Conference

Review of In the Photographic Darkroom conference

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Jo Gane, Darkroom at BCU (Birmingham City University)

Writer and PhD researcher, Alice Mercier, has written an excellent review of “In the Photographic Darkroom“, the conference co-organised by the IMCC and led by Sara Dominici back in June of this year. As Alice writes: “Instead of viewing the darkroom as a neutral container for photographic production, this conference studied the darkroom as a space with its own materiality, rhythm and choreography”.

Read the full piece on the CREAM website here.

In the Photographic Darkroom conference, June 8-9 2023

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June 8th-9th 2023
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW

In the Photographic Darkroom

What role has the photographic darkroom played in the histories of photography and visual culture? How has this space, at times known as the camera obscura, developing room, laboratory, operating room, operating box, darkened chamber, photographic tent, dark tent, and developing tent, shaped ways of living and knowing?

Historical accounts of the wet darkroom are sparse, and critical discussions largely limited to this space as the site of photographic manipulation. Yet, the darkroom is not a neutral container for photographic production, but a space with its own materiality, rhythm, and choreography that has been central to experiences of, for example, scientific experimentation, research, learning, commerce, colonial encounters, political and cultural agency, sociability, and individual and artistic expression.

This hybrid two-day event initiates a critical conversation about the largely overlooked space of the darkroom, and outlines new ways to research, theorise, and interpret the roles that it has played in our modern world. In the Photographic Darkroom will seek to do so by shifting the focus from the visual product (e.g., negatives and prints) to the setting itself within which these objects were produced, positing that the material, socio-cultural, and corporeal dimensions of the darkroom had an influence on how people conceptualised and, consequently, understood photography. This will enable us to rethink the role of photography in the development of modern visual culture, and its wider historical relations, from fresh viewpoints.

Check out the conference website here: https://sites.google.com/my.westminster.ac.uk/darkroom/home

Call for Papers: In the Photographic Darkroom

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Call for papers for an event taking place on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 June 2023 at the University of Westminster & in hybrid form.
Deadline for paper proposals: by Monday 09th January 2023.

What role has the photographic darkroom played in the histories of photography and visual culture? How has this space, at times known as the camera obscura, developing room, laboratory, operating room, operating box, darkened chamber, photographic tent, dark tent, and developing tent, shaped ways of living and knowing?

Historical accounts of the wet darkroom are sparse, and critical discussions largely limited to this space as the site of photographic manipulation. Yet, the darkroom is not a neutral container for photographic production, but a space with its own materiality, rhythm, and choreography that has been central to experiences of, for example, scientific experimentation, research, learning, commerce, colonial encounters, political and cultural agency, sociability, and individual and artistic expression.

This hybrid two-day event initiates a critical conversation about the largely overlooked space of the darkroom, and outlines new ways to research, theorise, and interpret the roles that it has played in our modern world. In the Photographic Darkroom will seek to do so by shifting the focus from the visual product (e.g., negatives and prints) to the setting itself within which these objects were produced, positing that the material, socio-cultural, and corporeal dimensions of the darkroom had an influence on how people conceptualised and, consequently, understood photography. This will enable us to rethink the role of photography in the development of modern visual culture, and its wider historical relations, from fresh viewpoints.

To this end, we invite papers for 15 minute presentations from academics, practitioners, and museums and archives professionals at all career stages working in research areas such as photographic history, visual culture, media and communications studies, social, cultural and media history, cultural studies, history of art, archives and records management, and any other related fields of research.

Proposals may explore, but are not limited to: Commercial photographic laboratories; Bodily and sensory experiences in the darkroom; Darkroom diseases; Darkroom networks and related communities of practice; Darkroom practices vis-à-vis visual epistemologies; The darkroom technician; The darkroom in visual and popular culture; Global histories of the darkroom (from any historical period); Historic darkrooms; The material culture of the darkroom; Performative and tacit forms of knowledge in the darkroom; Portable darkrooms; Power relations in the darkroom; The relationship between the darkroom and the natural environment; The relationship between the space of the darkroom and its place within urban and not-urban contexts; Researching the darkroom in archives and special collections

Paper proposals should be submitted as ONE Word or PDF document to Dr Sara Dominici at s.dominici1@westminster.ac.uk by Monday 09th January 2023. The document should include:

Your full name
Email address
Institutional affiliation (when applicable)
Paper title
Proposal of no longer than 300 words for presentations of 15 minutes
Indication of whether you would be presenting in person or online
Short biographical note (100-140 words)

Event format: The event will take place at the University of Westminster in London (UK) in hybrid form and we will be able to accommodate a number of online presentations. The language of the event will be English.

Importantly: Selected speakers will be invited to contribute extended versions of their papers to a journal special issue or edited volume on the same theme. Please could all the applicants consider their paper proposals for research not yet published elsewhere as expressions of interest to contribute to the edited publication as well, or specify in the document itself if their paper proposal is based on research that has already been published elsewhere and/or if they would not want to be considered for the edited publication.

Online roundtable and workshop: Sinophone creative responses to Covid-19, racism and xenophobia

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Wednesday 21 October 2020, 2:00 – 6:00 pm BTS

Online roundtable and workshop: Sinophone creative responses to Covid-19, racism and xenophobia

Following overwhelming public response to a roundtable on Covid-19 and racism back in March 2020, our friends and colleagues in the Contemporary China Centre at the University of Westminster are following up with another online roundtable and workshop on how different Chinese communities have continued to combat Covid-19 related racism.

All are welcome but registration is required.

For Chinese-speaking communities in the UK and elsewhere, Covid-19 has witnessed a steep rise in racism and xenophobia. Alongside efforts to combat Covid-19 related racism and support those who have experienced discrimination, Chinese-speaking communities have been producing and circulating Chinese-language materials about the virus through various creative means and media, in an attempt to foster new forms of understanding about their respective communities to broader audiences. Building on the overwhelming public response to the previous roundtable on racialised discourses and Covid-19, this workshop is part of a series of events exploring the ways in which different Chinese communities have been responding to Covid-19 and the ensuing wave of racism and xenophobia. Through collaboration with academics, activists, and local communities, the aim is to map out the creative responses emanating from a diverse range of Chinese cultures and build new alliances and networks to fuel resistance, action, and change. What strategies, resources and ideas can be shared for intervening in prevailing Covid-19-fuelled racisms to build towards a more equitable future?

Dr Diana Yeh, Flair Donglai Shi, Sam Phan and Dr Shzr Ee Tan will share their reflections on how the fear and ignorance around Covid-19 have continued to fan pre-existing racisms and expose social faultlines, and the kinds of responses that have sought to resist and challenge such practices. This second half of the event will a workshop led by Dr Denise Kwan in which participants move into breakout groups to explore the themes: Anger/Joy as Resistance; Collective Care; and Political-Hearts.

Note: Those who have registered will be sent a link to Zoom before the event starts.

Online Symposium: Photography Beyond the Image, Saturday 28 November CANCELLED

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Saturday 28 November 2020, 9.30am – 1pm

Photography Beyond the Image

IMPORTANT NOTICE: The symposium, Photography Beyond the Image, which was re-scheduled online for this November, engendered some critical responses concerning the line-up of the event. Committed as we are to creating a public engagement programme based on equality, diversity, and inclusion, and appreciating that the online move of an originally UK-based event, cancelled because of COVID-19, should have been an opportunity to diversify the panels further, the decision has been made to suspend the event to consider this and are working towards developing a differently structured symposium on the topic of photographic studies beyond the visual image in the future. Apologies to those who had already booked for the event.

Recent years have seen photographic studies move beyond the analysis of the visual product. From a focus on photographs as the privileged points of access for studying photography, thus supporting a predominant understanding of the medium as a representational tool, the field is today embracing a more holistic approach. This has brought photography into a much needed interdisciplinary and intermedial analytical environment, and alerted us to the social, cultural and commercial entanglements that shape and are shaped by photographic practices.

This one-day symposium seeks to examine these intellectual trends by reflecting on their postulates, methodologies and future directions.

The event, which is free, will take place on Zoom. The Zoom link will be emailed out to everyone who has reserved a ticket on Saturday 21 November, together with a link to access the pre-recorded contributions.

One Hundred Years of Night and Day conference, Saturday 26th October

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Saturday 26 October, 9.30 – 5.30
School of Humanities, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW

One Hundred Years of Night and Day

In her diary in 1920, Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘I don’t suppose I’ve ever enjoyed any writing so much as I did the last half of N. & D.’ Her happiness with the novel was characteristically short-lived. In 1932 she wrote that ‘N. & D. is dead.’ Likewise with critics, the novel has moved in and out of favour. Coming as it did after the often surreal subversion of the Bildungsroman that is The Voyage Out, it has been sometimes read by Woolf’s contemporaries and more recent critics alike as a step back towards realist fiction. Famously described by Katherine Mansfield in 1920 as ‘Jane Austen up to date,’ and by critic Randy Malamud in 1989 as ‘a stillborn modernist artefact,’ the question of where this novel exists on the spectrum between realist and modern is one that persists in Woolf criticism, right up to present day. But as well as considerations of its position in the broad narrative of Woolf’s relationship to realism and modernism, Night and Day has provided fertile ground for critics to explore a wide range of ideas presented by its content. Its engagement with Shakespeare, with women’s suffrage, with mathematics, with class; its portrait of London; its silence on the First World War – all have led critics to new and exciting enquiries.

One hundred years after its initial publication, this one-day symposium in the heart of London seeks to encourage work that considers Night and Day and its innovations, breaking away from readings of the text as a mis-step to consider the rich, unusual, and sometimes difficult ideas that the novel offers.

Keynote address by Dr. Suzana Zink, Université de Neuchâtel.

Full programme and booking via eventbrite here.

Call for Papers: Remapping the cultural and linguistic landscape of the Chinese in Britain

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Saturday 15 February 2020, University of Westminster

Call for Papers: Remapping the Cultural and Linguistic landscape of the Chinese in Britain

Confirmed keynote speaker: Professor Caroline Knowles (Goldsmiths, University of London)

 The Chinese in Britain is a small but one of the fastest growing communities. According to Office for National Statistics, the number of Chinese in Britain has increased from 247,000 in 1991 to 400,000 in 2011, and it is estimated the total number of Chinese has reached 500,000 by 2015. Approximately two-thirds of Chinese in Britain were born outside UK, with the majority coming from Hong Kong, China and Southeast Asia. The past two decades has witnessed a steady rise in the number of people from mainland China, including professionals, skilled workers, investors and young people who come to study in UK’s schools and universities. The existing literature on the Chinese in Britain has predominately focused on the Cantonese-speaking communities from Hong Kong and to a lesser extent Southeast Asian countries. There is an urgent need to document and conceptualize this important demographic and cultural shift, not only for a better understanding of the new development of Chinese communities in the UK but also for the benefit of Britain whose future is increasingly built upon its understanding of and relations with the rest of the world including China.

This conference is aimed at addressing this gap by bringing together researchers, Chinese language teachers, community leaders and policy makers to identify and examine the changing linguistic and cultural landscape of the Chinese in Britain. It seeks to (1) unveil the ways in which the Chinese in Britain have changed into an unprecedentedly diverse and dynamic society in the dual contexts of China’s global rise and multicultural Britain; (2) explore new features and dis/continuity in the transformation of the British Chinese communities, mediated by (sub) ethnicity, linguistic identity, class, gender and generation; (3) discuss the extent to which this demographic and cultural change is shaped by and shaping the relationship between global China and post-Brexit Britain.

We welcome papers that engage with these three interrelated areas of discussion from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Suggested themes include:

Language and languaging
New mobilities and transnational connections
Everyday negotiation of borders, identities and belongings
Diasporic heritage and heritagisation
Representation, articulation and integration
Community building

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a brief bio to Dr. Cangbai Wang (c.wang6@westminster.ac.uk) by 30 September 2019. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified before the end of October 2019. Draft papers will be expected by mid-January 2020. Selected articles will be published as an edited volume or a Special Issue on peer-reviewed journal.

This conference is organised by HOMELandS in collaboration with the Contemporary China Centre of University of Westminster and funded by Language Acts and World Making Small Grant Scheme, AHRC Open World Research Initiative (OWRI).

Deaths at Sea: Migration and Art symposium, Weds 10th July 2019

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Wednesday 10th July 2019, 6-9 pm
P21 Gallery, 21-27 Chalton Street, London NW1 1JD

Death at Sea: Migration and Art

Accompanying the exhibition Sink Without Trace, co-curated by our colleague Federica Mazzara and the artists Maya Ramsay.

Speakers include:

Iain Chambers, Oriental University, Naples
Almir Koldzic, Co-Director, Counterpoints Arts
Federica Mazzara, Co-Curator of Sink Without Trace
Maya Ramsay, Co-Curator of Sink Without Trace
Valentina Zagaria, London School of Economics
Artists from the Sink Without Trace exhibition

Book a place here.

One Hundred Years of Virginia Woolf’s Night and Day, October 26 2019

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Saturday 26 October
School of Humanities, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW

One Hundred Years of Night and Day

In her diary in 1920, Virginia Woolf wrote: ‘I don’t suppose I’ve ever enjoyed any writing so much as I did the last half of N. & D.’ Her happiness with the novel was characteristically short-lived. In 1932 she wrote that ‘N. & D. is dead.’ Likewise with critics, the novel has moved in and out of favour. Coming as it did after the often surreal subversion of the Bildungsroman that is The Voyage Out, it has been sometimes read by Woolf’s contemporaries and more recent critics alike as a step back towards realist fiction. Famously described by Katherine Mansfield in 1920 as ‘Jane Austen up to date,’ and by critic Randy Malamud in 1989 as ‘a stillborn modernist artefact,’ the question of where this novel exists on the spectrum between realist and modern is one that persists in Woolf criticism, right up to present day. But as well as considerations of its position in the broad narrative of Woolf’s relationship to realism and modernism, Night and Day has provided fertile ground for critics to explore a wide range of ideas presented by its content. Its engagement with Shakespeare, with women’s suffrage, with mathematics, with class; its portrait of London; its silence on the First World War – all have led critics to new and exciting enquiries.

One hundred years after its initial publication, this one-day symposium in the heart of London seeks to encourage work that considers Night and Day and its innovations, breaking away from readings of the text as a mis-step to consider the rich, unusual, and sometimes difficult ideas that the novel offers.

Funding is available to contribute towards speaker travel costs. Lunch will be provided.

Please send abstracts of 150-250 words for 20 minute papers to rosie.reynolds@my.westminster.ac.uk by 31stJuly 2019.

Queering Academia: A Two Day Gathering on Queer Education and Scholarship, 21-22 June 2018

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Thursday 21st – Friday 22nd June 2018
Marylebone Campus, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1 5LS

Queering Academia
A Two Day Gathering on Queer Education and Scholarship

Queering Academia examines the role of Queer education and scholarship against the backdrop of the changing landscape of Higher Education. This two-day gathering brings together students, academics, and activists to consider the significance of Queer lives (and lived experience) within both formal and informal institutions of learning, with papers, panels, performances, and presentations examining the significance of Queer ways of thinkingbeing, and acting in education and scholarship.

Programme Information: 
https://queeringacademia.wordpress.com/event-programme/

Register online via Eventbrite:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/queering-academia-a-two-day-gathering-on-queer-education-and-scholarship-tickets-42675556739

Bridging Borders, Creating Spaces, Thursday 28th June 2018

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Thursday 28th June 2018, 9.30-18.00
Room UG05, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW

Bridging Borders, Creating Spaces: Negotiating Multicultural Identities and Belongings among Migrant Communities in Global London
A HOMELandS Workshop

Organised by our colleagues in the HOMELandS research group at Westminster, this workshop focuses in particular on the role of ‘language’ in bridging borders and creating spaces for migrants in global cities. Language is defined here in a broad and metaphorical sense, referring to all sorts of material and immaterial practices that serve the purpose of having a voice, hearing and being heard, and communicating. London as a global city has been a ‘contact zone’ of multiple flows of people, cultures and ideas from around the world, and a ‘migration lab’ for academic research. While there are numerous studies of individual migration groups in London and the UK, surprisingly, so far very few have looked into the nexus between mobility and globality from a comparative and transcultural perspective. This workshop is aimed at filling this gap. By bringing together innovative research on a wide range of London-based migration communities, it seeks to stimulate intellectual dialogues between often segregated studies of migrants and between higher educational institutes and migrant communities, and to break new ground for interdisciplinary research on migration and diaspora.

The workshop will followed at 6pm by ‘Object-Stories’ of British Chinese Women Online Exhibition Launch and Reception in the Cayley Room.

Please book a place via Eventbrite here

CFP: London Conference in Critical Thought, 29th and 30th June 2018

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Friday 29 – Saturday 30 June 2018
University of Westminster

London Conference in Critical Thought

Westminster will be hosting the 7th annual London Conference in Critical Thought (LCCT), courtesy of our colleagues in the Department of Politics and International Relations.

Central to the vision of the conference is an inter-institutional, non-hierarchical and accessible event that makes a particular effort to embrace emergent thought and the participation of emerging academics, fostering new avenues for critically-oriented scholarship and collaboration. The conference is divided into thematic streams, each coordinated by different researchers and with separate calls for papers. The organisers welcome paper proposals that respond to the particular streams below. In addition, papers may be proposed as part of a general stream, i.e. with no specific stream in mind. Spanning a range of broad themes, these streams provide the impetus for new points of dialogue.

  • Art and Automation
  • Capital, Event and Agency (1968-2018)
  • Disruptions, Interventions and Liminalities: Critical Performative Pedagogies
  • Infrastructure, “infrapolitics” and experimentation
  • Politics of/in the Anthropocene
  • Resistant Bodies. On resistance and its corporeal challenges
  • Taking Positions
  • The Politics of Truth
  • Thinking Affect and Postcoloniality Together
  • Time, Cities, Bodies
  • Writing to Think

The Full Call for Papers can be found here: LCCT CfP 2018 feb 26

Please send paper/presentation proposals with the relevant stream indicated in the subject line to paper–subs@londoncritical.org. Submissions should be no more than 250 words and should be received by Monday 26th March 2018.

Women, Writing and Freedom October 19th 2017

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Thursday 19th October 2017, 5.30 – 7.30 pm
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW

Women, Writing and Freedom
Keynote talk by Maureen Freely, President of English PEN

In a masculine centred literary tradition that values male over female voices, women refuse to be silenced and continue to tell the truth about their personal and political lives. Join us in exploring the politics of silence and in honouring the voices of women writers everywhere who, despite repression and invisibility, risk all to give voice to the need for liberation and freedom.

Speakers: Maureen Freely, Hema Macherla, Avril Joy, Lynn Michell

Organised by The Contemporary Small Press project at Westminster in collaboration with Linen Press, a small, independent press run by women for women.

For tickets and info please click here.

“Show thy queere substance”: The Queer, the Early Modern and the Now

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Friday 7th & Saturday 8th July
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HW

“Show thy queere substance”: The Queer, the Early Modern and the Now

Hosted by our friends in the Queer London Research Forum at Westminster, a one-day symposium which seeks to consider two questions: firstly, what can queer frames tell us about Early Modern texts and contexts? Secondly, in what ways can the Early Modern (be it literature, culture or politics) speak to queer cultures in the present? Or, what do queer reiterations of Early Modern texts and contexts achieve in the present?

The conference begins on Friday 7th July at 5:30pm (in the Cayley Room in the 309 Regent Street building) when Andy Kesson is going to run a performance workshop, titled ‘Playing Queerness’, which showcases the work he’s been doing with director Emma Frankland, as part of the Before Shakespeare project, on John Lyly’s Galatea. The workshop will be followed by a wine reception in the foyer.

The programme for the papers on Saturday can be found at:
https://showthyqueeresubstance.wordpress.com/saturday-8th-june/

Attendance is free, but registration is required. You can register for the conference here.

Reminder: Researching, Writing and Exhibiting Photography, April 8th

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Saturday 8th April, 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish Street, London W1W 6UW

Researching, Writing and Exhibiting Photography

Speakers: David Bate (University of Westminster); Benedict Burbridge (Sussex); Sara Davidmann (UAL); Anna Dannemann (Photographer’s Gallery); Christopher Morton (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford); Russell Roberts (University of South Wales); Karen Shepherdson (Canterbury Christ Church); Kelley Wilder (De Montfort)

This one-day symposium seeks to explore current practices of researching, writing and exhibiting photography, three activities central to the production of knowledge about photography. The symposium will consider the intertwined relationships between these activities from two main standpoints. The first is the ways in which the practices of researching, writing and exhibiting photography draw from, influence and critique one another as they produce our understandings of the photographic. The second is the ways in which the photographic, understood here as technical forms and associated images, operates as a transformative force within society, and in doing so produces the field for researching, writing and exhibiting photography.

Unfortunately, this event is now FULLY BOOKED. However, please complete the form in the link below if you would like to be added to the waiting list. We will be in touch if places become available:
http://rwepsymposium.weebly.com/contact.html

You can find further details of the programme on the RWEP website here.

Further information from Sara Dominici at: s.dominici1@westminster.ac.uk

Researching, Writing and Exhibiting Photography Symposium, Saturday 8th April 2017

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UPDATE: This event is now FULLY BOOKED. Please complete the form in the link below if you would like to be added to the waiting list. We will be in touch if places become available:
http://rwepsymposium.weebly.com/contact.html

Saturday 8th April, 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
University of Westminster, 115 New Cavendish Street, London W1W 6UW

Researching, Writing and Exhibiting Photography

We’re delighted to announce details of the upcoming Institute of Modern and Contemporary Culture’s one-day symposium on Researching, Writing and Exhibiting Photography.

Speakers: David Bate (University of Westminster); Benedict Burbridge (Sussex); Sara Davidmann (UAL); Anna Dannemann (Photographer’s Gallery); Christopher Morton (Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford); Russell Roberts (University of South Wales); Karen Shepherdson (Canterbury Christ Church); Kelley Wilder (De Montfort)

This one-day symposium seeks to explore current practices of researching, writing and exhibiting photography, three activities central to the production of knowledge about photography. The symposium will consider the intertwined relationships between these activities from two main standpoints. The first is the ways in which the practices of researching, writing and exhibiting photography draw from, influence and critique one another as they produce our understandings of the photographic. The second is the ways in which the photographic, understood here as technical forms and associated images, operates as a transformative force within society, and in doing so produces the field for researching, writing and exhibiting photography.

Organised into three successive panels – “Researching Photography”, “Writing Photography” and “Exhibiting Photography” – the event brings together researchers, writers and curators working in academic and commercial contexts, and whose interests span from photographic archives to contemporary photographic practice. The symposium will provide a platform to discuss conceptual, theoretical and practical approaches to the study, discourse and display of photography; and how their intertwined relationship(s) can offer reflections on approaching the opportunities and challenges presented by working in the arts and humanities today.

You can find further details of the programme, and can book your free ticket, on the RWEP website here.

Further information from Sara Dominici at: s.dominici1@westminster.ac.uk

Call for Papers: Media, Arts and Hybrid Spaces, January 27th 2017

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Friday 27th January 2017, 10.00 am – 6.00 pm
Room 315, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2HT

Media, Arts and Hybrid Spaces: Experience and Meaning in the Contact Zone

Study Day organised by Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media (CREAM) in collaboration with HOMELandS

Mary Louise Pratt introduced the concept of ‘the contact zone’ in 1991, using this term ‘to refer to social spaces where cultures, meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today’. She goes on to introduce the concept of ‘transculturation’, which is expanded upon in her later book Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (1992), which describes ‘processes whereby members of subordinated or marginal groups select and invent from materials transmitted by a dominant or metropolitan culture’.

The ‘contact zone’ is a site of artistic production but it can also be a site of negotiation of meanings, a context of experience. In her paper, Pratt expands on the notion of the contact zone beyond the interpretation of colonial encounters and deals with difference and conflict in the classroom. She writes, ‘All the students in the class had the experience … of having their cultures discussed and objectified in ways that horrified them; all the students experienced face-to-face the ignorance and incomprehension, and occasionally the hostility of others … Along with rage, incomprehension, and pain, there were exhilarating moments of wonder and revelation, mutual understanding, and new wisdom—the joys of the contact zone’. How might we broaden Pratt’s notion of the ‘the contact zone’? What is its significance in the contemporary sphere and how might it be a useful site for further investigation?

Please send abstracts (circa 300 words) for 20 mins papers by 6 January 2017 to both organisers:
Mattia Lento – Lentom@westminster.ac.uk
Margherita Sprio – spriom@westminster.ac.uk

Archive-as-method Salon, December 5th at Senate House

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Monday 5th of December 2016, 15.30-18.30
Institute of Modern Languages Research, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E (SH243)

Archive-as-Method Salon
Working with Visual Documents of the Italian Colonial Heritage

Presentations, short-film screenings and Q&A with: 
Alessandra Ferrini, Gianmarco Mancosu, Martina Melilli and Jacopo Rinaldi

Organised by one of our former MA Art & Visual Culture students, Alessandra Ferrini, of the excellent Mnemoscape, this Salon brings together artists, filmmakers and historians in order to discuss methodological approaches to the exploration and activation of colonial, archival material. Given the recent interest in the Italian colonial past,  the salon aims to shed light onto a previously marginalised historical period.

The first part of the salon will introduce to the fascist imperial project and its legacy through Gianmarco Mancosu’s research based on the newsreels on the Ethiopian War of 1935-36 and Alessandra Ferrini’s essay film and pedagogic project Negotiating Amnesia (2015), which is based on archival photographs and propaganda postcards from the same period. The second part of the salon will kick off with Martina Melilli’s presentation of an ongoing body of work stemming from her family’s history in the Libyan colony and in Italy, after the expulsion of Italians from Libya in 1970. It will be followed by Jacopo Rinaldi’s problematisation of the truthfulness of archival material, through his research in the Pirelli Historic Archive (Milan), and the production of works exploring the rubber industry. To conclude, the four researchers will be in conversation and will open up the debate to the public.

Free, but seats are limited. Please email Mnemoscape at mnemoscape@gmail.com to book a place.

For more information please visit the facebook event page.

The Architecture of Neoliberalism book launch

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Monday 24th October, 6.00 – 8.00
Room M416, University of Westminster, 35 Marylebone Road, London NW1

The Architecture of Neoliberalism: How Architecture Became an Instrument of Control and Compliance

An invitation to the book launch for our friend Doug Spencer’s The Architecture of Neoliberalism, published by Bloomsbury. A talk by Doug about the book will be followed by a panel discussion with IMCC affiliate Jon Goodbun, Peg Rawes from the Bartlett School of Architecture and David Chandler from Westminster’s Centre for the Study of Democracy.

Look out, too, for a later one-day event at the Architectural Association on Friday 25th November, The (Dis)Enchanted Subject of Architecture, also timed to celebrate the publication of Doug’s book, with speakers including Libero Andreotti, Nadir Lahiji, Joan Ockman, Nina Power and the IMCC’s own David Cunningham. Details here: http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/VIDEO/lecture.php?ID=3500

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Legacies of Aurora Leigh conference, October 15th

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Saturday 15th October, 9.15 – 6.45 (followed by reception)
University of Westminster, London

Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Legacies of Aurora Leigh: Literature, Politics, Society

On Saturday 15 October, the Department of English, Linguistics & Cultural Studies at the University of Westminster is hosting a one day conference on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and the Legacies of Aurora Leigh. The day will include a range of talks on how Barrett Browning’s major work influenced later writers and thinkers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and our two keynote speakers will be Professor Marjorie Stone, from Dalhousie University, and Professor Margaret Reynolds, from Queen Mary, University of London. There will also be a roundtable discussion on the future of Barrett Browning studies with Professor Cora Kaplan and a reading of extracts from Aurora Leigh by actor and writer, Sharon Eckman. The full programme can be found on the conference website at: https://auroraleigh2016.wordpress.com/programme/

Registration is now open. Attendance at the conference is free but all attendees need to register through the conference website at: https://auroraleigh2016.wordpress.com/registration/