Tag Archives: English and Humanities

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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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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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Vacancy C19: Postgraduate Editorial Intern in Academic Publishing Online – deadline extended 5 October 2018

The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies

seeks a Postgraduate Editorial Intern in Academic Publishing Online

The Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies invites applications from Birkbeck’s postgraduate research students for an Internship in Academic Publishing Online to manage our web journal:

19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century

(www.19.bbk.ac.uk)

Deadline for application: 5.00pm on Friday 5 October 2018

The Journal

Launched on 1 October 2005, 19 is an electronic publishing initiative originally designed to publicize and disseminate the research activities carried out by Birkbeck’s Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies, and to provide practical research and professional development opportunities for the many postgraduate students undertaking research degrees in nineteenth-century studies at the College. The journal is now housed in the Open Library of Humanities https://www.openlibhums.org, allowing free and open access to its contents. It is fully peer-reviewed and aggregated with NINES (Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-Century Electronic Scholarship). It is now recognized and respected as a leading journal in the field, known for exciting, leading research and as an innovative and field-setting example of Open Access practice.

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 annual Dickens Day; and organizes and hosts major conferences, workshops and symposia. The Centre also provides opportunities for Postgraduate students to organise and run events.

The Position

The postgraduate editorial internship in Academic Publishing Online trains a student to manage 19, working with another intern under the supervision of the journal’s General Editor, Dr Carolyn Burdett, its section Editor, Dr Victoria Mills, and the Editor for systems, Dr David Gillott, and with the guidance of the Editorial Board. The appointee will participate fully in the day-to-day running of the journal and help manage the Centre’s website.  Responsibilities include maintenance and resourcing of 19 and the Centre’s website; liaising with and between guest editor, authors and publisher; overseeing the smooth operation of the peer review system; supporting authors in securing image permissions; copy editing essays and other submitted materials; aiding the proofing processes; promoting and publicizing the journal; and taking an active role in web publishing initiatives, including innovation to increase the journal’s reach and influence. The postholder will be supported and mentored by an intern already in post and, in turn, will mentor the next intern. There will also be Centre-focused activity, including curation of the Centre’s presence in social media and elsewhere, and help with blog initiatives; contributing to the archiving of the Centre’s work; and participation in initiatives with postgraduate students working in the nineteenth century. Postholders will attend Centre meetings, and will be expected to be active participants and, where appropriate, helpers in the Centre’s programme of seminars, conferences and symposia.

Eligibility

We invite applications from postgraduate research students from across the College.  Research interests in the nineteenth century are desirable but not essential, though we would expect applicants to have some interest in the period. Applicants should expect to be enrolled as students at Birkbeck until end of the academic year 2019-20. Exceptionally, students in their first year of MPhil/PhD can be appointed but the norm will be for students to have completed their first year of study.

Selection Criteria

Essential

  • Excellent literacy skills
  • Organizational and clerical skills
  • Independence and initiative
  • Good communication skills

Desirable but NOT essential

  • Research interests in Nineteenth-Century Studies
  • Web authoring and design skills
  • Experience in electronic publishing
  • Editing experience
  • Organization of research activities such as Reading Groups, Seminars or Conferences

Remuneration

£16.00 per hour. The hours will be agreed on a flexible basis with the General Editor (spread across one calendar 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 CV, together with the name of your supervisor, from whom we will require a reference, to Dr Carolyn Burdett (c.burdett@bbk.ac.uk) in the School of Arts by 5.00pm on Friday 5 October 2018.  Shortlisted candidates will be interviewed early on in the autumn term (date tbc).

Please direct any enquiries to Dr Carolyn Burdett (c.burdett@bbk.ac.uk).

 

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Poetry against Slavery: guided tours in October and November 2018

Poetry against Slavery: guided tours in October and November 2018

This guided tour takes place at 12pm and 3pm on Thu 4 October (National Poetry Day), Sun 14 October, Sun 21 October, Thu 25 October, Sun 18 November, Thu 22 November and Sat 24 November. Venue: Museum of London Docklands, No. 1 Warehouse, West India Quay, London E14 4AL. The tour and museum entry are both free. All welcome with no need to book.

The London, Sugar & Slavery gallery at the Museum of London Docklands is a unique resource for exploring London’s involvement in the transatlantic slave trade, and for understanding the trade’s present-day legacies. As part of the museum’s Black History Month programme in October, and during the nationwide Being Human Festival in November, Matt Martin (Stuart Hall Research Scholar and PhD student in the Contemporary Poetics Research Centre at Birkbeck) will lead one-hour guided tours of the gallery, showcasing his research into how poetry has galvanised resistance against the oppression of African, Caribbean and Black British people.

From Africa’s rich heritage, through preservation of cultural legacies during slavery, to recent political activism, you will encounter and discuss poems that give voice to objects and images in the museum. Discover how African cultural origins have influenced language and poetry in the Caribbean, how poems inspired anti-slavery action in the Caribbean and the UK, and how later poets have drawn upon this history to oppose continuing racial injustices. The spoken and written word will emerge as powerful ways to build solidarity among and between communities. No advance reading required – all texts will be provided on the day.

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CFP: BRAKC Research Centre 2018-19: Deadline 30 September 2018

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? BRAKC was established ten years ago and since then we have organised many conferences, symposia, seminars, reading groups, exhibitions, interrogating the concepts of “family”, “kinship”, and “community”.

We would like to encourage interested research students in the School of Arts to play a prominent role in the activities of the centre. We invite proposals for research events in 2018-19. Some funding is available if needed for the organisation of these events. Although organisers will not be paid, they will have something to add to their CVs!

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words to Dr Nathalie Wourm, Director of BRAKC, by 30 September 2018. Selected proposals will be announced shortly after that, and the events will be organised in cooperation with BRAKC.

Email: n.wourm@bbk.ac.uk

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

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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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CFP Elegy: New Approaches – Deadline for Abstracts: 3 August 2018

Elegy: New Approaches

Department of English Studies and the Centre for Poetry and Poetics

Durham University, September 14, 2018

Extended Deadline for Abstracts: 3 August 2018

Keynote Speaker: Professor Stephen Regan

Elegy, as Jahan Ramanzani observes, is the ‘mimesis of mourning’. It is the poetic form and distillation of our common response to loss, meeting the need for consolation and renewal in the face of death. It fulfils several cathartic requirements: the expression of grief, anger, and disbelief; the idealisation of what is lost; and the preservation of its memory. Elegy’s catalyst can emerge as the death of a loved one or exemplary figure (often a fellow poet, as in Alfred Tennyson’s ‘In Memoriam’), the loss of love itself, or the loss of values that have receded from the cultural consciousness.

Traditionally considered as a mode of consolation and reassurance, in modernity these tendencies have sometimes been questioned and rejected. How can the elegy function effectively, for example, in the era of police brutality and Black Lives Matter, or in the aftermath of the recent mass shootings at US high schools? Conversely, can elegy as a genre of response open up new ways of thinking about socio-political issues – can the homoerotics of certain Roman love elegies, for instance, help us explore the grief reaction to the AIDS crisis of the 1980s? For this conference, we seek papers that investigate new approaches to the elegy in its many forms, be it the elegies of the Civil Rights Movement, responses to political violence (such as the hauntingly beautiful poems of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley), elegies of Diaspora, or the prominent elegies in the English tradition. We also welcome papers that consider the elegiac response as something that exceeds the poetic lyric: a diary entry of Woolf’s, for example, deliberates whether ‘elegy’ should supplant ‘novel’ when describing works such as To the Lighthouse, and traditions of ritual mourning such as keening can be approached as intersections of social and literary conventions. Our aim is to foreground these ‘texts’ as elegiac in their own right and to showcase recent research in this area.

This conference is envisioned as a forum for reflection on the current state of research on elegy and on potentially fruitful directions for future exploration. The organisers are especially keen to elicit proposals pertaining to new and emergent areas of interest, and/or which take an interdisciplinary approach to the subject. We also welcome proposals relating to elegies outside of the Anglophone tradition, although for the purpose of this conference all presentations must be delivered in English.

We invite proposals for 20 minute papers on the theme of elegy and the elegiac, broadly considered. Please send a 250 word abstract and a mini-biography (50-100 words) to Dr Laura McKenzie at elegy2018@gmail.com by 3 August 2018. For further details visit the conference website at https://bit.ly/2IMY5ya.

 

Contact Info: 

Dr Laura McKenzie

Department of English Studies

Durham University

 

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Volunteer Opportunity: London Science Fiction Conference 14/15 September 2018

The London Science Fiction Research Community (LSFRC), run by fellow research students Aren Roukema and Rhodri Davies, is in need of people (or self-identifing AIs) to assist with its 2018 conference, “Sublime Cognition: Science Fiction and Metaphysics”.

Interested parties would be able to help in a number of different areas, including setup, welcome and registration, refreshments, technical assistance and chairing of panels (if suitable research experience). This opportunity would be particularly valuable for students looking to gain conference organisation experience and make new contacts in science fiction studies and related fields. Free admission will be provided.

“Sublime Cognition” will take place 14–15 September at Gordon Square. The conference will feature keynotes from Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck) and Helen de Cruz (Oxford Brookes), as well as a roundtable with SF authors Justina Robson, Jeff Noon, and Fiona Moore, and panel presentations from more than 30 speakers.

Please contact Aren Roukema or Rhodri Davies at lsfrcmail@gmail.com.”

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Birkbeck Eighteenth-Century Research Group – Artisanal Knowledge and Practical Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century 9 May 2018

Birkbeck Eighteenth-Century Research Group

Artisanal Knowledge and Practical Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century

Postgraduate Workshop and Lecture by Ruth Mack (SUNY, Buffalo)

Wednesday 9 May, 4.30-8pm, Keynes Library, Birkbeck School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square

  1. 4.30-6.00: Postgraduate Workshop, organized by Robert Stearn

In her chapter ‘Hogarth’s Practical Aesthetics’, Ruth Mack asks: ‘what does it mean, exactly, to make a theory of beauty artisanally?’

In the first part of this workshop, postgraduate students and early career researchers will give short presentations on objects and problems drawn from their research. Responding to Ruth’s chapter, these will explore how diverse instances of image-making, cataloguing, classifying, reproducing, and theorising engage with artisanal knowledge, and the potentially troubled relation of such knowledge to theory and to the everyday.

In the second, Ruth will respond to these presentations, opening a discussion in which we will use her chapter and the materials presented to shape a conversation about the place of practical knowledge in eighteenth-century natural philosophy, aesthetic theory, artistic practice, and commercial production. What does it mean to call such knowledge maker’s knowledge, or to say that it is corporeal or embodied knowledge? How might such a framework account for desire and pleasure, or for the division of labour? We hope you can join us to think about these questions and more.

Presentations

  • Marianne Brooker (Birkbeck): ‘This Laborious, Expensive, and Arduous Undertaking’: Thomas Martyn’s Universal Conchologist (1784-7) and his ‘Principles of a Private Establishment’
  • Felicity Roberts (King’s College London): Sir Hans Sloane, Classification, Cataloguing, Detail and Delight
  • Rees Arnott-Davies (Independent): Jan van Rymsdyk’s Theory of Image Making
  • Robert Stearn (Birkbeck): George Bickham the younger’s Rococo Knowledge of Everyday Life
  • Miriam Al Jamil (Birkbeck): Dancer, Mistress, Venus, Queen: The Multiple Identities of a Statue

Attendees are encouraged to read Ruth’s chapter, ‘Hogarth’s Practical Aesthetics’, in Mind, Body, Motion, Matter, ed. M. H.McMurran and A.Conway (Toronto, 2016), which is available here: http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=604622.

  1. 6.00-8.00, ‘Equiano and Craft’, Lecture by Ruth Mack

This paper examines the concept of embodied knowledge as it is worked out through Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative. Many of the questions brought to Equiano’s text over the past decade concern issues of authenticity and identity (asked in especially provocative form in Vincent Carretta’s biography of Equiano). I aim to examine the root of these debates over the location of identity in Equiano’s own thought. I will contextualize Equiano’s thinking about society in terms of related Scottish Enlightenment theories he would have known well. But the center of the paper will concern craft or maker’s knowledge and its strange fate in the formation of Equiano’s social theory. Here, I will look at the way craft is both embraced and distanced from the form of subjectivity Equiano wishes to claim, tainted as craft must be by its association with the slave’s merely bodily identity, as the slave trade conceived of it. Working through this tension in his relation to craft ultimately gives Equiano the terms for an ethnography of his African homeland that is both aesthetic and, ultimately, political.

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