Conferences, Symposia and other Events
Alternative Modernisms: An International, Interdisciplinary Conference
Event Date: 15 – 18 May 2013, Cardiff University
This three-day, international, and interdisciplinary conference aims to draw attention to critically neglected modernist forms, movements and texts. It aims to bring together scholars from across Europe and beyond both to explore these ‘alternative’ modernisms and to consider the extent to which modernism(s) can itself be seen as (an) alternative. Submissions are invited on all aspects of the title and across all disciplines and fields, including art, fashion, design, literature, history, architecture, music, cultural studies and critical theory.
To visit the conference web site and download the full call for papers, please visit: www.cardiff.ac.uk/encap/modernisms
Critical Ecologies: Theory, Culture, and the Environment
Date: Friday May 24th, 2013
Location: Room 3.19, The Graduate Centre, Union Building, Cardiff University.
Critical Ecologies is a one day interdisciplinary conference dealing with the critical intersection of culture and the natural environment from the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences. The event is open to both staff and students, attendance is free, and refreshments will be provided.
To attend the conference, please email us at criticalecologies@cardiff.ac.uk or TynanA@cf.ac.uk
For further details of this event please click here
Partitions & Cultural Memory
Event Date: 3-4 June 2013
The AHRC funded research network Partitions: What are they good for? is delighted to announce the first of three 2 day symposia, to be organised jointly by the School of English, Communication and Philosophy, Cardiff University and the School of English, University of St Andrews. For more information about the event (including registration form and conference programme) as well as more information about the research network, please visit: http://www.partitions-net.com or email partitions@cardiff.ac.uk
2013 Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory Summer Symposium
Date: 6th June
Butetown History & Arts Centre
The Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory is currently running a student-led, AHRC-funded Collaborative Skills Development Project. This involves a programme of training activities, held in collaboration with Butetown History & Arts Centre, a multi-ethnic community-based charity in Cardiff Bay. The Collaborative Skills Development project seeks to build new skills related to the impact and engagement agendas among members of the up and coming generation of PhD students and Early Career Researchers. Its primary aim is to train researchers in how to make engagement and impact central to their activities. This symposium will enable participants to reflect on issues related to public engagement.
The theme of the symposium is “Engaged Research.”
For further details of this event please click here.
Health Communication Research Centre 8th Summer School
Analysing Communication in Healthcare Settings
Date: 1 - 3 July 2013
Location: Cardiff University
This intensive course is specifically targeted at researchers and professionals within the broad healthcare field. The course will offer exposure to different analytical frameworks, covering micro and macro perspectives on both oral and written data, in a range of healthcare sites. Each day is divided into presentations from the course leader followed by smaller group work involving a practical hands-on approach. There will be opportunities for participants to discuss their ongoing research (in the form of data sharing, poster presentations and consultations).
For further details of this event please click here
Writing the Detectives: Charlie Higson and Andrew Lane in conversation with Dr Heather Worthington
Event Date: Thursday 21 March 2013
19:30 - 20:30
An event aimed at adults part of Cardiff's first Children's Literature Festival
Join Dr Heather Worthington (Cardiff University) as she chats to Charlie Higson (Young Bond) and Andrew Lane (Young Sherlock), exploring the choices writers make when writing for young and old, and the dilemmas and dramas of re-writing famous detectives when writing a crime detection thriller.
This event is free but places must be reserved - please ring ticketline on 02920 230130 or go to the Cardiff Children's Lit Fest website.
Visiting speaker, 26 Feb 2013: Nicola Watson on Walter Scott, Washington Irving and literary heritage
Nicola Watson (Open University) will be presenting her paper, ‘Transporting the Romantic: Sir Walter Scott, Washington Irving and the Romantic Writer’s House’, at 5.30pm on Tuesday, 26 February 2013. The talk will take place in the Cardiff University’s John Percival Building, Room 2.48.
This paper investigates the making of Washington Irving’s house in New York State, Sunnyside, as a reworking of Sir Walter Scott’s exercise in self-promotion at Abbotsford. It argues that Irving, having presented and explicated Scott’s home in Geoffrey Crayon’s Sketchbook to a wide public, especially in the States, consciously took Scott’s house as a model for his own display of himself as a romantic writer. Sunnyside rethinks Abbotsford by sentimental referencing, by reiterating the aesthetic of the collection, and in architectural terms. Most strikingly, it mimics Scott’s fantasia by embedding the writer’s house within a ‘heritage’ landscape itself produced by his own writing. The paper enquires as to how typical this project might have become for other romantic American authors, notably Fenimore Cooper, Henry Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The conclusion speculates on whether the romantic understanding of literary genius as most intensely expressed in houses and associated landscapes survived the Atlantic crossing intact, or whether it mutated into something distinctive in the environment of New England.
For further details of this event please click here
"The Common Treasury of the Nations": Internationalism in Welsh Periodicals in English
Dr Malcolm Ballin
Event Date: 7pm, 27th February 2012
Dr. Malcolm Ballin, an independent researcher at the Cardiff School of English, Communication and Philosophy, will be giving a talk on ' "The Common Treasury of the Nations": Internationalism in Welsh Periodicals in English'. The talk will be given at a meeting of Cardiff and District United Nations Association, due to be held in the Council Chamber of the Temple of Peace on Wednesday 20th February at 7.00pm. Admission is free, and everyone is welcome. The Association has supplied the English and Welsh posters for this event, and would be happy for them to be downloaded and displayed.
The Temple of Peace is situated along King Edward VII Avenue, Cathays Park, between the Redwood and the Bute Buildings of Cardiff University. King Edward VII Avenue runs parallel to North Road
Cardiff BookTalk
Event Date: Thu, 28/02/2013
Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1813, has one of the most famous and most quoted first lines of English literature and goes on to narrate the fortunes of one of the most iconic romantic couples Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy. The novel has inspired a myriad of adaptations, sequels, societies, museums and events: The BBC adaptation starring Colin Firth, Death Comes to Pemberley, The Jane Austen Convention and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies to name but a few.
Pride and Prejudice occupies a prominent position in the public imagination as a result of these multiple representations. Nonetheless, it is a novel that rewards re-reading in its original form to engage directly with the complexity of the characters and Austen's style that can be lost in the many adaptations. This event will explore both that narrative and its cultural impact over the succeeding centuries.
Our speakers for this session are:
Dr Anthony Mandal: (School of English, Communication & Philosophy) speaking on the publishing history of Pride and Prejudice.
Prof. Keir Waddington: (School of History, Archaeology and Religion) speaking on apothecaries and medicine at the turn of the nineteenth-century.
Dr Jenny Kidd: (School of Journalism Media & Cultural Studies) speaking on Pride and Prejudice in a remix culture.
This event will take place in the Optometry Lecture Theatre in the Optometry Building on Maindy road at 7pm.
Cardiff BookTalk
Maus is a classic of graphic fiction, or graphic autobiography: the text weaves Art Spiegelman's tense relationship with his Auschwitz-surviving father, while retelling his father's experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland.
The discussion revolved around the complete Maus, which includes both Maus I: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. Maus is a contemporary classic of immeasurable significance.
The speakers for this session were:
Prof Gerrit-Jan Berendse, School of European Languages, Translation & Politics
Dr Lisa El-Refaie, School of English, Communication & Philosophy
Dr Toby Thacker, School of History, Archaeology & Religion
To book your place on the event, please e-mail publicbookings@cf.ac.uk
Cardiff BookTalk
The School is very pleased to be involved in Cardiff University's book group with a difference - BookTalk. We read high-quality fiction and discuss the big ideas in the books as they relate to twenty-first century life.
At the BookTalk event on Tuesday 30th October at 7pm, Professor Ann Heilmann explored Sarah Waters' novel 'The Little Stranger'
'Sarah Waters' masterly novel is...gripping...unnerving and supremely entertaining' Hilary Mantel
After her award-winning trilogy of Victorian novels, Sarah Waters turned to the 1940s and wrote The Little Stranger, a tender and tragic novel.
Set against the backdrop of wartime Britain, The Little Stranger was shortlisted for both the Orange and the Man Booker, and went straight to number one in the bestseller chart.
BookTalk sessions are free and are open to the public.
For more information about this event please click here.
Cardiff BookTalk
Pigeon English: Narrative Voice and the Child Detective, by Dr Tomos Owen
Part of the Cardiff BookTalk explored 'Pigeon English' by Stephen Kelman.
Here, Dr Tomos Owen explores the code-switching of Harri's narrative, and raises questions of identity in this 'detective' story of sorts
Cardiff BookTalk is a forum for discussion of great literature from a variety of perspectives. Visit cardiffbooktalk.co.uk for further information!
Cardiff BookTalk
Dr Julia Jordan on 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy
Is 'The Road' a redemption narrative? In this talk, Dr Julia Jordan discusses whether critical interpretations of McCarthy's great novel are as accurate as they first appear.
Cardiff BookTalk is a forum for discussion of great literature from a variety of perspectives. Visit cardiffbooktalk.co.uk for further information!
Philosophy Cafe
Philosophy Cafe is a space for sharing and exploring ideas, which affirms that we are all philosophers, even if we don't quite know it yet.
It aims to exploit the enthusiasm of academic philosophers and social scientists for their subject to create stimulating debates in which anyone can participate. Topics up for discussion will range from the ethics of global warming to the nature of democracy and freedom, and from corporate social responsibility to the rights and wrongs of new technologies such as genetic engineering and nanotechnology.
On the third Tuesday of each month, join us in the Cafe Bar at The Gate to listen as speakers introduce insights and invite us to address key problems. Afterwards, why not continue the debate in our blog?
The emphasis is on joining in. Philosophy Cafe starts from the assumption that everyone's viewpoint is potentially a source of illumination. Our ethos is therefore that all opinions are entitled to respect, and that open, friendly discussion, disagreement, and debate is the best way to show them that respect.
Bring an open mind along, and change the way you see the world.
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