We are absolutely delighted to announce the publication of Emma McEvoy’s new book Gothic Tourism as part of the Palgrave Gothic series.

From Strawberry Hill to the London Dungeon, Alton Towers to Barnageddon, Gothic tourism is a fascinating and sometimes controversial subject. Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Westminster, Emma McEvoy considers some of the origins of Gothic tourism and discusses Gothic itself as a touristic mode. Through studies of ghost walks, scare attractions, Dennis Severs’ House, Madame Tussaud’s, the Necrobus, castles, prison museums, phantasmagoria shows, the ‘Gothick’ design of Elizabeth Percy at Alnwick Castle, a party at Fonthill Abbey, and a poison garden, McEvoy examines Gothic tourism in relation to literature, film, folklore, heritage management, arts programming, and the ‘edutainment’ business.

Order up your copy here.

Wednesday 25 November, from 11.00 am
Furtherfield Commons, Finsbury Park, London

The Shopping Cyborg: A Flash Mob Ethnography

Join anthropologist and Westminster MA Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture student Chiara Garbellotto for a group exploration into how our relationships with technology in retail and exchange spaces make us into cyborgs. Working with tools from anthropology, especially Laura Forlano’s flash mob ethnography, we will observe and discuss the embodied experience of the shopper. We will share our ideas on how our bodies interact with technology and what kind of data we produce and mediate. Places limited to 12 people.

Arrive from 10:30am for a 11:00 start. Coffee and cake provided. Dress for the weather and please bring with you a printed image (photograph/clipping/drawing) of a shopper. It can represent any kind of exchange process and environment. Please also bring a means to take photographs and download the images (laptops are not needed).

Book here.

In association with the Museum of Contemporary Commodities: www.moccguide.net

Thursday 19th November, 4.30-5.30pm
Room 211, University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London

Queer London
Simon Avery and Katherine Graham, with Francis Ray White

The fifth in the Autumn series of Social Sciences and Humanities research seminars will be presented by our own Simon Avery and Kate Graham, from English, with a response by Francis Ray White in History, Sociology and Criminology. All welcome.

Simon and Kate are co-directors of the Queer London Research Forum (QLRF), based at the University of Westminster, which was established in September 2013. Its aim is to facilitate interdisciplinary discussion on various aspects of queer London, c. 1850-present. By bringing together academics, practitioners, students and those with an interest in queer issues more generally, the hope is to to encourage dialogue and debate about the range of London’s queer lives and experiences.

Please note earlier 4.30 start time for this week only.

For further information please contact: andreaspm@westminster.ac.uk.

Wednesday 11th November, 5.00-8.00pm
Architecture Studios, University of Westminster, Marylebone Road, London

What is at Play in Environmental Design?

What kinds of research are required to understand the forms of the human-environmental relation today? Part of Westminster’s Architecture Play Week, this symposium brings together a number of speakers giving short presentations on the kinds of environmental practitioners we might need in the future.

Speakers include: Claudia Dutson, Jon Goodbun, Susannah Hagen, Karin Jaschke, Torange Khonsari, Shaun Murray, Mirko Nicolic, Isis Nunez-Ferrera, Peg Rawes, Andreas Rumpfhuber, Douglas Spencer, and Victoria Watson.

For further details, contact Jon Goodbun at: jcgoodbun@mac.com

Thursday 12th November, 5.00-6.30pm
Room 211, University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London

Entanglements + Folds of Pleasure
Victoria Brooks and Adam Eldridge

The fourth in the Autumn series of Social Sciences and Humanities research seminars will be presented by Victoria Brooks from Westminster’s Law School, with a response by Adam Eldridge in History, Sociology and Criminology. All welcome.

For further information please contact: andreaspm@westminster.ac.uk.

Thursday 5th November, 5.00-6.30 pm
Room 2.11, University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London

“Beyond the Gaze: New Architecture of Security”
Elisabetta Brighi (Politics and International Relations)
with response by David Cunningham (IMCC)

For the latest in Westminster’s series of Social Science and Humanities research seminars, Elisabetta Brighi will be presenting a paper on the new American Embassy in London and architectures of security with a response from David Cunningham. All welcome.

A quick plug for the third issue of Mnemoscape, edited by two of our former MA Art and Visual Culture students, Elisa Adami and Alessandra Ferrini, as well as the launch of their new website at: http://www.mnemoscape.org/

Devoted to the theme of ‘Set in Stone’, the new issue also contains a fine article by another of our ex-students, Mirna Pedalo, ‘Memory Rupture’.

A note that the University of Westminster’s SSH Faculty Seminars for this year begin on Thursday 22^nd October, 5.00-6:30pm. These will be held every Thursday in room 2.11 in the University’s Little Titchfield Street building.

The first seminar will be led by Lea Sitkin and Dorrie Chetty from the Department of History, Sociology and Criminology, who will be giving a paper on “Tottenham: The People’s Perspective”, with a response by Nitasha Kaul from the Department of Politics and International Relation. Wine and soft drinks will be provided…

Future seminars include Elisabetta Brighi on New Architectures of Security, with a response from the IMCC’s David Cunningham (November 5th); Victoria Brooks from Westminster’s Law School on ‘Entanglements and Folds of Pleasure’ (November 12th), with a response by Adam Eldridge; Simon Avery and Kate Graham on Queer London (November 19th); Derek Hird on Chinese Men in London, with a response from our own Anne Witchard (December 10th); and, rounding things up, our old friends Ben Pitcher (Sociology) and Andreas Philippopolous-Mihalopolous (December 17th).

October 27th 2015, 6pm
University of Westminster, Little Titchfield Street, London W1W 7BY

The Artist Contract in the Digital World

Chris Ancliff is the General Counsel (International) at the Warner Music Group and was previously General Counsel at EMI Group plc. Paul is the first full time CEO of the Featured Artists Coalition. Nick Mason is a renowned composer, musician and producer, who in some ways will be ‘coming home’ for the event – along with fellow architecture student Roger Waters, he held rehearsals for their band Sigma 6 in the student common room in what is now the Law School building. As part of Pink Floyd he later returned to play in the building’s grand art deco Portland Hall, where this event takes place. It is now almost 50 years since Pink Floyd signed their first contract with EMI, and the evolution of this relationship will be discussed, along with consideration of various current issues.

Attendance is free, please register online.

A final reminder that this year’s series of English Literature and Cultural Studies research seminars will kick off at 5pm on Wednesday 14th October with Victoria Browne from Oxford Brooks speaking on ‘Generational Politics in Feminist History’. Sanna Melin Schyllert, a doctoral researcher at Westminster, working on feminism and modernism, will respond to Victoria’s talk.

“Sisterhood” is the familial metaphor most often associated with feminism; yet in fact, metaphors of “feminist foremothers”, “mothers” and “daughters” are employed just as frequently to convey relationships between feminists of different ages and eras. This kind of generational symbolism has been subject to serious criticism in feminist theory in recent years – for giving rise to “Oedipal” anxieties, and portraying the history of feminist theory and activism in terms of a struggle between “overbearing mothers” and “undutiful daughters”. This talk will examine critiques of the generational model of feminism, thinking through various significations of the generational metaphor, and its relation not only to feminist history but historical time more generally.

This first seminar will be followed by a drinks reception to celebrate the start of the new series and to welcome the new members of our research community. The seminar will take place in Room 105, University of Westminster, 32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW (nearest tube stations: Oxford Circus, Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street).

Directions here: http://www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/visit-us/directions/wells-street

A plug for an event organised by our colleagues in HOMELandS, the Hub for Migration, Exiles, Languages and Spaces, based at the University of Westminster.

Wednesday 28^th October 2015, 4-6 pm
Westminster Forum, University of Westminster, Wells Street London W1T 3UW

“Diaspora in the Field of Vision”
Margherita Sprio, Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media

Contemporary art practices that have emerged out of the existing art school structure in Britain have enabled a multitude of emerging practices to be given the current status that they hold in debates about visual culture. Diasporic artists since post war education expansion in Britain have become visible in small but significant numbers – in part supported by those sympathetic to the politics of educational equality. But also, supported by those for whom education and Diasporic experience were the life line that enabled both the art practices that now constitute contemporary art and also the critical debates that are now common place within contemporary art education. This paper will address some of the key issues that have been made apparent in the work of some contemporary Diasporic artists who live, work and have studied/study in London in relation to ideas of displacement migration, power and ethics.

Dr Margherita Sprio is a Senior Lecturer in Film History and Theory at University of Westminster and works on film practice and theory as well as the relationship of film theory to photography, contemporary art and philosophy. She is the author of Migrant Memories: Cinema and the Italian Post War Diaspora in Britain (Peter Lang, 2013).

The event is free and open to the public. Non-University of Westminster attendees please register with Cangbai Wang atc.wang6@westminster.ac.uk

Following on nicely from the IMCC’s event on Marx-Form-Isms held at Westminster in June this year, our colleague Charles Denroche is speaking at an Institute for English Studies colloquium entitled Form and Poetry: An Exploration of Russian Formalism – ostranenie, city poetics, metaphor, metonymy – at Senate House on October 23^rd, 10.00-5.30. Further details here.

For those of a heavy theory bent, the special issue of Theory, Culture and Society on Transdisciplinary Problematics has finally appeared, including David Cunningham’s ‘Logics of Generalization: Derrida, Grammatology and Transdisciplinarity‘, as well as further articles by Eric Alliez, Etienne Balibar, Lisa Baraitser, Felix Guattari, Peter Osborne, Nina Power, Stella Sandford, Michel Serres, and others. Available from the TC&S website here.

Catch it before it goes: John Beck’s review of McKenzie Wark’s Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene is currently up as a freebie on the Radical Philosophy website here.

Buy the whole issue and get Lucy Bond’s review of Morgan Wortham’s Thought in Pain thrown in for good measure: http://www.radicalphilosophy.com/issues/193

We’re delighted to report that Alex Warwick and Leigh Wilson’s co-edited Selected Writings of Andrew Lang (Edinburgh University Press) has been nominated for the Folklore Society’s 2015 Katharine Briggs Award (previously won by Vladimir Propp and E.P. Thompson, among others). The winner will be announced at a reception at the Warburg Institute on Wednesday 18th November.

Time to save up some money and buy a copy of the two volumes here.

A lovely compliment to Michael Nath’s “great, very intense book … the elegant, rococo noir-ish British Story” from the great guitarist and former Captain Beefheart collaborator Gary Lucas on his facebook site here.

In tribute, here are two of Gary’s own greatest, most intense moments…

And…

Anne Witchard has contributed to the new collection Lord of Strange Deaths: The Fiendish World of Sax Rohmer, edited by Phil Baker and Anthony Clayton, and published by Strange Attractor Press. It’s a limited edition of 500 copies, so order your copy now! Further details here: http://strangeattractor.co.uk/books/lord-of-strange-deaths/

The Centre for Law Society and Popular Culture, in conjunction with the Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies is delighted to announce an international poetry event to be held at the University of Westminster on 13^th October.

Hosted by the University of Westminster’s spoken word Artist in Residence, Mike Garry, “The Shaken and the Stirred”, a group comprising four renowned Canadian poets and novelists, will present their work in a public reading. The group, sponsored by the Centre for Creative Learning in Canada, includes prize winning authors Jeanette Lynes, Steven Heighton, Ian Burgham and Catherine Graham reading from their recently released and upcoming collections. For more on Mike Garry, including news of his recent Saint Anthony project, see here

These writers, all of whom have been recognized internationally, not only represent some of the best work being produced in Canada, but demonstrate a wide range of the types of poetry and themes that currently can be found in the Canadian literary landscape.  

Free tickets available at this link.

David Cunningham’s article in the latest issue of Radical Philosophy on the current debates around “accelerationism” is currently up as a freebie on the Radical Philosophy website here.

Thursday June 4th
The Boardroom, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1T

5:30 – 7.30 pm Keynote Lecture: John Roberts (University of Wolverhampton)
Shklovsky, Error and the End of Saint Petersburg

John Roberts is Professor of Art and Aesthetics at the University of Wolverhampton. His books include The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday, The Philistine Controversy (with Dave Beech), Philosophizing the Everyday, The Intangibilities of Form and The Necessity of Errors.

John’s lecture is the opening address of Marx, Form, Isms. For further details see: https://instituteformodern.co.uk/2015/marx-form-isms-june-4-5-2015