Wednesday 14th November, 4.00pm – 5.15pm
Wells Street, room 106

Bianca Leggett (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Englishness Elsewhere: Exploring Parochialism in the Contemporary English Travel Novel

Ever since the days of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, English fiction has repeatedly portrayed travelling protagonists who feel possessed by the need to be English elsewhere, that is, to travel. Terry Eagleton has suggested that the ‘striking number of contemporary novels written in England but set in some non-English locale suggests ‘a sense that from the viewpoint of “creative” writing there is something peculiarly unpropitious about the typical social experience of an industrially declining, culturally parochial, post-imperial nation.’ This paper traces the historical and cultural origins of the myth of the English as a nation that both loves travel and yet remains staunchly parochial, suggesting that contemporary Crusoe-stories are part of how the English have attempted to understand their role in a post-war postcolonial world. It considers how this myth is revisited and revised in three stories of Englishmen in Continental Europe, Ian McEwan’s The Innocent (1990), Julian Barnes’s Metroland (1980) and Geoff Dyer’s Paris Trance (1998). While each novel comments on historically distinct moments in English attitudes to European identity, their similarities suggest a shared desire to critique English insularity. Finally, the paper asks whether the portrait of Englishness which finally emerges is more ambivalent than it first appears, suggesting that its admonitory messages are tempered by elements of postcolonial melancholia and nostalgia.

Courtesy of our friends in the Centre of the Study of Democracy …

The Prose of the World:
Capitalism, Democracy and the Novel

Dr David Cunningham, University of Westminster
Tuesday November 6, 17:15-18:45 | Westminster Forum, 5th Floor, Wells Street

UPDATE: Video posted at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR5ktvgFqVc&feature=em-share_video_user

FRIDAY 23 NOVEMBER, 2012 2-7PM (followed by exhibition opening and reception)
MG14, UNIVERSITY OF WESTMINSTER, 35 MARYLEBONE ROAD, LONDON NW1 5LS

An international symposium organised by the Architecture Research Group at the University of Westminster in conjunction with SOAS Seminars on Turkey.

The making of modern Ankara is a momentous yet oft-neglected episode in twentieth century history. The transformation of this ancient Anatolian town into the capital of the Turkish Republic captured the world’s attention during the interwar period, when Ankara became a laboratory of modernism and nation building.
Largely designed by European architects, the new capital embodied the reformist ethos of a secular state firmly projected towards the West. Today, as this sprawling city of over four millions seeks to reinvent its identity, its modern development is the subject of growing scholarship and public interest.

The half-day symposium brings together a panel of scholars from architecture, planning, art history, heritage, and Turkish studies to revisit the making of modern Ankara in a cross-disciplinary perspective, while also debating its legacy on the eve of the Republic’s 90th anniversary. The event will be followed by the launch of Building Identities, an exhibition about Ankara’s Republican architecture curated by the Turkish Chamber of Architects, Ankara branch.

THE EVENT IS FREE FOR ALL. PLEASE BOOK AT themakingofmodernankara.eventbrite.co.uk

PARTICIPANTS WILL INCLUDE: Elvan Altan Ergut, Middle East Technical University Martina Becker, ENGLOBE/Marie Curie, Middle East Technical University Lindsay Bremner, University of Westminster Eray Çaylı, University College London Davide Deriu, University of Westminster Benjamin Fortna, SOAS Zeynep Kezer, University of Newcastle Melania Savino, SOAS, Kunsthistorische Institut Florence

Queer London Conference: Call for Papers

Saturday 23^rd March, 2013
Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, University of Westminster, London, UK

Keynote Speaker:
Dr. Matt Cook (Birkbeck College, University of London)

This one-day conference is dedicated to a consideration of London and its role in creating, housing, reflecting and facilitating queer life. It aims to bring together scholars from a variety of different disciplines and backgrounds to consider representations of queer London and how London itself represents queers.

That London is a focus and centre for queer life and culture can be seen on its stages; in its bar and club scenes; in its film festivals and its representations in film; in its performance art; in its political life; in its gyms; in its history; in its book groups and book shops; and in its representations in the contemporary queer fiction of writers like Alan Hollinghurst and Sarah Waters. What the ‘Queer London’ conference aims to do then is to offer an opportunity for further analysis and investigation of these representations / representational platforms and to consider the socio-cultural role that London plays in queer life. The conference will focus on the period 1885 to the present and welcomes interdisciplinary proposals and those from a wide range of disciplines, including: Literature, History, Art, Cultural Studies, Theatre and Performance Studies.

Please send abstracts of 500 words, or proposals for panels of three linked papers, by Friday 30^th November 2012 to Dr. Simon Avery and Dr. Katherine M. Graham at the University of Westminster. Abstracts should be sent as Word attachments to s.avery@westminster.ac.uk and k.graham1@westminster.ac.uk, and should include details of your current affiliation and a very short author bio.

Conference blog page: http://queerlondonconf.wordpress.com/

Wednesday 31^st October, 4.00pm – 5.30pm
Wells Street, room 106

Zara Dinnen (Birkbeck College, University of London)
Did we Miss it? The Legacy of Cyberculture in Contemporary Representations of Digital Technology

It seems today the watchword of the contemporary is augmented reality not virtual reality. As we move toward an increasingly ubiquitous digital culture, are we able to begin to historicise late twentieth century projections for a digital future? This talk will discuss how cyberculture might be perceived as being of a distinct technocultural moment, and the ways that might matter for approaches to our digital present.

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

Wednesday 17^th October, 4.00pm – 5.15pm
Room 106, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW 

Christopher Daley (University of Westminster)
‘Too many machines’: British Science Fiction Film and Television of the 1950s

In analysing British cinema between 1945 and 1965, Tony Shaw (2001) argues that the influence of American cinema on British audiences was undeniable: ‘Hollywood films dominated the British market from the beginning to the end of the period and not to recognize the potentially significant role American productions had in shaping British perceptions of the Cold War would be misleading’ (p.4). Movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and Forbidden Planet (1956) persist as potent symbols of an era which mixed fear of communism and nuclear war with utopian hopes for the technological conquest of other worlds. Whilst the political content of these popular films has been continuously reviewed by critics and scholars alike, the contemporaneous works of British filmmakers has received limited attention. In this paper, I will analyse a series of British films and television programmes which not only challenged or complicated the political content of prominent American SF productions, but crucially, made use of the speculative imagination to reflect upon the state-of-the-nation during a period of rapid technological and social transformation.

Death and Space
Tue 23 October 2012, 6.15 pm

£5 full price; £3 student, unemployed and over 65s
The Deadhouse, Somerset House, The Strand, WC2R 1LA

‘Death and the Contemporary’ is a series of site-specific events organised by our new colleague Georgina Colby, along with Anthony Luvera, that will take place across London in October 2012 as part of the Inside Out Festival. Panel discussions with keynote philosophers, writers, visual artists, and theorists will provide an exciting interdisciplinary forum in which to consider issues surrounding the representation of death in contemporary culture.

The first event, ‘Death and Space’, is scheduled to take place at the Dead House, Somerset House, on October 23rd, 2012. Confirmed panellists include David Bate, Andrea Brady, Robert Hampson and Tom Hunter. A glass of wine in included in the ticket price.

Further details at: http://www.insideoutfestival.org.uk/events/death-and-the-contemporary/

China in Britain: Myths and Realities
Aesthetics: Visual and Literary Cultures

December 8^th 2012, 9:30am – 4:00pm
The Cayley Room, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

You are warmly invited to the fourth in this University of Westminster/AHRC funded series. The day will present an eclectic programme with presentations on modernist architecture, fashion and literature, chinoiserie, and both literature and photography ‘then and now’. Speakers in the morning are Sarah Cheang (Royal College of Art), Edward Denision (Bartlett, UCL), Patricia Laurence (City University of New York), and David Porter (Michigan). The afternoon sessions will include a presentation by photographer Grace Lau and conversations with Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking (Penguin 2012) and novelist Xiaolu Guo. The day will end with a drinks reception.

The full programme along with abstracts and biogs can be found at: www.translatingchina.info

Entrance – including lunch and refreshments – is free of charge so for catering purposes it is essential to book your place by emailing: anne@translatingchina.info

Cultural Politics during the French Occupation
Wednesday 10 October 2012, 6 pm – 8 pm, Room 354
University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

Organised by our colleagues in the Group for War and Culture Studies at Westminster

Alan Riding, best-selling author and journalist, on “Writing with the Enemy”

Alan Riding, a Brazilian-born Briton, is a former foreign correspondent for The New York Times, most recently as the paper’s arts correspondent for Europe. He is author of Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans and co-author of Essential Shakespeare Handbook and Opera. His latest book is And The Show Went On: Cultural Life in Nazi-Occupied Paris. He lives in Paris.

David Drake, Emeritus Reader at Middlesex University, on “Jean-Paul Sartre and les années noires.”

David Drake has written two monographs on French Intellectuals and Politics (both published by Palgrave/ Macmillan). He is currently a UK co-editor of Sartre Studies International and is the author of a biography of Sartre (Haus, 2005). He is Emeritus Reader at Middlesex University, and in 2005, was made a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques.

Entrance free. To reserve a place, please R.S.V.P. Dr Caroline Perret: C.Perret@westminster.ac.uk

Some events coming up that IMCC-followers may be interested in, organised by our upstairs neighbours in the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster.

On Saturday 3rd November, from 1-7pm, there’s half-day conference on ‘The Promise of Democracy’, with speakers including David Chandler, Albena Azmanova, Mihaela Mihai and Paulina Tambakaki. The keynote address will be given by Professor Fred Dallmayr from the University of Notre Dame. Everything will take place in the Boardroom in 309 Regent Street, and will be followed by a wine reception at 7.00. Register online at: http://promiseofdemocracy.eventbrite.com

CSD is also running its usual seminar series on Tuesdays in the Westminster Forum at Wells Street. Speakers this semester include Nicholas Rengger (St Andrews) on Dystopic Liberalism; David Cunningham (IMCC, Westminster) on capitalism, democracy and the novel; and Alberto Toscano (Goldsmiths) on tragedy as a political category. Further details at: http://www.facebook.com/csdwestminster

The Institute is excited and delighted to welcome our new Visiting Professor in the IMCC, Professor Allan Stoekl. Allan will be based at the Institute during 2012-13, while on research leave in London from his position as Professor of French and Comparative Literature at Pennsylvania State University.

Allan’s many publications include the books Politics, Writing, Mutilation: The Cases of Bataille, Blanchot, Roussel, Leiris and Ponge (University of Minnesota Press, 1985); Agonies of the Intellectual: Commitment, Subjectivity, and the Performative in the Twentieth-Century French Tradition (University of Nebraska Press, 1992); and Bataille’s Peak: Energy, Religion, and Postsustainability (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). He was editor of a seminal special issue of Yale French Studies, ‘On Bataille’ (1990), and also translated Paul Fournel’s Need for the Bike (2003).

During his time at Westminster, Allan will be working on a new book provisionally entitled Avatars of the Postsustainable City, while also contributing to the work of the Institute in various ways. We very much look forward to working with him!

Alexa Wright is taking part in Digital Aesthetic³ 2012, an international exhibition and conference which explores the impact that the digital has on our sense of self and our relationship to the physical world. The exhibition is housed in the Harris Museum & Art Gallery, and the University of Central Lancashire’s PR1 Gallery in Preston. It demonstrates some of the diverse ways that artists are utilising digital technology, including projection, digital print, 3d work, screen based video work, touch panel installation, and a live interactive website. The conference takes place over Friday Oct 5^th and Saturday Oct 6^th. In a great line up, other participants include Mark Amerika, Sean Cubitt and Sophie Calle.

Further details at: http://digitalaesthetic.org.uk/

Advance news of the next series of English Literature and Culture research seminars taking place in the first semester this year.

Seminars are fortnightly on Wednesday afternoons, from 4pm to around 5.30pm, and will be held in room 106 in the University’s Wells Street building.

Wednesday 17^th October
Christopher Daley (University of Westminster)
‘Too Many Machines’: British Science Fiction Film and Television of the 1950s

Wednesday 31^st October
Zara Dinnen (Birkbeck College)
Did we Miss it? The Legacy of Cyberculture in Contemporary Representations of Digital Technology

Wednesday 14^th November
Bianca Leggett (Birkbeck College)
Englishness Elsewhere: Considering Cosmopolitanism in the English Travel Novel

Wednesday 28^th November
Martin Eve (University of Sussex)
‘Opening children’s eyes’: Pynchon, Bolano, Overloaded Forms and the Didactic Function

The Institute is delighted to welcome three new members who are joining the Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies this academic year.

Georgina Colby joins us as a Lecturer in Contemporary Literature. She is the author of Bret Easton Ellis: Underwriting the Contemporary (Palgrave), and is currently working on a second book on the author Kathy Acker. She has also published widely on the intersections of literary practice and visual culture in contemporary US art, and is presently organising a major series of events to be held in London on ‘Death and the Contemporary’.

Lucy Bond is joining us as post-doctoral research and teaching fellow. Her PhD at Goldsmiths focused on the commemoration of 9/11 in the American public sphere, looking particularly at memorial practices embodied in literature and material culture, and at the ways in which a reification of the discourse surrounding the attacks has limited the production of a successful counter-narrative able to critique the attacks’ appropriation and manipulation by the institutions and individuals of the wider hegemonic sphere.

Matt Charles is also joining us as post-doctoral research and teaching fellow. Matt’s PhD thesis was completed at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, now based at Kingston University, titled ‘Speculative Experience and History: Walter Benjamin’s Goethean Kantianism’. He is also a member of the editorial collective of the journal Radical Philosophy. Matt’s current research concerns theories of mass education, and the recent pedagogical turn in theory, and he will be organising a major conference on Walter Benjamin’s pedagogic materialism at Westminster later next year.

ARCHITECTURE_MEDIA_POLITICS_SOCIETY is a new on-line, fully peer reviewed academic journal.

The journal is a forum for the analysis of architecture in the mediated environment of contemporary culture. It seeks to expand an understanding of architecture and its relationship with media, politics and society in its broadest sense. One international paper is published each month that deals with an issue or theme relevant to the journal. Dual language publications are encouraged. Selected authors are also invited to submit articles for a printed version of the journal.

Currently, the journal forum operates as a platform for a research project entitled Architecture as Political Image; an investigation into the use of architecture in political campaign imagery in the United States and the United Kingdom. It is run in affiliation with Ravensbourne (University College), London, and Florida State University, Tallahassee.

ISSN 2050-9006 For details about submissions visit the web site: www.architecturemps.com

UPDATE: The second volume of issue one has just been published entitled Mythopoetics of the Kunsthalle. The issue contains an article arguing for a major reconsideration of the architectural profession that uses the notion of the Kunsthalle as its theoretical framework. The author, Manuel Schartzberg, is an architect and tutor currently working in the US. Previously, he worked for David Chipperfield Architects in the UK and his paper is partly based on his time there. You can read it at the web site: www.architecturemps.com

Joe Banks, former AHRC Research Fellow at the Institute, is out and about over the next month or so, promoting his Rorscach Audio project. The Times Literary Supplement has reviewed the “Rorschach Audio” book as “engaging… packed with interest” (TLS 5707, page 30), the project’s research archive is also on-line, and talks are now confirmed for The ICA, London, 15 Sept 2012 (as part of the closing events for Bruce Nauman’s exhibition “Days”) and at the Liverpool Biennial, 6 Oct 2012, organised by Mercy.

Please come along, we will be hosting a reception to celebrate the publication of Journal of Visual Culture’s ‘The Ways of Seeing 40th Anniversary Issue’, published this month. Join us on Saturday 8th September from 4:00-5:00 at King’s College, University of London to raise a glass (or two). The launch coincides with the three-day ‘Ways of Seeing John Berger’ conference organized by King’s and the British Library. You can find details of the venue for the Reception, and the conference more generally here: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/ahri/centres/lifewriting/berger/index.aspx

Edited by Raiford Guins, Juliette Kristensen, and susan pui san lok, our ‘Ways of Seeing 40th Anniversary Issue’ includes contributions from: Mieke Bal, Geoffrey Batchen, Sonia Boyce, Alan Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin, Lisa Cartwright, Jill H. Casid, Laurie Beth Clark, Mike Dibb, Clive Dilnot, Jennifer A. González, Raiford Guins, Ben Highmore, Richard Hollis, Martin Jay, Guy Julier, Louis Kaplan, Juliette Kristensen, susan pui san lok, Peter Lunenfeld, Tara McPherson, Tom Overton, Griselda Pollock, Adrian Rifkin, Julian Stallabrass, Marita Sturken, John Timberlake, and Ming Wong. Further details can be found here: http://vcu.sagepub.com/content/current

We’re delighted to announce the publication of Anne Witchard’s new monograph from Hong Kong University Press, Lao She in London. Focusing on one of China’s great modern writers, the book contributes to the rethinking of modernism as an event outside the boundaries of a single language, a single historical moment, or a single national formation.

“A beautifully written book that combines literary biography with a remarkably succinct account of British modernism and an evocative portrait of interbellum London, as viewed through Chinese eyes. Anne Witchard reminds us eloquently of the key role played by Chinese influences—both classical and modern—in literary modernism, and makes a great contribution to our understanding of Lao She’s London years.” — Julia Lovell, Birkbeck College, University of London

Details at: www.hkupress.org/book/9789888139606.htm

August 2012  188 pp.  14 b/w illus.
Paperback ISBN 978-988-8139-60-6

We’re excited to announce that Thomson and Craighead been shortlisted for this year’s Jarman Award amid a fantastic group of artists. You can find more info on the shortlist here: http://flamin.filmlondon.org.uk/projects/projectscurrent/jarmanaward/jarman_award_12

In other news, Thomson and Craighead are premiering their series of karaoke videos as part of the Film & Video Umbrella exhibition, ‘Our Mutual Friends’ launching online and for an event at Jerwood Space, London on 30th August 2012. The videos take a fresh look at unsolicited spam emails and their affinities with notions of romanticism and realism. You can view online versions of the videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/songsofinnocence100

The duo have also been commissioned to make a new installation for this year’s Brighton Photo-biennial: a documentary artwork that looks at the burgeoning Occupy movement and its explosion worldwide during October 2011. The recent documentary artwork, ‘Belief’ is streaming online as a single screen work at Animate Projects alongside an interview and an essay by Morgan Quaintance.  Finally, ‘The Time Machine in alphabetical order’ is showing as part of ‘Trans Adriatic Grey Area’ exhibition at LAMPO in Italy. The exhibition is curated by Darko Fritz for Lampo Net & Contemporary art Exhibition, D’Annunzio Room, Aurum, Pescara from August 25th – September 24th 2012.

China in Britain: Myths and Realities
Theatre/Performance and Music

July 18^th 2012, 9:45am – 5:30pm
The Old Cinema, 309 Regent Street, London W1B 2UW

You are warmly invited to the third in this University of Westminster/AHRC funded series. The day will present an eclectic programme with presentations from actors and broadcasters and academics. Dongshin Chang (City University of New York), Diana Yeh (Birkbeck College and University of East London), Simon Sladen (University of Winchester) and Ashley Thorpe (University of Reading) will present research that restores the history of China and Chineseness to the English stage, from Regency Extravaganzas, such as Chinese Sorcerer to chinoiserie theatre in the 1930s and Lady Precious Stream. We will look at subversive pantomime in Thatcher’s Britain, Poppy, and more recently Anna Chen’s Steampunk Opium Wars and Damon Albarn’s opera Monkey: Journey to the West.

The UK’s most high profile British Chinese actor, David Yip, remembered by many for his role as Detective Sergeant John Ho in The Chinese Detective will be talking about his new multimedia show Gold Mountain. There will be performances from comedienne, poet and political pundit, Anna Chen (aka Madame Miaow), actor David Lee-Jones, currently the lead in Richard III – the first British Chinese actor to be cast as one of Shakespeare’s English Kings – and Resonance Radio’s Lucky Cat DJ, Zoe Baxter, playing Korean Punk, Chinese Hip Hop and Reggae, Japanese Ska, Thai Country, and Singapore 60’s pop.

Entrance – including lunch and refreshments – is free of charge so for catering purposes it is essential to book your place by emailing: anne@translatingchina.info