Two short papers will be given:
'South Asian Britain: Connecting Literary Histories' – Dr Florian Stadtler:
Through the digital resource, ‘South Asian Britain: Connecting Histories’ (https://southasianbritain.org) this talk will map how South Asians in Britain have shaped and reshaped literary culture, influenced publishing and pushed boundaries in the areas of novel writing, short fiction and poetry. From nineteenth century travel writing to the fringes of Bloomsbury, from literary workshops and setting up of publishing houses and magazines, South Asian’s had manifold impacts on Britain’s cultural scene as writers, publishers and editors. This presentation will showcase how a digital resource can become a useful mapping tool to reveal this interconnected hidden literary heritage and highlight the long-standing contributions South Asians have made to Britain’s cultural life.
'"A story grows, with me, in a series of images': A lecture on the aesthetic registers of Paula Fox's Desperate Characters (1970) – Lauren Smith
In the shadows of Desperate Characters (1970) hovers a dense array of artistic references and several aesthetic registers of sophistication and subtlety. Could the presence of such a rich and varied visual imagination explain the novel’s ambiguous relationship to postwar realism? In this lecture, three of the novel’s aesthetic registers – which seem at first glance too varied and discrete for such a slim volume – are gathered and presented for the first time, and shown to coexist in a way that evokes the emotional repression, expression, and isolation of its central characters.