Category: Theme: Arts and Humanities

The Art of Not Doing Conference – call for papers


In a culture that valorises busyness, productivity, pace and “progress”, stillness can be radical. Refusing, ignoring, omitting, not doing; sometimes the most political actions look like doing nothing at all. But who gets to not do? When and how is not doing a politicised, racialised, privileged, resistant or utopian act?

Through conversation, provocation, installation and self-care, we look at unproductivity as an activist practice and the ways in which caring, resting, suspending, pausing and breaking can be re/claimed as political acts by and for everyone, particularly those marginalised by the racial and gender inequalities of neo-liberal capitalism.

As part of this one-day conference, we are inviting paper proposals/provocations and interdisciplinary submissions from Birkbeck graduate students, early career researchers and individuals from wider academic, creative and activist communities. Alongside paper proposals, we welcome submissions of artworks, shorts films, and proposals for performances and acts of care. Please read the about section before submitting.

Deadline for submissions: 10th of June

Send submissions to: theartofnotdoingconf@gmail.com

View call for papers poster

Conference website

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BIMI-PITT Research Workshop: Displacement in film and visual culture

BIMI-PITT RESEARCH WORKSHOP: “DISPLACEMENT IN FILM AND VISUAL CULTURE”

WEDNESDAY 15 – FRIDAY 17 MAY 2019

The third edition of the biennial research workshop organised by Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) and the University of Pittsburgh Film Programme will take place Wednesday 15 May to Friday 17 May 2019 in Birkbeck Cinema.

The idea of the workshop is to bring together faculty and postgraduate students from Birkbeck and Pittsburgh to share their ongoing research, to get to know each other in person, and to develop collaborative research projects together.

Previous editions – “Cinema and the City” (2015) and “Urban Change” (2017) – have been both productive and enjoyable occasions, generating several joint research initiatives, including journal publications, student and staff exchanges, public lectures, curatorial projects, and study days.

The forthcoming edition is entitled “Displacement”, a theme that for the purposes of the workshop can be interpreted from any angle or approach, as long as there is some connection to film, moving image, or visual culture.

Free to register

The workshop is free and open to all, regardless of affiliation. However, we will be especially pleased to welcome Birkbeck staff and students from Arts, Law, SSHP, and Science, across the range of research areas and disciplines that BIMI is committed to representing as part of its mission at Birkbeck: Applied Linguistics, Cultures & Languages, English & Humanities, Film & Media, Geography, History, History of Art, Law, Philosophy, Politics, Psychological Sciences, and Psychosocial Studies.

If you would like to attend the workshop, please register here, as this will help us to know who is coming:

Alternatively, you can let us know by email (bimi@bbk.ac.uk). We look forward to seeing you there, as it is the quality of discussion and conversation that has made the previous workshops such memorable events.

The Margaret Elise Harkness Prize, application deadline 17 May 2019

Opportunity: The Margaret Elise Harkness Prize, application deadline 17 May 2019

The Margaret Elise Harkness prize is an annual award made by the Birkbeck Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies in recognition of outstanding postgraduate work on a Nineteenth-Century woman associated with the arts, social/political activism, or global travel and writing in long nineteenth century. The prize was established in 2018 to honour the work of the writer and activist Margaret E. Harkness (1854-1923). The amount of the award is £1000.

Eligibility

This prize is open to students currently enrolled in PhD programmes in the School of Arts at Birkbeck.

Application
  • Submission of an A4 page describing your project by 5pm 17thMay 2019 to Dr Ana Parejo Vadillo.
  • Jury: Dr Ana Parejo Vadillo (Chair), Dr Vicky Mills (Co-Director, Centre Nineteenth-Century Studies), Flore Janssen (ISSF Fellow)

Highlighted CHASE Training Opportunities

The following events and opportunities are available via the AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Programme. All of the opportunities below are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded or self-funded.

Diverse Methodological Approaches to PhDs in Law

Thursday 2 May – Saturday 4 May 2019 | 0900-1730

Room TC 1.9, University of Essex

Legal research entails the evaluation of legal phenomena in their political, social, cultural, doctrinal or other contexts. Contemporary modes of inquiry into legal phenomena increasingly use more than one discipline in the production of interdisciplinary research and writing. Even subjects that were traditionally taught by way of the doctrinal method have opened up to socio-legal approaches. There is a much greater emphasis on the sociology of law, and the social and political forces that shape legal doctrine and institutions. Law as a social phenomenon can be understood empirically through a range of different methods. Thus, contemporary postgraduate researchers need to expand beyond the black letter law training of practitioners and be aware of major trends in the social sciences of relevance to their own research and future careers. The key idea behind the multidisciplinary workshop for law postgraduate research students is to introduce candidates to a broad range of theoretical and practical approaches to legal research.

This three day workshop will consist of workshops, and informal networking.

Find out more and register

Film Screening + Q&A: ‘Berlin Childhood around 1900’ – A Project in Progress

May 10, 2019 | Professor Stuart Hall Building, Goldsmiths

Following the success of her photography series inspired by the Berlin Childhood texts (Berlin Childhood, published by Steidl in 2001), artist and photographer Aura Rosenberg embarked on a collaborative project with filmmaker Frances Scholz, featuring Walter Benjamin’s granddaughter, Chantal Benjamin, and her daughter, Lais Benjamin Campos. The project, which is still in progress today, consists of disparate film segments based on the original textual vignettes. The short films revisit the sites of Walter Benjamin’s childhood in contemporary Berlin, resulting in an uncanny continuity of experience as they depict his great-granddaughter in the different phases of her own urban childhood.

Find out more and register

Gender (In)Equality in the Historical Professions

0930 – 1630 | Wednesday 15 May 2019

This Training and Research Workshop at the University of Essex aims to bring together historians from different stages of their careers: Masters Level students, PhD researchers, post doctoral researchers, Lecturers, Readers and Professors, together with historians who work outside of academia, to share and reflect upon experiences, develop collaborative strategies and build networks which will act to support historians facing gender bias and inequality in their chosen profession.  The workshop will be non-hierarchical, with panels being made up of historians from different stages in their career, and will focus upon small group discussion.  Participants will produce a ‘zine at the end of the workshop, and plenty of time for informal networking will be built into the day’s timetable.

Find out more and register

Gender History in a Non-Binary World: A Workshop for Doctoral Students

Friday 17 May 2019 | 1000-1700

Room GOR 124, Birkbeck, 43 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD

This workshop offers training for students in ways of researching, teaching and engaging the public in histories of gender nonconformity, non-binary and transgender experiences. The workshop will be relevant to historians of all periods and students working on gender and/or sexuality in literature and art history.

Working with leading historians, archivists and museum professionals, participants will address issues such as:

  • Working with documentary and oral sources to research gender nonconformity in the past
  • Developing techniques to recognise diverse and marginalised histories and work with sources sensitively
  • The importance of developing diverse historical narratives around gender and communicating them to the public
  • Advantages and challenges of co-production with marginalised communities
  • Complexity of teaching non-binary and transgender histories to students who identify as cis, trans and non-binary
  • Navigating historical research into trans and non-binary lives in the context of a divisive and fraught contemporary political terrain

Find out more and register

Writing for Pleasure, Writing for Publishing Workshop

Wednesday 29 May 2019 | 1000 – 1500

Wivenhoe House, Colchester Campus, University of Essex

In this two-part workshop, Professor Helen Sword and Dr Will Pooley make an evidence-based case for recuperating pleasure as a legitimate (and indeed crucial) academic emotion. Via practical exercises, they show how you can enjoy writing, and in this way become a more engaging communicator, skilful wordsmith and productive researcher.

Find out more and register

Highlighted CHASE opportunities

The following events and opportunities are available via the AHRC funded CHASE Doctoral Training Programme. All of the opportunities below are open to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded or self-funded.

+ 19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century – Placement available

Applications for this placement are open to all arts and humanities PhD student at Birkbeck, regardless of whether they are funded by CHASE. The successful applicant will receive a stipend, fee reimbursement and the opportunity to claim expenses. The deadline for applications is 29 March.

Art at the Frontier of Film Theory: Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen

22 March – 25 May 2019

From 22 March to 24 May, Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image and the Essay Film Festival is hosting a unique programme of research events about the work of filmmakers and film theorists Laura Mulvey and Peter Wollen. The programme comprises an exhibition at Birkbeck’s Peltz Gallery, a film season, a series of ‘In Conversation’ events and Gallery Workshops, a Curators’ Talk, and a student-led Symposium.

 CHASE training opportunities

Media Skills Training – 5 spaces available

19 March | 0900-1700 | Camden, London

This interactive workshop leads from identifying the elements of a good media story in academic research, through the challenges of dealing with the media and the competing pressures of academic and journalistic methods to final on-camera interviews and playback analysis. Run by Media Players International, this one-day workshops will help you understand what makes for good communication through the general media. It also directly address the issues of impact and media strategy required by the Research Excellence Framework.

Performing Theory: Speaking in Tongues

Friday 29 March | 1400-1700 | Birkbeck Cinema

This series of Master Classes aims to present a wide variety of approaches to the artistic production of ideas in audio-visual form.  We are inviting performance artists and moving image makers whose work (written, performed, filmed) manifests theoretical innovation.  The latter part of the 20th century produced body of Anglo-American writing and work that are recognised today as canonical as with Hollis Frampton, Maya Deren, Peter Gidal for example.  With this series we want to produce a sample of this kind of interplay between ideas and creating that are underway today.  In so doing, we hope to open the field of play between theory and works to create new conversations.

The inaugural session in the series is Speaking in Tongues: a lecture-performance by Christopher Harris. Throughout his career artist and filmmaker Christopher Harris has used film and video installations to re-stage and explore African American accounts of history. Using experimental film techniques, Harris brings disparate mediums into dialogue with one another, in order to present multiple perspectives highlighting experiences of the African diaspora.

BAME Creative Writing Masterclass Series – further session added: Sabrina Mahfouz

Wednesday 27 March | 1400-1600 | The Enterprise Centre, UEA, TEC 0.02

Sabrina Mahfouz has recently been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and is the recipient of the 2018 King’s Alumni Arts & Culture Award. She has been shortlisted for The Stage Award for Best Solo Performance, a Women in the Creative Industries Award, an Arts Foundation Award for Performance Poetry and has won a Sky Arts Academy Award for Poetry, a Westminster Prize for New Playwrights and a Fringe First Award. She also writes for children and her play Zeraffa Giraffa won a 2018 Off West End Award.

Sabrina is the editor of The Things I Would Tell You: British Muslim Women Write, a 2017 Guardian Book of the Year and currently nominated for The People’s Book Prize. She is an essay contributor to the multi-award-winning The Good Immigrant and is currently writing a biopic of the legendary ‘Godfather of Grime’, rapper and producer Wiley, for Pulse Films.

Sharing Feminist Research and Practice

“And where the words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognise our responsibility to seek those words out, to read them and share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives. That we not hide behind the mockeries of separation that have been imposed on us and which so often we accept as our own.”
Audre Lorde

 Sharing Feminist Research, Methods and Practice Event 

The CHASE Feminist Network was borne of discussions wishing to provide spaces of resistance in what continues to be a patriarchal higher education sector, with ongoing and intersectional discrimination happening at all levels. We seek to create a community of inspirational people inside and outside of CHASE who are challenging this environment, provide spaces for discussion, and offer support for innovative projects and events. The network is transpositive and intersectional, and places a strong emphasis on the importance of interdisciplinary commitments to feminist research and practice and welcomes a wide variety of creative, artistic, historical, literary, theoretical, and experimental contributions.

We would like to invite proposals for contributions to our two-day event from staff and students at CHASE funded institutions. We hope to receive proposals for a variety of formats, including individual or collaborative papers (20 minutes), workshop suggestions, themed topic roundtables, creative workshops, and performances, which aim to demonstrate the plurality and the breadth of feminist expression across CHASE.

This event wishes to address how discrimination within the academy, the unequal distribution of emotional labour, and imbedded cultures of privilege, can be troubled, disrupted and overturned through feminist approaches in academia. Taking feminist methodologies and pedagogies as its central focus, the event aims to address the complexities and nuances of working in a feminist way whether feminism is a focus of the research or not.

We welcome submissions that consider queer and feminist ways doing of research, cultural analysis, teaching, and artistic practice. How can this operate through activism? How can a feminist approach become an act of resistance in itself in spaces of intersectional oppression? How can feminism be an everyday practice of resistance to hierarchies in the academy and beyond, as a way of creating and recreating our own academic identities in a hostile system? We are particularly interested in submissions that address, but are not limited to:

  • Trans rights and visibility
  • Race, legacies of empire and decolonising the curriculum
  • Motherhood, childcare and caring responsibilities
  • Feminism and (dis)ability
  • Precarious employment and the pay gap
  • Gender and austerity
  • Gender and age(ism)

The event will include a workshop on identifying the relevance of feminism in your research.

Please complete the form below with an abstract no more than 300 outlining your submission idea with a short bio by 30th November.  We are also pleased to announce that we have a childcare fund available for this event.

Please submit your abstract and bio here: https://goo.gl/forms/txtVituZQ0fOUISL2

For any queries, please do not hesitate to contact chase.feminist@gmail.com

Dandelion Journal – Call for Editors for 2018-19

Dandelion (dandelionjournal.org) is the Postgraduate Arts Journal in the School of Arts, run by research students. The Journal encourages a multi-disciplinary research approach to the Arts, and provides a supportive environment to the publishing experience, offering a space to develop and showcase thoughts and ideas whilst shaping, and writing on, your research.

Current Birkbeck School of Arts Postgraduate Students are encouraged to join the Dandelion Journal Editorial Team for the academic year 2018/19. No publishing or editorial experience is necessary: you will learn editorial skills as you go. Although, if any, these will be a valuable asset.
Your research area should lie within, or across, the fields of: History of Art, Museum Cultures, Film, Media and Cultural Studies, English and Humanities, and Cultures and Languages. You can be at any stage in your research.

We are looking for:
1. General Editors (suitable for PhD students)
2. Subject Editors (suitable for MA or PhD students)

About the roles:
1. General Editors will start the production of the new Volume in December 2018 and will be responsible for the editorial supervision of the next Dandelion volume. They will be selecting the new theme and writing the Call for Papers, setting the timetable for the issue, selecting Subject Editors, commissioning articles, and sharing production management tasks.

2. Subject Editors will be required to edit and copyedit two or three articles (between 1500 – 8000 words) – the timing of this will be confirmed by the appointed General Editors (it may range, for example, between April and August 2019). You will be asked to attend two or three editorial meetings with the rest of the team during this time. You will also be welcome to contribute to events planning, design, typesetting etc. Subject Editors are assigned to articles, and therefore advise contributors, according to their subject area expertise.

If you are interested then we would love to hear from you. Please send an email expressing your interest in either editorial role, and detailing any relevant experience you may have, by Saturday 1st December to mail@dandelionjournal.org. In your email please include details of which
research programme you are enrolled in, and the research area you are focusing on. If you have any questions then please do get in touch – we will be happy to answer them.

We look forward to hearing from you.
The editors
Donatella Valente and Jenny Turner

B R E A T H I N G

The Arts Research Dandelion Journal is pleased to announce the release of the New Autumn Issue, b r e a t h i n g.

“Through the critical reflections brought together in this issue, and beyond them — in the films, art installations, sculptures, drawings, paintings, histories, writings, videos and photographs on which they draw — Dandelion seeks to invoke a meditative journey, and a dynamic and affective encounter with  b r e a t h i n g.” (1)

With contributions from:
  • Breathing Through the Medium: Representations of Refugees in Contemporary Art, Greta Adorni
  • From Exhalation to Transformation: The Female Body in the Orientalist Romance, Pauline Suwanban
  • Mobile, Malleable, and Modified: Tapestry in Early Modern Literature, Masuda Qureshi
  • B r e a t h i n g in Apichatpong, Donatella Valente

  • Hyperventilations, Dylan Williams
  • We Can’t Breathe, Anna Jamieson and Kasia Ozga
  • Breathe: Making the Invisible Visible, Carly Robinson and Elizabeth Pimentel de Çetin
  • Breathless Rictus: Ken Currie’s Krankenhaus, Christine Slobogin
About Dandelion:

The Arts Research Dandelion Journal is based in the School of Arts at Birkbeck. The journal is for and by postgraduate research students and early-career academics, and gathers contributions not only from Birkbeck, but also from other academic institutions. It encourages a multi-disciplinary research approach to the Arts, and provides a supportive environment to the publishing experience, combined with precise editing advice by Subject Editors expert in the contributor’s area of research. Dandelion aims to offer a space to develop and showcase your many serendipitous thoughts and ideas you encounter whilst shaping, and writing on, your research. Dandelion disseminates Call for Papers generally once a year, although you are welcome to generate a specific topic and / or even guest-edit a small supplementary edition. For any contribution ideas, or if you’re interested in joining the editorial team, as a General Editor, Subject Editor, or Copyeditor you can email the Editors (Donatella Valente and Jenny Turner) on mail@dandelionjournal.org . You can follow us on Twitter @dandelionbbk

 

(1) Valente, D & Turner, J . (2018) “Editorial”, Dandelion: Postgraduate Arts Journal and Research Network. 9(1)

New CHASE Training opportunities

The following CHASE training opportunities are available to all Arts and Humanities PhD students at Birkbeck, regardless of whether you are funded by CHASE or not.

CHASE conference presentations workshop – limited places available

Monday 5 – Tuesday 6 November, Birkbeck, University of London | 1000-1700

A two-part workshop on writing and giving conference papers which combines an introduction to academic conferences, writing abstracts and preparing presentations, with a practical session on the second day (run as a mock-conference) in which the participants have the opportunity to rehearse the delivery of sample presentations, handle questions and receive feedback. Josie has given this workshop in over 30 universities in the UK, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden.

Introduction to the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA)

Wednesday 7 November 2018 | Institute of Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH

Since its founding in 1946, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) has presented ground-breaking projects across the arts, situating contemporary culture within the socio-political conditions of the times. As a professional partner of CHASE, the ICA is delighted to offer training and placements to CHASE-funded and affiliated students. This event provides a valuable introduction to the ICA, with a particular focus upon the Institute’s film programme and documentary film festival, Frames of Representation (FoR.) This will be led by Nico Marzano, film programmer and curator at the ICA, who will also be available to answer questions about upcoming placement opportunities working on FoR 2019.

Students will have the opportunity to visit Version History, the first solo exhibition in a major UK institution by artists, filmmakers and designers Metahaven, featuring an expansive new moving-image commission as part of an overview of their hybrid investigations into overlapping geopolitical, technological and emotional conditions. More details about the exhibition can be found here.

CA is generously offering 20 tickets to attend a film screening in the evening. The tickets will be allocated to the first 20 who register for the introduction.

Making Films for your Research:
Innovative Audio-Visual Practices – A CHASE Doctoral Training Day.

Birkbeck Cinema, 10.00-17.30 on Saturday, November 17, 2018, followed by a wine reception

Filmmaking research is a form of practice research that enquires into production practices, techniques, modes and genres used in cinema, television and online. The outputs are films that may include fiction, documentary and hybrid forms. Filmmaking research pushes at the boundaries of traditional filmmaking and traditional research methods by adopting distinct approaches to professional and critical practices. Filmmaking research is a developing area and films produced within the academy are growing in number. There is an increasing engagement with filmmaking as research method and films as outputs, by researchers from a range of disciplines. Film can provide a powerful means to explore issues, disseminate research and create impact.

In this event, we will screen examples of innovative audio-visual filmmaking research practice, have presentations by filmmaker-researchers about their work, and hold round tables.

Screen Studies Day

King’s  College London (Strand Campus) on 17th November 2018

This is a full-day event (9:30-20:30) aimed at PhD students doing research in film and screen media. The training offered will be most beneficial to students in the earlier stages of their studies.

The event is open to students from all CHASE institutions and is free to attend.

November Film Festival

22-25 November | Close-Up Film Centre in London

November Film Festival is an international festival for experimental film and artists’ moving image run by CHASE students.
There will be 8 programs of films in total, two on each day. A full program will soon be made available on: https://www.novemberfilmfestival.org/
The screenings will be free to attend and registration for them will be on first come first serve basis through the festival website.
On Saturday the 24th at 9pm, there will be a networking dinner event for CHASE students and the visiting filmmakers, for which you can register below.