Tag Archives: Reading Group

Posted on by

Medical Humanities Reading Group – 23 February 2017

The next session of the Birkbeck Medical Humanities Reading Group explores the theme of surgery.

Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm (2014) is an account of his work as a neurosurgeon in the NHS. We will also read a short extract from Samer Nashef’s The Naked Surgeon (2015), which details his experiences working as a heart surgeon.

Do No Harm is available for around £5-10 online (including postage); the extract from The Naked Surgeon is available via the Reading Group’s shared dropbox folder (for further details of how to access, please contact Heather on h.tilley@bbk.ac.uk).

We will meet on Thursday 23 February, 3-4.30pm, in Room B02, 43 Gordon Square .

Please note the date for our second reading session this term: Thursday 23 March, 3-4.30pm. It will focus on portraiture and illness and will be led by the artist Tim Wainwright, whose work is currently on exhibition as part of the Hunterian Museum’s show Transplant and Life (until Saturday 20 May 2017). More details of the reading will be circulated soon. Colleagues may also be interested in a forthcoming event at the Hunterian Museum that Tim and his collaborator John Wynne are participating in: ‘Transplant and Life – the artists in conversation’ (Thursday 23 February, 7-9pm). More information on this talk can be found on the Royal College of Surgeon’s website.

For more information please visit our website.

Please do circulate details of the group and readings to interested colleagues and postgraduate students.

Kind regards

Heather

—

Dr Heather Tilley

Birkbeck Wellcome Trust ISSF Fellow

Department of English and Humanities

 

. . Category: Archived Reading Groups . Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted on by

Eighteenth-Century Reading Group, Wednesday 1 February 2017, 12-2pm

Birkbeck Eighteenth-Century Research Group: Reading Group

Wednesday 1 February 2017, 12.00-2.00pm

Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square

National and Cosmopolitan Antiquities in the Late Eighteenth Century (Irish, Scottish, German, Russian)

Readings chosen and introduced by:

Alexis Wolf (PhD candidate, English and Humanities, Birkbeck)

Catherine Angerson (PhD candidate, Cultures and Languages, Birkbeck)

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, Royal Charter (1783), pp. 2-5.

Matthew Guthrie, Dissertations sur les antiquities de Russie (1795), pp. 6-15.

Ekaterina Romanovna Dashkova and Martha Bradford, Memoirs of Princess Daschkaw, Lady of Honour to Catherine II (1840), pp. 16-21.

Johann Gottfried Herder, ‘Extract from a Correspondence on Ossian and the Songs of Ancient Peoples’ (Auszug aus einem Briefwechsel über Ossian und die Lieder alter Völker) (1773) available online in German: http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Herder,+Johann+Gottfried/Theoretische+Schriften/Von+deutscher+Art+und+Kunst/1.+Auszug+aus+einem+Briefwechsel

Gottfried August Bürger, Outpourings from the Heart on Folk Poetry (Herzensausguß über Volkspoesie) (1776) available online in German: https://www.uni-due.de/lyriktheorie/texte/1776_buerger.html

(English translations available)

Alexis Wolf will introduce the writings of Anglo-Irish sisters Martha and Katherine Wilmot, who travelled to Russia between 1803-1808 to live as the guests of Princess Yekaterina Dashkova, a major figure in the Russian Enlightenment, and recorded observations about the customs and songs of Russian peasants, relating them to Dissertations Sur Les Antiquities de Russie (1785) by Matthew Guthrie, a Scottish physician resident in St Petersburg and a Correspondent Member of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, whose Charter is also included in the reading pack. The transnational practice of the Irish women and the Scottish doctor in Russia will be compared to German reflections on the poetry of Ossian through texts by Herder and Bürger introduced by Catherine Angerson.

To request copies of the readings, please email Luisa Calè, l.cale@bbk.ac.uk

 

. . Category: Archived Reading Groups . Tags: , , , ,
Posted on by

Digital Aesthetics Reading Group: 9 December 2016 3pm

The next meeting of the Vasari Research Centre hosted Digital Aesthetics Reading Group will take place on 9 December from 3pm to 5pm in the Vasari.

For this meeting we will be reading two essays from the recent Postdigital Aesthetics: Art, Computation And Design collection (edited by David Berry and Michael Dieter).

The two essays – “Aesthetics of the Banal: ‘New Aesthetics’ in an Era of Diverted Digital Revolutions” by Christian Ulrik Andersen and Søren Bro Pold and “The Genius and the Algorithm: Reflections on the New Aesthetic as a Computer’s Vision” by Stamatia Portanova – are available upon request and all are very welcome to join us.

All best wishes,

Joel McKim

j.mckim@bbk.ac.uk

 

. . Category: Archived Reading Groups . Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted on by

Architecture Space and Society Centre Reading Group 2016-17

Architecture Space and Society Centre Reading Group – 2016-17

Birkbeck’s Architecture Space and Society Centre reading group, which had its first meeting in May, is a forum for wide ranging discussion of architecture, space and society, across periods, geographies and disciplines.

Each session is led by an ASSC member (or 2-3 members), who will assign preparatory tasks.  These will normally be texts to read, but preparation could also include a building, site, or set of images to look at, for instance.

All academics and research students at Birkbeck with an interest in the themes discussed are welcome to participate. We also extend a warm welcome to ASSC speakers from beyond Birkbeck, who are encouraged to invite their research students.

These are the dates and names for 2016-17.  Specifics about themes and texts, etc will be sent out closer to the time.  Scans of texts will be available.

All meetings are on Thursday, 3-4.30pm.

8 December: Leslie Topp – Keynes Library
9 February: Peter Fane-Saunders – B02, 43 Gordon Square
16 March: Mark Crinson – Keynes Library
11 May: Lesley McFadyen – G02, 43 Gordon Square
15 June: Tag Gronberg – Keynes Library

For details of the reading group and the texts/themes discussed in the first session, please see – http://www.bbk.ac.uk/assc/reading-group/

. . Category: Events, Reading Groups . Tags: , , ,
Posted on by

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).

. . Category: Archived Events, Archived Reading Groups . Tags: , , ,
Posted on by

Architecture, Space and Society Centre: Reading Group 19th May 2016

Birkbeck’s Architecture Space and Society Centre is inaugurating a reading group. It will be a forum for wide ranging discussion of architecture, space and society, across periods, geographies and disciplines.

Each session will be led by an ASSC member (or 2-3 members), who will assign preparatory tasks.  These will normally be texts to read, but preparation could also include a building, site, or set of images to look at, for instance.

All academics and research students at Birkbeck with an interest in the themes discussed are welcome to participate. ASSC speakers from beyond Birkbeck will also be invited and encouraged to invite their research students.

1st session, Thursday 19 May 3.30-5pm, 43 Gordon Sq, Room 112

Architecture Across Time – led by Nic Sampson and Leslie Topp

To inaugurate the reading group, we have chosen two texts which address the question of what happens when we look at issues in architecture across disparate time periods.

Alexander Nagel, Medieval Modern: Art out of Time (2012), chapters 2, 18 and 19.

Reyner Banham, ‘Revenge of the Picturesque: English Architectural Polemics, 1945-1965’ in John Summerson, ed., Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing presented to Nikolaus Pevsner (1968)

Nagel’s book is a provocative argument for a new flexibility in history of art that tries to shake up our strict adherence to periods and style, and see important multiple connections between modern and pre-modern art.  We’ll read a short intro chapter in which he sets out his stall and two chapters (also fairly short) on the medieval cathedral and early 20th-c architectural modernism (German and Russian).

The Banham essay, with its rich account of the polemics around British post-war modernism and various periods and traditions in pre-modern architecture (from Renaissance humanism to 18th-century picturesque), is a lively document of post-war debates about period-hopping with a close link to Birkbeck’s famous past Professor Pevsner.

If you are interested in attending please contact Leslie Topp (l.topp@bbk.ac.uk), who can send you the readings.

The reading group will be followed by:

Thurs 19 May, 18.00-19.30, Birkbeck main building, entered off Torrington Square, Room 153

Mark Crinson, ‘Brutalism: From New to Neo’

The last few years have seen a wealth of publications and exhibitions about Brutalism, yet without any quite seeming definitive. This talk from Professor Mark Crinson (Manchester) sifts through them, and attempts to separate what they say about our present preoccupations from what they say about the past. What was Brutalism? Why does it still seem to separate us into either ardent advocates or angry critics? This public talk looks ahead to Professor Crinson joining History of Art at Birkbeck.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/brutalism-from-new-to-neo-tickets-24343471980

. . Category: Archived Reading Groups . Tags: , ,
Posted on by

Digital Aesthetics Reading Group: 4th May 2016

School of Arts Research Students are invited to attend the inaugural meeting of the Digital Aesthetics Reading Group on Wednesday 4 May from 6-8pm. The reading group is organized by the Vasari Research Centre for Art and Technology and meetings will be held in the Vasari (basement of 43 Gordon Square, below the cinema). The reading group is an opportunity for Birkbeck staff and graduate students interested in digital culture and aesthetics to gather and discuss relevant texts, artworks and developments in the field.

For this first meeting we will discuss a chapter from Orit Halpern’s recent book Beautiful Data: A History of Vision and Reason since 1945 and screen a selection of film work produced by the designers Ray and Charles Eames.

Please find attached reading here: Halpern Beautiful Data

. . Category: Archived Reading Groups . Tags: , , ,
Posted on by

London 18th-Century Postgraduate Reading Group: ‘The Dangerous Mix of Atomism & Poetry’, 19 April 2016

 

The second session of the London 18th-Century postgraduate reading group will be at 12.30pm on Tuesday 19th April in Room S3.05, Strand Building, King’s College London, WC2R 2LS. We’ll be continuing with the theme of Resentment and Regard (more details on the group’s blog, here).

‘Whatever in Lucretius is Poetry is not Philosophical, whatever is Philosophical is not Poetry’ – Samuel Taylor Coleridge to William Wordsworth, May 1815.

The week’s reading is focused on the simultaneous resentment and regard directed towards Lucretius’s poetics from the late seventeenth-century English translations onwards. Seen as a prime example of atheistic poetry, the publication of various translations of Lucretius’s De Rerum Natura provoked many backlashes that both regarded the high quality of his poetic verse whilst resenting the atomistic philosophy it aimed to teach its readers. We will look at various commentaries on Lucretius and his translations across the early to mid-eighteenth century as a way of discussing the interactions between poetics and dangerous philosophies in the period:

 

– Lucy Hutchinson’s dedication to her unpublished 1675 translation of De Rerum Natura [Available online here]

– John Dryden’s comments on Lucretius in his ‘Preface to Sylvae’ [Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online here, images 10-18]

– Thomas Creech’s Preface to his 1682 translation of De Rerum Natura, [Available on Early English Books Online here, images 8-11]

– Aphra Behn’s ‘To the Unknown Daphnis on his Excellent Translation of Lucretius’, [Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online here, images 62-65]

– Richard Blackmore’s preface to his 1712 anti-Lucretian poem Creation [Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online here, looking at pages 1-2; 32-52]

– Later comments on Lucretius in the 1740 The Christian Free-Thinker: Or an Epistolary Discourse Concerning Freedom of Thought [Available on Eighteenth Century Collections Online here, pages 28-34]

 

Topics to discuss might include: the religious ramifications involved in a turn towards a classical past; the use of poetics to present philosophy; the power and danger of poetry; the place of Lucretius’s poetry as part of a gendered resentment in Behn and Hutchinson; the balance of regard for poetics and resentment for philosophy; the use of poetics to simultaneously promote and overturn.

For optional critical material on the place of Lucretius in the eighteenth-century, see: David Hopkins, ‘The English Voices of Lucretius from Lucy Hutchinson to John Mason Good’, in The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 254-273.

For further information (and for copies of the readings if you cannot access them through your institution), please contact Robert Stearn (rstear01@mail.bbk.ac.uk) or James Morland (james.morland@kcl.ac.uk).

You can read about the first session’s discussion here.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , , ,
Posted on by

Birkbeck 18th Century Research Group: Reading Group, Tuesday 16 February 2016

Birkbeck Eighteenth-Century Research Group: Reading Group
Date: Tuesday 16th February 2016
Time: 12.30-2 pm
Location: Room 112, School of Arts, Gordon Square

 

A Life Scribbled in the Margins: The World of Joseph Bufton of Coggeshall, 1650-1718

Brodie Waddell, Lecturer in Early Modern History at Birkbeck

Joseph Bufton was an inconsequential tradesman who lived a rather ordinary life in later Stuart Essex. However, unlike almost all of his contemporaries, he left a substantial collection of writings to posterity, comprising eleven volumes of notes, memorandum, extracts and even some poetry. He used the blank pages and margins of printed almanacs to chronicle his family, his trade, his community, his religion and his nation. Dr. Brodie Waddell will introduce Bufton and attempt to show why we should care about this obscure individual. What is the value of such a microhistory?

Dr. Waddell researches early modern English history, focusing on social relations, economic life and popular culture. His book is entitled God, Duty and Community in English Economic Life, 1660-1720 (Boydell, 2012), and his most recent article is ‘The Politics of Economic Distress in the Aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, 1689-1702’, English Historical Review (April 2015).

In preparation for the reading group, please take a look at the selection of extracts from two of Bufton’s notebooks printed in Historical Manuscripts Commission, Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections, Vol. VIII (1912), pp. 569-92. Digital images of the original three of the volumes are available at: https://library.leeds.ac.uk/special-collections-explore/167025. Alternatively, please contact Kate Retford k.retford@bbk.ac.uk for a copy.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , , , ,
Posted on by

Birkbeck Medical Humanities reading group events in Spring term, 2016

This Spring term, the Birkbeck Medical Humanities reading group will explore the theme of medicine and care.

First session: Wednesday 17 February

Time: 3.30-5:00pm

Where: Room 112, 43 Gordon Square.

We will look at Marion Coutts’s The Iceberg: A Memoir (2015), an account of the death of her husband, Tom Lubbock. Please note that we will not be supplying copies of this book, but rather ask members to borrow or buy the book directly themselves. It is available online to buy for between £7-9, or available on Kindle for around £4.50.
Our next session will be held on Wednesday 16 March, 3.30-5pm, also in room 112, 43 Gordon Square. I will circulate details of reading nearer the time.

More information on the reading group, including past events, is available on our website.

. . Category: Archived Events . Tags: , , , ,