Birkbeck Eighteenth-Century Research Group: 12 February 2020 12-1.30pm

Wednesday 12 February, 12-1.30pm

Keynes Library, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square.

‘Skill and Narrative Form in Early Eighteenth-Century Adventure Fiction’

Robert Stearn

In this session we will look at how a passage from Defoe’s The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1719), is treated in an early abridgement of the novel, undertaken for Edward Midwinter by the jobbing printer Thomas Gent, and published in 1722. Readings from these two books will be compared with a brief excerpt from The Adventures, and Surprizing Deliverances, of James Dubourdieu, and his Wife (1719) – a short novel of unknown authorship, published within months of the first two volumes of Robinson Crusoe and addressed to the same world of maritime adventure as Defoe’s fiction. The first of many similar works, Dubourdieu sought to capitalise on the success of Crusoe, while offering an intriguing revision of Defoe’s narrative poetics and ideological investments. A number of the men involved in printing and selling it would go on to publish and – in the case of Willian Chetwood – write further volumes of adventure fiction.

Taking together Defoe’s continuation of his novel, a re-written version of Crusoe, and a newly-composed piece of prose fiction that was advertised as ‘proper to be Bound up with Robinson Crusoe’, we can ask: what might the alternations made to Crusoe by abridgements and supplements tell us about eighteenth-century ways of reading in general, and about critical assessments of Defoe’s fiction in particular? How might the formal choices of Defoe, Gent, and the author of Dubourdieu  – including their decisions about the representation of speech and audience and about the segmentation of narrative episodes – produce or reflect different concepts of skill and practical knowledge? How are these ideas about skill shaped by their elaboration in relation to imagined colonial violence? And, how should we understand the place of commercial and material constraints in all these choices?

Robert Stearn is a PhD student in English at Birkbeck, working on skill and service in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. His thesis draws on a range of verbal and visual sources – visual satire, material culture, life-writing by employers and servants, poetry, and prose fiction – in order to chart the changing shapes of skill and its everyday, non-artisanal and non-professional, consistency.

Readings: if you would like to attend this Reading Group, please email Kate Retford, at k.retford@bbk.ac.uk, to be sent a PDF copy of these texts

  1. Daniel Defoe, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (London, 1719), pp. 120-24.
  2. The Life And most Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (London, 1722), pp. 252-55.
  3. ‘Ambrose Evans’, The Adventures, and Surprizing Deliverances, of James Dubourdieu and his Wife (London, 1719), pp. 1-16
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Georges Bataille Essay Reading Group – Spring Term 2020

All are welcome to attend the newly arranged Bataille Essay Reading Group this term.

For more details please email Chris Milton on: cmilto02@mail.bbk.ac.uk.

Suggestions for essays to discuss in subsequent meetings are welcome. We may move from Bataille’s essays to longer texts in subsequent terms.

Wednesday 22 January 2020

7-9pm

Room 106

The first essay to discuss will be The Passage from Animal to Man and the Birth of Art, which can be found in the volume Bataille, Georges, The Cradle of Humanity: Prehistoric Art and Culture, Zone Books, 2009. Photocopies of the essay can be picked up from Anthony Shepherd  on request.

Future dates:

Wednesday 26 February 2020: 7-9pm, Room 106, 43 Gordon Square

Wednesday 25 March 2020:7-9pm Room 106, 43 Gordon Square

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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.

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Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group – Thursday 21 March

The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group will meet on Thursday 21st March 2019, 14:00-15:30, in Room 101, 30 Russell Square, London, WC1B 5DT. **Please note the change from our usual location** 

 

This session will focus on phenomenological approaches to the medical humanities, and it will be led by Dr Peter Fifield (English and Humanities, Birkbeck) and Dr Mohammed Rashed (Philosophy, Birkbeck). The readings are:

  • Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford UP, 2003), pp. 109-125.
  • Havi Carel, Phenomenology of Illness (Oxford UP, 2016), Chapter 1 – “Why Use Phenomenology to Study Illness?”

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.

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Deleuze and Guattari Reading Group: 5 March 4pm

Deleuze and Guattari Reading Group

Tuesday 5 March from 4pm to 5.30pm

We will discuss the two short pieces below:

Gilles Deleuze – “Desert Islands” in Desert Islands and Other Texts 1953-1974 (2004), 9-14.

AND

“Control and Becoming” in Negotiations (1995), 169-176.

The reading group is organised by BRAKC (Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community).

We will be in room 106 at 43 Gordon Square.

 

All welcome!

Dr Nathalie Wourm

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Birkbeck Eighteenth-Century Reading Group: 13 Feb 12pm Room 106

Birkbeck Eighteenth-Century Reading Group: led by Anna Jamieson, PhD Student in History of Art,  Birkbeck

‘The Sentimental Look in the Asylum: Henry Mackenzie and Sophie von La Roche at Bedlam

Wednesday 13th February, 12-2pm, room 106, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square

Anna Jamieson will introduce two texts which describe visiting Bethlem Royal Hospital, commonly known as Bedlam, during the latter decades of the eighteenth century: Henry Mackenzie’s novel The Man of Feeling (1771) and Sophie von la Roche’s diary entry of her visit in 1786 (attached).

By comparing a literary and first-hand account of a visit to Bethlem, this session will consider the ways in which eighteenth-century tourist practices surrounding medical sites (or as Mackenzie calls them, ‘sights’) were informed by preconceived behavioural ideals. Spanning a period when Bethlem had recently put an end to its infamous practice of allowing the general public to view the mad, these sources mark a crucial turning point in the display of human suffering. Situating these texts amongst a number of key contemporary themes, discourses and debates – including emerging behavioural codes and the notion of performance within certain medical spaces, and how wider concepts such as detachment, disinterestedness and consumption may have impacted a visit and subsequent response – this session will frame Bethlem as an eighteenth-century ‘Dark Tourist’ destination, aligned with, but singular from, other spectacular sites along London’s tourist trail.

The session aims to generate further discussion about the relationship between suffering and spectacle. We will consider how wider sympathetic discourses impacted viewing society’s ‘unfortunates’, which in turn led to a proliferation of texts which instructed individuals ‘how to look’ at suffering.

  • Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (Berwick upon Tweed: John Taylor, 1800), pp.51-61
  • Sophie von La Roche, Sophie in London 1786: being the diary of Sophie v. la Roche. Translated from the German, with an introductory essay, by Clare Williams; With a foreword by G.M. Trevelyan.(London: J.Cape, 1933), pp.161-173

All very welcome! Please  contact Kate Retford – k.retford@bbk.ac.uk – for any further information.

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Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group – 29th November 2018 3pm: Schizophrenia

The Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group will meet on 29th November 2018, 15:00-16:30, in the Keynes Library, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD to consider work on the topic of schizophrenia. This session will be led by Dr Mohammed Rashed, ISSF Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow in Birkbeck’s Department of Philosophy, and the readings are as follows:

  • Colin King (2006) They diagnosed me a schizophrenic when I was just a Gemini. In ‘The other side of madness’. Reconceiving Schizophrenia. Edited by Man Cheung Chung, Bill Fulford, and George Graham (Oxford UP)
  • Angela Woods (2011) Schizophrenia, modernity, postmodernity. In Woods, The Sublime Object of Psychiatry: Schizophrenia in Clinical and Cultural Theory (Oxford UP)

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.

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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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Birkbeck Nineteenth-Century Reading Group – 2018/19 Sessions

The Birkbeck Nineteenth-Century Reading Group meets in Room 106 on Tuesdays at 6.00. We are a friendly group and always welcome new members.

The dates and texts for 2018-2019 are:

  • October 9th: Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
  • November 6th: Under Western Eyes (Conrad)
  • December 4th: What Maisie Knew (James)
  • January 8th: A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
  • February 5th: Stories by Rabindranath Tagore, texts to be advised.
  • March 5th: The Age of Innocence (Wharton)
  • April 2nd: Poetry of James Henry, texts to be advised.
  • May 7th: Fathers and Sons (Turgenev)
  • June 4th: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson)
  • July 2nd: Bartleby the Scrivener (Melville)

For further information contact Susie Paskins susiepaskins@googlemail.com

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Reading Group: Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture in Historical Perspective 9th July 2018

Reading Group: Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture in Historical Perspective

Monday 9th July, 6.30-8pm

Room G01, 43 Gordon Square

This series of reading groups looks at key texts in the history of psychoanalysis, exploring their connections to visual culture. Readings are intended for anyone interested in delving into this literature with a like minded group of non-experts from disciplines across art history, film and media studies etc.

For the second session on Monday 9th July, 6.30pm in room G01, 43 Gordon Square, we’re returning to some classics by Freud:

1) Freud & Josef Breuer, ‘On the Psychical Mechanism of Hysterical Phenomena: Preliminary Communication’, in Studies on Hysteria (1893)

2) Freud, ‘A Dream is the Fulfilment of a Wish’, in The Interpretation of Dreams (1900)

3) Freud, ‘Fragment of an analysis of a case: Dora’ (1905)

Note – this is a fairly long text, so you might want to just read some of the beginning and end parts of it.

4) Freud, ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ (1917)

Readings available to download via google drive:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1I5SBj_5Zb_V-wEbH4dddpd00zzsK5ynT?usp=sharing

If you’re only able to read two or three of the texts, please do still come along. We’re also inviting people to bring a few images that they’re working on – to help spark our visual thinking and draw out any potential connections, applications, tangents etc.

Assuming there’s an appetite to continue the readings, we’ll pick the texts and date for the next session following on from this second one. Please bring suggestions for readings if you have them!

To RSVP and for more information contact:

Alistair Cartwright (Birkbeck, History of Art) — alistaircartwright@gmail.com

Christy Slobogin (Birkbeck, History of Art) — cslobo01@mail.bbk.ac.uk

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