Posts from June 2011

Emma McEvoy on Gothic Music and Performance

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A quick plug for a superb blog by IMCC affiliate Emma McEvoy, about late eighteenth-century gothic music and performance, on Stirling’s The Gothic Imagination site. As Glennis Byron puts it in the Comments: ‘The post, is, people, pretty amazing … As we plod along, talking about Twilight and True Blood and Zombies and all that ephemeral rubbish, and repeating the same old points about gothic over and over and over and over, some people are actually doing real research’. Read it here.

online education: museums, galleries, and the university

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The University of Westminster’s Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, in association with the Masters Program in Museum Studies, Johns Hopkins University, invite you to:

‘ONLINE’: What can Museums and Galleries learn from online education in Universities, and vice versa?
A Round Table discussion with keynote speaker Phyllis Hecht (Johns Hopkins University)
Wednesday 20 July 2011, 6.30-8 p.m.
The Board Room, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Entrance free. RSVP Sharon Sinclair, email sinclas@westminster.ac.uk

Phyllis Hecht is Director of the Master of Arts in Museum Studies program at Johns Hopkins University, USA. She is the Chair of the Committee on Museum Professional Training (COMPT) of the American Association of Museums (AAM). Most recently she co-edited and contributed to The Digital Museum: A Think Guide (2007), an anthology on museums and technology. Phyllis will discuss how the MA program at JHU is using social networking, including incorporating Facebook and Twitter into its learning strategy.

This event is part of the JHU Museum Studies London Onsite Summer Seminar held at the University of Westminster. The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture launches its new MA programme in Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture in September 2011.

Upcoming Westminster Literature Research Seminars in Oct-Nov 2011

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An early heads up on the line up of speakers and list of dates for next year’s first semester series of English Literature and Culture seminars. All will take place from 1.15-2.30pm on Wednesday lunchtimes in the University’s Regent Street building (room 359).

12th October 2011
Helen Glew (History Project, University of Westminster)
“Women at the Regent Street Polytechnic, 1882 – 1945”

26th October 2011
Anna Katharina Schaffner (University of Kent)
“Havelock Ellis and the Literary Imagination: On Sexology and Fiction”

9th November 2011
Caroline Edwards (Surrey University)
“Fictions of the Not Yet”

23rd November 2011
Samuel Thomas (Durham University)
“The Gaucho Sells Out: Thomas Pynchon, Nation Building & Argentina”

Further details at: http://seminarserieswmin.wordpress.com/

Post-Bollywood? India Media Centre, international Indian Cinema conference, 8th-9th July

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‘What’s New? The Changing Face of Indian Cinema: Contemporary and Historical Contexts’
Friday 8th and Saturday 9th July 2011
Marylebone Campus, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

Invited speakers include: Filmmakers, Anurag Kashyap and Rituparno Ghosh, Rachel Dwyer (SOAS, London), Shohini Ghosh, (Jamia Millia Islamia University, Delhi), Lalitha Gopalan, (University of Texas at Austin).

Is mainstream Indian cinema moving into a ‘post-Bollywood’ era?  In recent years a growing number of popular (and not so popular) films made for commercial release have been challenging the conventions of the mainstream multi-genre, song and dance extravaganzas. These films are being made – both within and outside the prevailing studio system – in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and elsewhere. From ‘Dev D’ to ‘Just Another Love Story, Udaan’ or ‘Peepli Live,’ cinematic language is being explored, songs are disappearing or being used in different ways, and strong alternative storylines are presenting a new face of modern Indian society.  These films’ hybrid sensibilities are increasingly appealing to the global aspirations of India’s urban ‘multiplex’ generation.

The London Indian Film Festival was set up in July 2010 to showcase this trend, bringing cutting edge Indian films and filmmakers to London audiences. Alongside this summer’s festival, the India Media Centre at the University of Westminster, in association with the London Indian Film Festival, is hosting a conference that will bring together filmmakers, industry professionals and academics to explore this new phenomenon within both a contemporary and an historical context.

Full conference: Standard rate £150. One day rate £100
Full conference: Student rate £65.  One day rate £45.
There is an early bird discount if you pay by Thursday 30 June:
Full conference: Standard rate £125. Student rate £50

This covers all conference documentation, refreshments, lunches, a reception, reduced cinema ticket prices to LIFF events, free entry to the final night party, and administration costs.

To register please download the registration form from: http://www.westminster.ac.uk/whats-new_080711

General enquiries: please contact Helen Cohen at: H.cohen02@westminster.ac.uk
Academic enquires: please contact Daisy Hasan at: D.Hasan@westminster.ac.uk
Conference team: Rosie Thomas, Daisy Hasan, Radha Dayal, Helen Cohen.

Monday July 4th, Contemporary China Centre event on Mao, then and now

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Our friends in University of Westminster’s Contemporary China Centre present:

Through Time and Space with Chairman Mao:? The Afterlife and Global Impact of the Great Helmsman
A panel discussion with Pankaj Mishra and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, chaired by Harriet Evans
Monday, July 4, 2011, 5.00 p.m. – 6.30 p.m.
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B

How is Mao thought about in contemporary China and in other parts of Asia? In what ways have debates about his legacy and posthumous uses of his image paralleled or diverged from those of other larger-than-life figures associated with independence movements from Nehru to Nasser and from Ho to Che? What should we make of the “red song” movement sweeping through the PRC, which can be treated as fueled by nostalgic yearning or attributed to political manoeuvring?

Pankaj Mishra is the author of The Romantics: A Novel, which won the LA Times’ Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction, An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, and Temptations of the West: How to be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet and Beyond. His new book The Rise of Asia and the Remaking of the Modern World will be published next year.

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Professor of History and Chair of the Department at UC Irvine, where he also serves as the Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies. His books include Student Protests in Twentieth-Century China (1991), China’s Brave New World (2007), Global Shanghai, 1850-2010 (2009), and China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (2011). He is a co-founder of the “China Beat” blog/electronic magazine.

Harriet Evans is Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, and Director of the Contemporary China Centre, University of Westminster, and is curator of the exhibition ‘Poster Power: Images from Mao’s China, Then and Now.’

Contemporary China Centre
www.westminster.ac.uk/schools/humanities/research/asian-studies

For enquiries about the Contemporary China Centre, please contact
Professor Harriet Evans: evansh@westminster.ac.uk

‘Korean Contemporary Art on British Soil’ at Korean Cultural Centre, Friday 1st July

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The Nomad Artist in a Transnational Era: Korean Contemporary Art on British Soil
Friday 1st July 2011,14:30-19:00 pm
Multi-purpose Hall, Korean Cultural Centre UK in London, Grand Buildings, 1-3 Strand, London, WC2N 5BW (Main entrance on Northumberland Avenue)

The Institute’s Visiting Research Fellow Dr Young-Paik Chun (Hong-Ik University, Seoul) has programmed this exciting forthcoming event.

14:30 – 15:00
Digital Film Screening
Interview with Eemyun Kang
4482 Korean Contemporary Artists Group Exhibition

15:00 – 16:15
Session 1. Theoretical approaches
Chair: Marquard Smith (Director, IMCC, University of Westminster)
Speaker: Young-Paik Chun (Art History and Theory, Hong-Ik University, Seoul)
Commentator: Edward Allington (Head of Graduate Sculpture, Slade School of Fine Art)

16:15 – 16:30 coffee break

16:30 – 17:40
Session 2. Panel Discussion in Art Practice I – Curatorial Practice
Chair: Jade Keun-Hye Lim (Independent Curator / APG in Museum Studies, Leicester University)
David A Bailey (Director, International Curators Forum)
Ji-Yoon Lee (Director, Suum Contemporary Art Project & Academy)
Sook-Kyung Lee (Curator, Tate Liverpool)

17:50 – 19:00
Session 3. Panel Discussion in Art Practice II – Making Art Works 
Chair: Stephanie Seung-Min Kim (Director, Iskai Contemporary Art)
Mee-Kyung Shin (artist)
Chan-hyo Bae (artist)
Jin-Kyun Ahn (artist)

New Ways of Working with Image workshop, September 2011

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‘New Ways of Working with Image’ Seminar and Workshop
Wednesday 14 September 2011
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London

How do we understand ‘image’ today, and how has our notion of the image changed over time? What is the status of the image in current theory, and how does the study of image translate into visual culture? In which ways do words and verbal communication relate to or conflict with images? Do we work differently with images today, compared to the practices of previous generations? And if we do, why? Questions such as these underlie the Institute’s autumn Workshop which focuses on a practical, hands-on angle approach to working with image today.

Participants in this experiment are invited to discuss what they understand by the notion of ‘image’ and which methods they have chosen to work with it. Instead of discussing general themes and motifs without knowledge of each other’s premises, talking about what one does, and how one does it, reduces the chance of conceptual miscommunication and provides the opportunity for learning from new viewpoints. Interested academics, scholars and postgraduate students are all invited to attend.

The format of the day will be an interactive opening panel of invited speakers from art history, photographic theory, visual culture, philosophy and literary studies reflecting on their own approaches to the image in both disciplinary and transdisciplinary terms, followed by smaller group workshop sessions open to signed-up members of the audience, and concluding with general discussion. Individual workshop themes will include: (1) Image and Performance: on the nature and role of images in and as performance; (2) Imagescapes: what kinds of scenes and spaces images form and come to interact in; (3) Imaginary Image: how images condition and affect the reading experience; (4) Remediating Image: the slide and change of images between different semiotic modes.

Confirmed panel participants and workshop chairs include: David Cunningham (IMCC, Westminster), Mick Finch (Fine Art, Central Saint Martins), Andrew Fisher (Visual Culture, Goldsmiths College), Elena Gualtieri (Centre for Visual Fields, Sussex), Nigel Mapp (English Literature, Westminster), Lise Majgaard Mortensen (Aarhus University/IMCC), Luke Skrebowski (History of Art, Cambridge), Marquard Smith (IMCC, Westminster), Jarkko Toikanen (Tampere University/IMCC)

This workshop is convened by our Visiting Research Fellows in the Institute, Lise Majgaard Mortensen and Jarkko Toikkanen. For further information or to reserve a place (numbers are strictly limited!), please email Jarkko at: Jarkko.Toikkanen@uta.fi

The Institute welcomes Dr Nina Lager Vestberg, its new Visiting Research Fellow

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The Institute is pleased to welcome Dr Nina Lager Vestberg from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, who will be a Visiting Research Fellow at IMCC from 13th-30th June.

Nina is an Associate Professor of Visual Culture at NTNU, and a Founding Member of the Visual Culture in Europe Network. She was educated in the UK, where she studied photography and multimedia at the University of Westminster (BA Hons), and history of art at Birkbeck College, London (MA and PhD). Nina has published articles on French photography and cultural memory, the indexicality of the photographic archive, and issues of copyright. Her current project investigates the cultural implications of the transformation of the photographic archive from an analogue, physical and visual environment to a digital, virtual and largely textual one. This will be the focus of her work during her stay in London, where she will be consulting primary sources in various London-based archives and collections of photographs.