technologies. As social and technological contexts iterate, so do the practices of meme production. Put otherwise, the experience of creating or encountering a meme can be markedly different from one week to the next. This dynamism poses interesting challenges for researchers. Can internet memes be comprehensively theorised once they become displaced from the technosocial conditions in which they were created? This seminar will discuss these points, and suggest that theoretical positions drawn from performance studies provide strategies for acknowledging – and where possible capturing – the technosocial context in which a meme was created and proliferated.

Hannah Barton is a doctoral student in Birkbeck’s Department of Film, Media and Cultural Studies, where she is researching the cultural history of internet memes. She is also Digital Project Manager at Tate, and an occasional writer.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: arts, cultural history, FMACS, Graduate Research in Theatre, GRiT, Meme, School of Arts

Posted on May 1, 2019 by ubashe02

Films with a Mission: Medical Films from the Catholic Mission Archives – 11 May 2019

Films with a Mission

Medical Films from the Catholic Mission Archives

1930s-1960s

Saturday 11 May 2019, 1.00pm – 5.00pm.

Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image

Gordon Square Cinema

43 Gordon Square

London WC1H 0PD

Films with a Mission, for its third screening event, will extend its focus this year to films on medical subjects from the Catholic missionary archives. The films were widely circulated and exhibited on their release and over subsequent decades, not only in Ireland and Britain, but also across the US. The afternoon symposium will explore some of the key issues and questions in historically assessing missionary film archives. It will discuss how we can gain new perspectives in understanding the motivations, reach and transnational impact of these productions on local and global audiences.

Screening rarely shown films from the Irish Film Institute (IFI) and the British Empire and Commonwealth collection at Bristol Museums, the symposium will discuss how Catholic medical orders used film to promote medical research and hospital practices. These films are part of a broader emergence of educational film at the time. They are significant for their involvement of filmmakers trained in documentary film in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s.

Amongst the films shown will be:

Visitation: the Story of the Medical Missionaries of Mary (Andrew Buchanan, 1947, 60 mins) about the medical work of a women’s religious order: the Medical Missionaries of Mary, at their mission in Nigeria, Africa;

Aran of the Saints (London Catholic Film Society, 1930s, 21 mins) made on the island of Aran, Ireland, by the Missionary Sisters of the Divine Motherhood, and produced by the London Catholic Film Society, after the release of Robert Flaherty’s film Man of Aran (1934);

Ecce Ancilla Domini (FMDM,1950s; 54 mins) a recruitment film about the Franciscan Missionary Sisters of the Divine Motherhood (FMDM), Ladywell, Surrey, at their medical and educational missions in Northern and S. Rhodesia (Zambia, Zimbabwe), Nigeria, Singapore and Malaysia.

Speakers include: Dr. Emma Sandon, film historian and Dr. Carmen Mangion, historian of women religious, at Birkbeck, and they are joined by independent researcher, Edel Robinson, who catalogued the films in the IFI archive, and Isabelle Smyth, Writer in Residence, Medical Missionaries of Mary.

This event is run in collaboration with the Christian Missions in Global History seminar group, Institute of Historical Research, University of London; and supported by the Birkbeck Wellcome Trust Institutional Strategic Support Fund.

To book on Eventbrite please follow the link:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/films-with-a-mission-tickets-60371587042

The full timetable and programme of screenings and presentations for the afternoon will be released shortly.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: BIMI, Birkbeck Institute of the Moving Image, Emma Sandon, Films with a Mission, Gordon Square Cinema, Story of the Medical Missionaries of Mary