Historical Studies Seminar

4.15 pm, Lecture Theatre 2, 11 Woodland Road

Liz Prettejohn (Bristol)

The Modernity of Ancient Sculpture

FFI: Ronald Hutton

Classics & Ancient History Research Seminar

4.10 pm - 6.00 pm, First floor seminar room, Graduate Centre, 7 Woodland Road

Bella Sandwell (Bristol)

A cognitive approach to John Chrysostom's homilies on Genesis

For further information please contact Neville Morley

Music Lunchtime Concert

1.15 pm - 2.00 pm, Victoria Rooms

Roger Huckle (violin) and Steven Kings (piano)

Entry is free. Latecomers will not be admitted.

For more information, Click Here >>

Centre for Medieval Studies Research Seminar

4:15 pm, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 7 Woodland Road

Andrew Butcher (Former Director of the Canterbury Centre for Medieval and Tudor Studies)

The aesthetics of the written word: cultural change in the English town, c.1200-1509

**CANCELLED**

FFI: Elena Lombardi.

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Eric Schwiztgebel (UC Riverside)

TBA

Centre for East Asian Studies Research Seminar

4.00 pm -5.30 pm, Drawing Room, Royal Fort Lodge

CEAS 2009-2010 Seminar Series: The PRC at Sixty: China Transformed — Implications for the Global Future.

Professor Lina Song (University of Nottingham)

Can China Stabilize Its Economic Development?

All Welcome

FFI: Click Here >>

Historical Studies Seminar

4.15 pm, Lecture Theatre 2, 11 Woodland Road

Elisa Sei (History of Art postgraduate)

Representations of Space in Futurist Aeropittura

FFI: Ronald Hutton

Theology & Religious Studies Research Seminar

4.00 pm, G5, 3 Woodland Road

Tea: 4.00 pm, Seminar: 4.30pm:

Tim Cole (University of Bristol, Historical Studies)

Defining Jewishness: Hungary 1944

Chair: Jo Carruthers

For further information please contact Carolyn Muessig.

Music Lunchtime Concert

1.15 pm - 2.00 pm, Victoria Rooms

David Bednall (organ)

Entry is free. Latecomers will not be admitted.

For more information, Click Here >>

Screen Research @ Bristol event: Contemporary Animation.

2:00 pm, The Lecture Room, Department of Drama, Cantocks Close.

There are three scheduled speakers:

David Sproxton (co-founder of Aardman Animations): "The Making of Curse of the Were-Rabbit"

Paul Wells (Loughborough)

Andrew Chong (Loughborough)

Inaugural Lecture - Professor Neville Morley

5.30 pm, LT3, Arts Faculty

Professor Neville Morley - Professor of Ancient Economic History and Historical Theory

Ancient and Modern

Followed by a drinks reception.

FFI: Nicola Fry

Drama Department Final-Year Students' Annual Production

Time TBA, Department of Drama, Cantocks Close

Directed by Martin White.

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Michael Ridge (Edinburgh)

TBA

Drama Department Screening of Films by Final-Year Students

Department of Drama, Cantocks Close

Films by Final Year students will be screened during the week of 25 January. Further details to follow.

Music Lunchtime Concert

1.15 pm - 2.00 pm, Victoria Rooms

Bristol University Chamber Choir and Madrigal Ensemble.

Entry is free. Latecomers will not be admitted.

For more information, Click Here >>

Classics and Ancient History Myth Conference

2.00 pm - 7.00 pm, Lecture Theatre 1, Arts Faculty, 3-5 Woodland Road

Department of Classics and Ancient History Research Conference on Myth:

'What's in a Variant?'

Papers by Emma Aston (Reading), Alberto Bernabe (Madrid), Ken Dowden (Birmingham), Daniel Ogden (Exeter).

After the papers there will be a reading/performance of a modern short story offering a living 'variant' of an ancient myth. The reader/performer will be a well-known television actor.

Programme:

2.00 Introduction (Prof. Richard Buxton)

2.10-2.45 ‘Laocoon’ (Prof. Daniel Ogden, Exeter)

2.45-3.20 ‘Thetis and the immortalisation of Achilles’ (Dr Emma Aston, Reading)

3.20-3.40 Tea

3.40-4.15 ‘Dionysus and the daughters of Minyas' (Prof. Alberto Bernabé, Madrid)

4.15-4.50 ‘The Proetids: location, location, location’ (Prof. Ken Dowden, Birmingham)

4.50-5.25 Plenary discussion

5.25 Pause

5.30 Reading/performance of Mercedes Aguirre's short story The Two Brothers.  Reader: Sam Callis.

6.15 Wine

7.00 Dinner for speakers

Organiser, Richard Buxton (Bristol)

FFI: variants.doc

English Departmental Seminar

1.00pm, 3-5 Woodland Rd, Room G7

Dr Charles Butler (UWE)
The Writing South West Seminar (title tbc)

Centre for Medieval Studies Research Seminar

4:15 pm, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 7 Woodland Road

Alfred Hiatt (London)

Reading medieval maps: Narrative, anachronism, mutation

FFI: Elena Lombardi.

Archaeology and Anthropology Society

5.30pm Lecture Theatre, 43 Woodland Road (Archaeology & Anthropology Department).

Hege Usborne

title TBA (an aspect of analysis of animal bones)

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Cara Nine (Cork)

TBA

School of Humanities Research Seminar

4.15pm - 6.00pm, Lecture Theatre 2, 11 Woodland Road

Theology & Religious Studies: 'Hatred and Tolerance'

Speakers: Kenneth Austin (History), Jon Balserak (THRS), Fernando Cervantes (History), Laurence Publicover (English).

Organiser: Jon Balserak

For further information please contact Gillian Clark.

Music Lunchtime Concert

1.15 pm - 2.00 pm, Victoria Rooms

Gemini

Entry is free. Latecomers will not be admitted.

For more information, Click Here >>

John GOWLETT (University of Liverpool/British Academy "From Lucy to

Language" Project co-Director)

'Earliest fire: socio-technical add-on or prime mover in human evolution?'

Archaeology and Anthropology Society

5.30pm Lecture Theatre, 43 Woodland Road (Archaeology & Anthropology Department).

Dr Victoria Walters (UWE)

"'Artistic Detours': Joseph Beuys as Anthropologist"

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Keith Hossack (Birckbeck)

TBA

Historical Studies Seminar

4.15 pm, Lecture Theatre 2, 11 Woodland Road

Dr Deborah Oxley (All Souls’ College, Oxford)

Historical Body Mass

FFI: Ronald Hutton

HANN Chris (Director, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle)

'Collective action in an Uyghur village in rural eastern Xinjiang'

Archaeology and Anthropology Society

5.30pm Lecture Theatre, 43 Woodland Road (Archaeology & Anthropology Department).

Dr Anne Teacher (University of Sheffield)

Centre for Medieval Studies Research Seminar

4:15 pm, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 7 Woodland Road

Judith Bryce (Bristol)

Writing in Time of Conflict: Lorenzo de’ Medici's sonnets composed in Naples and Cremona

FFI: Elena Lombardi.

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

David Sedley (Cambridge)

'Plato's theory of change (Phaedo 70-1)'

Historical Studies Seminar

4.15 pm, Link Rooms, 3 Woodland Road

Dean Blackburn(Bristol)

TBA

FFI: Ronald Hutton

Theology & Religious Studies Research Seminar

4.00 pm, G5, 3 Woodland Road

Tea: 4.00 pm, Seminar: 4.30pm:

Ingmar Heise

Calling Back and Ferrying Across - Some Remarks on Buddhist rituals for the Dead in Contemporary South China

Chair: John Kieschnick

For further information please contact Carolyn Muessig.

Chantal CONNELLER (University of Manchester)

'Meaningful materials: towards an archaeology of stone'

Archaeology and Anthropology Society

5.30pm Lecture Theatre, 43 Woodland Road (Archaeology & Anthropology Department).

Miss Louisa Pittman (University of Bristol)

"Appeasing Neptune: the Function of Maritime Folklore"

Annual Christianson Lecture in French

5.30pm, LT3, 17 Woodland Road

Professor Max Silverman (Leeds)

'Identity and Memory in a Transnational Age'

FFI: Susan Harrow

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Thomas Pradeu (Paris)

TBA

Centre for Medieval Studies Research Seminar

4:15 pm, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 7 Woodland Road

Simon Gilson (Warwick)

Medieval Visual Theory and Dante’s Comedy

FFI: Elena Lombardi.

Archaeology and Anthropology Society

5.30pm Lecture Theatre, 43 Woodland Road (Archaeology & Anthropology Department).

Dr  Simon Wyatt        

"... drums, drums in the deep: TRB drums in context."

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Speaker TBA

Postgraduate Medieval Conference: 'Language and Silence'

Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol

16th Annual Postgraduate Medieval Conference, on 'Language and Silence'

Including a Master Class with Professor Bernard McGinn (University of Chicago): Communicating the Incommunicable: Mystical Ineffability from Origen to Catherine of Siena

Issues of language and silence permeate both religious and political life in the Middle Ages: from attempts to engage with and communicate spiritual experience, to the complex negotiations involved in balancing the demands of the solitary religious life with the needs of the community, to the political pressures on everyday language in times when charges of heresy are a real concern. In private life, too, the ability or authority to speak was governed by a complex array of theological, philosophical and social codes. This conference aims to address issues such as these in the context of medieval life, and also some of the broader issues of language, and its absence, raised by such debate.

The University of Bristol hosts the longest-running international medieval postgraduate conference in the UK. Each year we offer medievalists the opportunity to present their research, discuss ideas, and foster links bridging disciplinary and geographical boundaries.

For the call for papers, please Click Here >>

For further information, please contact Edwina Thorn.

Supported by the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts (BIRTHA)

Please note that registration is free only until January 29th. (After this a late charge of £5 will apply.)

School of Humanities Research Seminar

4.15pm - 6.00pm, Lecture Theatre 2, 11 Woodland Road

Classics & Ancient History/Centre for Romantic Studies: Romans, Romantics and Reception

Visit of Prof. Jonathan Sachs (Concordia University)

Jonathan Sachs is associate professor of English at Concordia University, Montreal. He writes: 'My research examines the uses of antiquity in forging literary and political modernity in Britain during the long eighteenth century. My monograph, Romantic Antiquity: Rome in the British Imagination, 1789-1832 (OUP fc), examines how Romantic-period writers deploy Roman republican precedents to contest central aspects of political modernity including the expansion of political franchise, the rise of mass democratic movements, and the consolidation and spread of empire.'

Organisers: Neville Morley and Ralph Pite.

For further information please contact Peter Coates (P.A.Coates@bristol.ac.uk)

PELS, Peter (University of Leiden)

'Global heritage and the politics of archaeology and anthropology'

Archaeology and Anthropology Society

5.30pm Lecture Theatre, 43 Woodland Road (Archaeology & Anthropology Department).

Mr Gary Rossin (Sedgefield Historical and Archaeological Research Project)

"SHARP: the story so far"

Inaugural Lecture - Professor James Ladyman

5.30pm, Powell Lecture Theatre, Physics Building

Professor James Ladyman - Professor of Philosophy

'Does Physics Answer Metaphysical Questions?

There is no doubt that in the history of physics there has been great

progress in finding increasingly accurate descriptions of the phenomena we

observe, and in the manipulation of physical systems in experiment and

technology. Physics is often thought also to tell us about the most

fundamental nature of reality, for example, about the true nature of

material things and the unobservable causes of the phenomena, space and

time, causation and the laws that govern the universe. However, there are

grounds for scepticism about whether current physics should be trusted to

answer metaphysical questions. There have been very successful theories in

the past, such as Newtonian mechanics, optical ether theories of light,

classical electromagnetism and others that are according to our best

current theories largely wrong in their metaphysical implications despite

being approximately empirically adequate to an excellent degree. Sir James

Jeans said in 1942:

“?physics and philosophy are at most a few thousand years old, but probably

have lives of thousands of millions of years stretching away in front of

them. They are only just beginning to get under way, and we are still, in

Newton’s words, like children playing with pebbles on the sea-shore, while

the great ocean of truth rolls, unexplored, beyond our reach.”

Do we have reason to be more confident now than he was then? I will present

the arguments on both sides of this issue and argue for my own middle way.

(The lecture is intended to be accessible to those who don’t know any

physics.)

FFI: Nicola Fry

The Cradle will Rock

 7.30 pm ,Studiospace

Wickham Theatre, Department of Drama, Cantocks Close, Woodland Road,

by Marc Blitzstein

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Alex Voorhoeve (LSE)

TBA

A BIRTHA Conference

10.00 - 6.15 pm, Lecture Theatre 2, 11 Woodland road (entrance at 3-5 Woodland Road)

Great Mystics Address the Contemporary World

Organized by Anke Holdenried (Historical Studies) and Carolyn Muessig (Theology and Religious Studies).

For further information please contact Carolyn Muessig.

Centre for East Asian Studies Research Seminar

4.00 pm -5.30 pm, Drawing Room, Royal Fort Lodge

CEAS 2009-2010 Seminar Series: The PRC at Sixty: China Transformed — Implications for the Global Future.

Professor Yongjin Zhang (University of Bristol)

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Contrasting International Images of Contemporary China in Global Transformations

All Welcome

FFI: Click Here >>

Historical Studies Seminar

4.15 pm, Lecture Theatre 2, 11 Woodland Road

John Moore(Bristol)

Birmingham Prison 1849-1854: Reformation, Terror and Scandal

FFI: Ronald Hutton

KUBICA-HELLER Gra?yna

'Anna Czaplicka: a pioneer anthropologist at the University of Bristol'

Centre for Medieval Studies Research Seminar

4:15 pm, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 7 Woodland Road

Laura Varnam (University College, Oxford)

The House of God on Earth: Constructing Sacred Space in Late Medieval England

FFI: Elena Lombardi.

Inaugural Lecture - Professor Susan Harrow

5.30pm, Reception Room, Wills Memorial Building

Professor Susan Harrow - Professor of French

Working Narratives in Modern French Literature and Visual Culture

Since the Second World War the everyday has been a compelling topic for French culture and, consequently, for the academic discipline of French studies.  Informed by ethnography, sociology and cultural history, theorists have explored everyday practices from modes of walking, through the sign systems of fashion and cooking, to the spaces of super-modernity (airport lounges, shopping malls, and other ‘non-places’).

The everyday has become a productive academic industry.  Yet, one conspicuously neglected aspect of the everyday is that most everyday of activities: work.  Perhaps because it is too obvious, too ordinary, too workaday to deserve attention. 

This Inaugural Lecture tackles that blind spot.  It focuses on how work works in literature and visual culture, with examples ranging across the broad modern period, drawn from French culture and beyond.  It asks questions about how representation itself works.  How do words work?  How do readers (and viewers) work?  And how do they turn work into play?

FFI: Nicola Fry

imitating the dog-Tales from the Bar of Lost Souls

7.30pm

Wickham Theatre, Department of Drama, Cantocks Close, Woodland Road

For more information

www.imitatingthedog.co.uk/ www.talesfromthebaroflostsouls.com

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Daniel Elstein (Leeds)

TBA

Theology & Religious Studies Conference

9.30 am – 5.00 pm, Location TBA

Fifteenth Joint Postgraduate Conference, Theology and Religious Studies.

Organized by Jon Balserak.

For further information please contact Carolyn Muessig.

Historical Studies Seminar

4.15 pm, Lecture Theatre 2, 11 Woodland Road

Peter Coates(Bristol)

Going Swimmingly: Rivers of Rebirth and Recreation

FFI: Ronald Hutton

Theology & Religious Studies Research Seminar

4.00 pm, G5, 3 Woodland Road

Tea: 4.00 pm, Seminar: 4.30pm:

Bernard McGinn (Chicago University)

Human Dignity and the Christian 'Imago Dei' Tradition

Chair: Carolyn Muessig

For further information please contact Carolyn Muessig.

For more information:WUN Ideas and Universities - Virtual Seminars 2010

Archaeology and Anthropology Society

5.30pm Lecture Theatre, 43 Woodland Road (Archaeology & Anthropology Department).

Dr Märit Gaimster (Pre-Construct Archaeology, London)

"Small things forgotten: metal and other objects from excavations"

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Philip Ebert (Stirling)

TBA

Society of Latin American Studies Annual Conference

University of Bristol

The Forty-Sixth Annual Conference of the Society of Latin American Studies

Professor Steve Stern will be giving the Plenary lecture at the conference on Saturday 10 April 2010.

Further details concerning all aspects of the conference will be available in due course. In the meantime, some frequently asked questions concerning SLAS conferences are available.

Click Here >> for further information.

Organisers: Dr Matthew Brown, Dr Jo Crow, Dr Caroline Williams.

Sponsored by the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts (BIRTHA) and the Royal Music Association (RMA)

WUN Ideas and Universities - Virtual Seminars 2010

Professor Yin Cheong Cheng

Hong Kong Institute of Education

A typology of Higher Education development in the Asia-Pacific region: reforms and education hub

For more information:WUN Ideas and Universities - Virtual Seminars 2010

Theology & Religious Studies Research Seminar

4.00 pm, G5, 3 Woodland Road

Tea: 4.00 pm, Seminar: 4.30pm:

Andrew Moore (University of Oxford)

The Empirical Spirit. Co-sponsored by the Department of Philosophy.

Chair: Gavin D’Costa

For further information please contact Carolyn Muessig.

Centre for Medieval Studies Research Seminar

4:15 pm, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 7 Woodland Road

Louise Haywood (Trinity Hall, Cambridge)

Textual Community and the Poetics of Vision in the 'Cancionero de Palacio'

FFI: Elena Lombardi.

5.30pm, LR8, 21 Woodland Road

Dr. B. Stephens (Bristol)

Title TBA

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Speaker TBA

9.30-4pm. Clifton Hill House.

Multidisciplinary Study Day on the 1950s Style

FYI: Katie@gardenhistoryinstitute.co.uk

A BIRTHA Postgraduate conference:

Lecture Theatre 2, School of Chemistry, Cantock's Close (off Woodland Road)

Imagining Astrology: Painted Schemes and Threads of the Soul,

A Two-Day International Conference

Supported by the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts (BIRTHA), the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Alumni Foundation.

Organised by Darrelyn Gunzburg (History of Art) and Liz Greene (Historical Studies).

For more information, Click Here >>

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Daniel Nolan (Nottingham)

TBA

Theology & Religious Studies Research Seminar

4.00 pm, G5, 3 Woodland Road

Tea: 4.00 pm, Seminar: 4.30pm:

Brian Leftow (University of Oxford)

Scripture, God and Time

Chair: Oliver Crisp

For further information please contact Carolyn Muessig.

Centre for Medieval Studies Research Seminar

4:15 pm, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 7 Woodland Road

Alixe Bovey (Kent)

The Smithfield Decretals: Images from the Margins of a Fourteenth-Century Law Book

FFI: Elena Lombardi.

Wickham  Lecture-Ted Hughes and Shakespeare

5:30 pm, Wickham Theatre, Department of Drama, Cantocks Close, Woodland Road,

Jonathan Bate

Admission free

Archaeology and Anthropology Society

5.30pm Lecture Theatre, 43 Woodland Road (Archaeology & Anthropology Department).

Mr Fabian Graham (University of Bristol)

"Flagellating mediums and conversing with the gods - A short introduction to Chinese popular religion"

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Maureen O’Malley (Exeter)

TBA

The 4th Blackwell Bristol Lecture Series in Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition 2010

Four lectures, May 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th

5.15 pm - 6.30 pm, Venue, TBA

Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte (F U Berlin): Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides' "Bacchae" in a Globalizing World

1. Performing a Text or a Cultural Revolution? Richard Schechner's Dionysus in 69

Followed by a wine reception.

The Blackwell Bristol lectures are generously sponsored by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, and the lectures will be published by them in due course.

Organiser: Pantelis Michelakis.

The 4th Blackwell Bristol Lecture Series in Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition 2010

Four lectures, May 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th

5.15 pm - 6.30 pm, Venue, TBA

Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte (F U Berlin): Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides' "Bacchae" in a Globalizing World

2. Redefining Cultural Identities: The Bacchae of Klaus Michael Grueber and Theodoros Terzopoulos

Followed by a wine reception.

The Blackwell Bristol lectures are generously sponsored by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, and the lectures will be published by them in due course.

5.30pm, LR8, 21 Woodland Road

Dr. M. Hurcombe (Bristol)

Journey's end: André Malraux, fellow-travelling and the Spanish Civil War

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Robbie Williams (Leeds)

TBA

The 4th Blackwell Bristol Lecture Series in Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition 2010

Four lectures, May 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th

5.15 pm - 6.30 pm, Venue, TBA

Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte (F U Berlin): Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides' "Bacchae" in a Globalizing World

3. Celebrating Freedom - Festivals of Liberation: The Bacchae in Warsaw, Sao Paulo and Lagos

Followed by a wine reception.

The Blackwell Bristol lectures are generously sponsored by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, and the lectures will be published by them in due course.

The 4th Blackwell Bristol Lecture Series in Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition 2010

Four lectures, May 11th, 12th, 18th, 19th

5.15 pm - 6.30 pm, Venue, TBA

Professor Erika Fischer-Lichte (F U Berlin): Dionysus Resurrected: Performances of Euripides' "Bacchae" in a Globalizing World

4. Westernization, Asiatisation or Universalism? The "Bacchae" in  Tokyo, New Delhi, and Beijing

Followed by a wine reception.

The Blackwell Bristol lectures are generously sponsored by Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, and the lectures will be published by them in due course.

Centre for Medieval Studies Research Seminar

4:15 pm, Ground Floor Seminar Room, 7 Woodland Road

Helen Deeming (Royal Holloway)

Boni cantores erant in Anglia’: on the creation and reception of thirteenth-century English music

FFI: Elena Lombardi.

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Asa Wikforss (Stokholm)

TBA

Title to be confirmed

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Arif Ahmed (Cambridge)

TBA

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Markus Schrenk (Cologne and Meunster)

TBA

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Helen Beebee (Birmingham)

TBA

Philosophy Research Seminar

4.00 pm - 6.00 pm, Common Room, 9 Woodland Road

Stacie Friend (Heythorpe)

TBA

Conference: 75 Years of Penguin Books

University of Bristol

75 Years of Penguin Books: An International Multidisciplinary Conference

In 2010, Penguin Books will be 75 years old and Puffin Books will be 70 ears old. Organised by the AHRC Penguin Archive Project, the International Penguin Conference is occasioned by these two anniversaries of what is arguably the most distinctive and the most significant publishing house in the twentieth century and beyond.

Plenary speakers include:

• Professor Sir David Cannadine
• Professor Simon Eliot
• Professor Kim Reynolds
• Professor Sir Christopher Ricks

The conference will seek to cover the diversity of Penguin's publication history. The Penguin Archive itself is held in the Special Collections of the University of Bristol Library and attracts the attention of researchers in many disciplines and fields at national and international level, including historians of the book, biographers, social and political historians, cultural analysts and literary researchers.

For further information on registration, and to download the full Call for Papers, please Click Here >> or email penguin-project@bristol.ac.uk.

Fourth CHOMBEC Conference: Worlds to Conquer: The travelling virtuoso in the long 19th century

Victoria Rooms, Bristol

Call for papers (deadline 2nd November)

Sponsored by CHOMBEC (Centre for the History of Music in Britain, the Empire and the Commonwealth)

IGRCT Conference Series: Thinking Reciprocity

Time & Venue TBA

A mini-conference-series of two one-day conferences entitled 'Thinking Reciprocity'.

Sponsored by the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition.

Organisers: Ika Willis (lecturer in Reception) & Steve D'Evelyn (IGRCT Research Fellow)

IGRCT Conference: Reception and the Gift of Beauty

Link Rooms, 3-5 Woodland Rd

Reception has become an important and influential approach to researching and teaching Classical literature, and it has wider implications. By emphasizing the text as object in process, a dialogue between those working on reception theory and gift-theory could help move the discussion on. Research on Classical literature and gift-giving has tended to focus less on texts than on their contexts, but investigating the composition of text as gift as it both gives meanings to and receives meanings from social contexts, artistic and religious practices, and interpretive approaches helps us understand how these texts are composed and received. The aesthetic turn in gift theory is focused by the phrase 'the gift of beauty'.

This conference is being called to explore the claim that the concept and experience of beauty are essential to understanding and creating texts. It will consider how research into texts as gifts of beauty complements the answers drawn from theological, historical, anthropological, and sociological approaches.

In Cicero’s skeptical consideration of divination, the perception and reception of natural beauty involves the compulsion to respond which is characteristic of gift-exchange: “…the order of celestial things and the beauty of the universe compel me to confess that there is some excellent and eternal Being which deserves the respect and homage of the human race.”

As well as the compulsion to reciprocate, gift-theory offers other ideas important to the perception and creation of beauty: difference and delay in reciprocity and the image as gift and return-gift, the sublime and/ or beauty as ‘saturated phenomenon’, gift as object and subject and the ambiguity of beauty, etc.

This conference is part of the 'Thinking Reciprocity' series and will be followed directly by the conference 'Desiring the Text, Touching the Past'

(Bristol, 10 July 2010). Reduced fees will be offered to people attending both conferences.

For the call for papers and more information, please Click Here >>.

If you have any queries, please contact the conference organiser: Steve D'Evelyn.

Sponsored by the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition.

IGRCT Conference: Desiring the Text, Touching the Past: Towards an Erotics of Reception

Link Rooms, 3-5 Woodland Rd

Keynote Speaker: Professor Carolyn Dinshaw (NYU)

A one-day conference co-organised by the Bristol Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition & the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto.

"In reading Cicero's letters I felt charmed and offended in equal measure. Indeed, beside myself, in a fit of anger I wrote to him as if he were a friend and contemporary of mine, forgetting, as it were, the gap of time, with a familiarity appropriate to my intimate acquaintance with his thought; and I pointed out those things he had written that had offended me." (Petrarch, Rerum Familiarum Liber I.1.42)

Love, desire, fannish obsession and emotional identification as modes of engaging with texts, characters and authors are often framed as illegitimate and transgressive: excessive, subjective, lacking in scholarly rigour. Yet such modes of relating to texts and pasts persist, across widely different historical periods and cultural contexts. Many classical and medieval authors recount embodied and highly emotional encounters with religious, fictional or historical characters, while modern and postmodern practices of reception and reading - from high art to the subcultural practices of media fandom - are characterised by desire in all its ambivalent complexity. Theories of readership and reception, however, sometimes seem unable to move beyond an antagonistic model: cultural studies sees resistant audiences struggling to gain control of or to overwrite an ideologically loaded text, while literary models of reception have young poets fighting to assert their poetic autonomy vis-a-vis the paternal authority of their literary ancestors.

This conference aims, by contrast, to begin to elaborate a theory of the erotics of reception. It will bring together scholars working in and across various disciplines to share research into reading, writing and viewing practices characterized by love, identification, and desire: we hope that it will lead to the establishment of an international research network and the formulation of some long-term research projects.

This conference is part of the 'Thinking Reciprocity' series and will follow directly from the conference 'Reception and the Gift of Beauty' (Bristol, 8-9 July 2010). Reduced fees will be offered to people attending both conferences. If you have any queries, or to submit an abstract, please contact one of the conference organisers: Dr Ika Willis or Anna Wilson.

For the call for papers and more information, please Click Here >>.

Conference: The Life and Work of Thomas Wright (1711-1786)

Clifton Hill House

‘Elysian Fields, Pindaric Shades and a Myriad Inchanting Mansions’: The Life and Work of Thomas Wright (1711-1786)

A one day conference to celebrate the contribution of Thomas Wright to eighteenth-century landscape to mark the tercentenary of his birth

For more information >>