Event
Sunday 27 October 2019
Regent Street Cinema
Bond Girls: Body, Fashion and Gender book launch
We are delighted to announce the launch of our colleague Monica Germana’s forthcoming new book: Bond Girls: Body, Fashion and Gender (Bloomsbury). The event includes a special screening of Goldfinger (3-5), followed by a Q&A (5-6), and the book launch itself (6pm) in the cinema bar.
Please reserve tickets via the Regent Street Cinema site:
https://www.regentstreetcinema.com/programme/goldfinger-book-launch/
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).
The IMCC is delighted to announce a series of public lectures to be held at the University of Westminster in collaboration with our friends in the Centre for the Study of Democracy, and with the support of the French Embassy and the Political Studies Association.
Lectures will take place monthly, normally on a Thursday evening from 5.30 – 7.00 pm, and are free to attend, but booking is essential.
Thursday 26th September – Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
Eric Fassin (University Paris 8 Vincennes – Saint-Denis/LEGS): Introduction
Thursday 10th October – Room UG05, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
Sophie Wahnich (CNRS/TRAM): “Democracy Taken in Vice: Understanding the ‘Yellow Vests’ Event”
Thursday 14th November – Room UG05
Ninon Grangé (University Paris 8/LLCP): on the state of exception
Wednesday 4th December – Room UG05
Fabien Jobard (CNRS/CESDIP): “Liberal, Authoritarian, or Police State? Defining the French State According to its Police”
Thursday 30th January – Fyvie Hall
Syliane Larcher (CNRS/IRIS): on Afrofeminism and French universalism
Thursday 13th February – Fyvie Hall
Sébastien Chauvin (University of Lausanne/CEG): on LGBTQI struggles and French universalism
March 2020 (TBC)
Norman Ajari (University Toulouse 2 Jean Jaurès/ERRAPHIS): on the racialised man produced as a threat in France
April 2020 (TBC)
Elsa Dorlin (University Paris 8): on violence entailed by the denial of France as postcolonial
Thursday 11th June
Nacira Guénif-Souilamas (University Paris 8/CEFEG): on subjectivities who already live as postcolonial
The events are free and open to all, but please do not forget to book on Eventbrite.
Deaths at Sea: Migration and Art symposium, Weds 10th July 2019
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.
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.
Thursday 2nd May 2019, 1.00 – 2.00 pm
Room 201, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London
Contested Identities in Costa Rica
Liz Harvey-Kattou (School of Humanities, University of Westminster)
Costa Rica is a country known internationally for its eco-credentials, dazzling coastlines, and reputation as one of the happiest and most peaceful nations on earth. Beneath this façade, however, lies an exclusionary rhetoric of nationalism bound up in the concept of the tico, as many Costa Ricans refer to themselves. This paper, based on the monograph of the same name, will begin by considering the idea of national identity, what this constitutes, and the idealised nature of the tico identity. It will argue that the tico encompasses a Eurocentric, patriarchal, heteronormative stance based on colonial ideals. It will go on to outline two key periods in Costa Rican history where the normative construct of who or what counts as tico has been challenged – the ‘sociological revolution’ of the 1970s and the ‘digital revolution’ of the 2010s. It will discuss the creation of radical literature and film in these two time periods, analysing the ways in which Costa Rican authors and filmmakers have used the soft power of creative production to question social norms and weave Afro-Costa Rican, feminist, youth, and LGBT+ cultures and identities into the fabric of the nation.
Organised by our friends in the Latin American Studies at Westminster group.
Thursday 13th June 2019, 6.00 pm
P21 Gallery, 21- 27 Chalton St, Kings Cross, London, NW1 1JD
Sink Without Trace: Exhibition on Migrant Deaths at Sea
Our friend and colleague Federica Mazzara will be launching her book Reframing Migration: Lampedusa, Border Spectacle and Aesthetics of Subversion, on June 13th at the P21 Gallery in London at 6pm in the context of the exhibition Sink Without Trace, on migrant death at sea, that she has co-curated with artist Maya Ramsay. The book launch is part of a series of events related to the exhibition, including a final symposium with guest speakers including Iain Chambers and Valentina Zagaria. Full details and registration here.
Full details about the exhibition and venue here.
Wednesday 3 April 2019, 5.00 pm
Room UG04, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B
Thursday 4th April 2019, 5.00-6.30 pm
UG05 Lecture Theatre, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
Race, Occidentalism/Orientalism and Sino-centrism in Wang Chong’s adaptation of Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine (2009) and his multi-lingual show Revolutionary Model Play 2.0 (2015)
Mary Mazzilli (University of Essex)
Dr Mary Mazzilli is Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Film and Theatre Studies at Essex. Prior to that, she worked at Goldsmiths, University of London in the Theatre and Performance Department (2015-2016) and in 2012-2014, was a post-doctoral fellow at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her monograph Gao Xingjian’s Post-Exile Plays: Transnationalism and Postdramatic Theatre is published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama.
Organised by our friends in HOMELandS, the Contemporary China Centre and Language Acts and Worldmaking.
Register via Eventbrite page here.
Thursday 28th March, 6.00 pm
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B
Poetics of Contemporary Art
Peter Osborne (CRMEP) and David Cunningham (IMCC)
The final in our series of six public lectures and exchanges on philosophy, politics and culture is a discussion of the Poetics of Contemporary Art with Peter Osborne, Director of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston, and David Cunningham, Deputy Director of the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture.
All the events have been recorded. We will be posting links soon!
Wednesday 20 March 2019, 5.00 pm
Room UG04, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B
Thursday 14 March 2019, 18:00 – 20:00 pm
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B
Towards a Socialist Cosmopolitanism
Etienne Balibar (CRMEP, Kingston University)
The fifth in a series of six Public Lectures on Philosophy, Politics and Culture, co-organised by the IMCC with the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy.
Etienne Balibar is Anniversary Chair Professor in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University and a Visiting Professor at the Department of French and Romance Philology at Columbia University. A contributor to Louis Althusser’s seminal Reading Capital (1965), he is author of Spinoza and Politics (1985), The Philosophy of Marx (1993), Violence and Civility (2010), Citizen Subject (2011) and Equaliberty (2014), among many other works. His most recent book, Secularism and Cosmopolitanism: Critical Hypotheses on Religion and Politics, was published in English translation by Columbia University Press in 2018.
Chaired by Elinor Taylor (IMCC).
The event is free, but booking via eventbrite is essential. You can book here.
Details on the rest of the series can be found here.
Wednesday 6th March 2019, 5:00 pm
Room UG04, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London
Wednesday 20th February 2019, 5:00 pm
Room UG04, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London
Monday 11 March 2019, 18:30 pm
Regent Street Cinema, 307 Regent Street, London W1B
The Socrates of Prague
In 1977, in Prague, a city at the heart of Europe, the philosopher Jan Patočka became the unlikely spokesperson for Charta 77 — a proclamation signed by a number of dissidents and issued to the communist authorities that pointed out the flagrant disregard of the norms of freedom and legality by the Communist authorities in the then Czechoslovakia. As a result of this principled action Patočka famously suffered the same fate as his hero Socrates, collapsing and dying after a lengthy interrogation by the secret police, at the age of 69. It is largely to Patočka that we owe Vaclav Havel’s famous call for ‘Living in Truth’ and the need for both civility and civil society. As a philosopher Patočka therefore played an important part in laying the foundations for the non-violent overthrow of Communism in Czechoslovakia in 1989, the so-called ‘Velvet Revolution’.
The Socrates of Prague film explores the life and thought of this extraordinary man with several students and friends who in the 1960s and 70s witnessed Patočka’s intellectual and political efforts, and shared with him the intense desire for a social and political renewal after the dramatic end of the Prague Spring in 1968. The main film is in English and is 17 minutes long. It will be shown along with another short film about Jan Patočka made by the Patočka Archive in Prague (and shown with English subtitles). The event will also feature short talks by Franceso Tava, Senior Lecturer at the University of the West of England in Bristol; Nicolas de Warren Nicolas, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University; and Graham Henderson, who is leading on the publication of a selected edition of Patočka’s work in English translation, due to be published by Bloomsbury in 2020.
Hosted by the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation, it is being held in partnership with, and supported by, the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Westminster. It is also being supported by the Czech Centre in London and by the Patočka Archives in Prague.
This event is free of charge but please RSVP in advance to info@rimbaudverlaine.org to reserve a place. These will be allocated on a strictly first come, first served basis. Please reserve your place now to avoid disappointment!
There are a whole host of fantastic events organised by IMCC members and affiliates that are happening as part of the Difference festival at the University of Westminster, focusing this year on the idea of the ‘radical’.
Monday 25th February, 6.00 -8.00 pm
Regent Street Cinema
Hold me like before: radical trans representation on film
Join us for a screening of this independent Costa Rican film Hold Me Like Before (Abrázame Como Antès, 2016; in Spanish with English subtitles). Taking place at the historic Regent Street Cinema, the documentary-style film is followed by a Skype Q&A with director Jurgen Ureña and a panel discussion on transgender representation on film and on the radical way the director went about the filmmaking process. Led by Liz Harvey-Katou, Senior Lecturer in Spanish Language and Culture, with Margherita Sprio, Reader in Film and Visual Culture.
Tuesday 26th February, 12.30 – 2.00 pm
Foyer, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
Picpoetry radical jam
Discover the visual poet in you with picpoet’s radical way of seeing and feeling the world around you through role-play. Take a walk around the university, discover unexplored angles and new ways of thinking and being. Radicalise the ‘Lawscape’ by exploring how norms allow us to move in certain ways and impede us in others. Take quick pictures and write instant texts that capture your own position with regards to what you see. With an opportunity to win modest but fun prizes. Led by Law and Theory Professor Andreas Philippopoulos-Mihalopoulos, the picpoet.
Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th February, 12.30 – 2.00 pm
Old Gym and Foyer, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
Banner up! a radical take-over
As you walk through into our Regent Street entrance, drop by and become an activist in our two-day ‘take-over’ using our workshops and activity stations set up there. Make a cartoon or a political placard in our workshops, or your own badge at our activity station. Your creation will feature in our installation of placards and banners to celebrating this year’s Difference Festival radical theme. Led by students and alumni of our MA Museums, Galleries and Contemporary Culture with the Cartoon Museum and Peter Ride, Principal Research Fellow, School of Humanities and IMCC.
Wednesday 27th February, 12.00 – 1.00 pm
Soho Poly Theatre Basement (meet in Foyer), University of Westminster, 4-12 Little Titchfield Street
Radical voices: poetry matters
Drawing on previous radical Soho Poly Project experiments disrupting time and space with our lunchtime theatre, found sounds and ghost gigs projects, we return to Poetry Matters and the history of poetry at the Polytechnic offering two radical takes. First, Mike Garry, Writer in Residence at Westminster Law School, offers his own radical take on poetry. Second, we offer a further radical take, again disrupting time and space and streaming this lunchtime performance live. Expect surprises. Organised by Guy Osborn, Professor of Law and Matt Morrison, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, working with Anna McNally, Senior Archivist.
Wednesday 27th February, 1.30 – 3.00 pm
Soho Poly Theatre Basement (meet in Foyer), University of Westminster, 4-12 Little Titchfield Street
The radical in popular culture: alternative theatre in Westminster, a virtual tour
Take a virtual visit of sites and venues in the borough of Westminster to discover why it became a centre of innovative theatre. Tour includes: Inter-Action’s Ambiance lunchtime theatre club in Queensway, their staging of Britain’s first Black Theatre and their time at the Almost Free Theatre in Rupert Street, scene of Britain’s first women’s theatre season in 1974 and first gay theatre season in 1975; the ground-breaking Soho Poly (later the Soho Theatre); the ILEA’s Cockpit Theatre; and the ICA’s controversial socialist theatre season. Find out also about the Cartoon Archetypal Slogan Theatre (CAST), and writing initiatives such as Foco Novo and Joint Stock. Led by our guest Susan Croft, playwright, historian and curator, and Unfinished Histories; organised by Guy Osborn and Matt Morrison, with Anna McNally.
Wednesday 27th February, 6.00 – 9.00 pm
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
Radical film: voyeurism in documentary filmmaking on migration
Together with a screening, we invite you to sit at our Long Table and take part in discussions with filmmakers, protagonists, curators and activists sharing their work and radical strategies to resist voyeurism in film-making on forced migration. Explore our positions as storytellers, curators and media consumers, think about the responsibilities of those who create visual narratives based on another’s experience and engage with some of those to whom these stories belong. Everyone is welcome to take a seat at the Long Table, breaking down hierarchies of ‘spectator’ and ‘expert’; come and go between table and audience and help the conversation outside on leaving the table. Led by Alternative Fictions, a collective of visual anthropologists and documentary makers, and Migration Collective; organised by Federica Mazzara, Senior Lecturer in Intercultural Communication, and Lily Parrot, School of Law and co-founder of Migration Collective.
Thursday 28th February, 6.00 – 8.00 pm
UG04, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street
Radical curation: race, memory and activism in heritage practice
Join us as we bring together activists, heritage professionals and academics developing new strategies to counter the naturalisation of racial injustice. This roundtable and Q&A examine the challenges of representing and commemorating black and minority histories. Together, we explore ways to bring marginalised pasts to public attention and make hidden histories visible. Followed by a drinks reception. Led by Lucy Bond, Lecturer in English Literature, School of Humanities and IMCC, and Jessica Rapson, Lecturer in Cultural and Creative Industries, King’s College London, with activists and heritage professionals from Tate, Museum of London, Black Cultural Archives, Black History Walks and the Organisation of Women of African and Asian Descent (OWAAD).
Thursday 7 February 2019, 18:00 – 20:00 pm
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B
Reason in Reverse: Kant and Freud on Faults
Stella Sandford (CRMEP, Kingston University)
The third in a series of six Public Lectures on Philosophy, Politics and Culture, co-organised by the IMCC with the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy.
Stella Sandford is Professor in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University. She is author of Plato and Sex (2010), How to Read Beauvoir (2006) and The Metaphysics of Love (2000), as well as co-editor of Further Adventures of the Dialectic of Sex: Critical Essays on Shulamith Firestone (2010).
Chaired by Leigh Wilson (IMCC).
The event is free, but booking via eventbrite is essential. You can book here.
Details on the rest of the series can be found here.
Wednesday 6th February 2019, 6:00 pm
Room UG04, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London
Dennis Duncan
“Nitpickers vs Windbags: Weaponizing the Book Index”
Thursday 24 January 2019, 18:00 – 20:00 pm
Fyvie Hall, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B
Is Memory the Basis of History (After Trump)?
Lucy Bond (IMCC) & Howard Caygill (CRMEP, Kingston University)
The second in a series of six Public Lectures on Philosophy, Politics and Culture, co-organised by the IMCC with the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy.
Lucy Bond is Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at the University of Westminster. She is author of Frames of Memory After 9/11 (2015), co-editor of The Transcultural Turn (2014) and Memory Unbound (2016), and co-author of the forthcoming Trauma in the Routledge New Critical Idiom series.
Howard Caygill is Professor of Philosophy at Kingston University. Among other works, he is author of Kafka: In Light of the Accident (2017), On Resistance: A Philosophy of Defiance (2013), Levinas and the Political (2002) and Walter Benjamin: The Colour of Experience (1998).
Chaired by John Beck (IMCC).
The event is free, but booking via eventbrite is essential. You can book here.
Details on the rest of the series can be found here.
Thursday 17 January 2019, 18:00 – 20:00 pm
UG05, University of Westminster, 309 Regent Street, London W1B
Is Science the Subject of Philosophy? Miller, Badiou and Derrida
Catherine Malabou (CRMEP, Kingston University)
The first in a series of six Public Lectures on Philosophy, Politics and Culture, co-organised by the IMCC with the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy.
Catherine Malabou is a Professor in Philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP) at Kingston University, and in Comparative Literature at the University of California Irvine. She is author of books including The Future of Hegel: Plasticity, Temporality, and Dialectic (1996), What Should We Do With Our Brain? (2004), The Ontology of the Accident: An Essay on Destructive Plasticity (2009), and Sois mon corps, with Judith Butler (2010).
All welcome, but booking via eventbrite is essential. Book here.
Further events in the series can be found here.
The Institute for Modern and Contemporary Culture
University of Westminster Department of English, Linguistics and Cultural Studies
32-38 Wells Street, London W1T 3UW. United Kingdom.