What's on at the Institute of English Studies

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Inter-University Postcolonial Studies Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Vedrana Velickovic (Kingston), ' "Seeing"/"Hearing" Bodies: The Question of (Un)Belonging in the Work of Bernardine Evaristo and Dubravka Ugresic '
Vedrana Velickovic is a final year PhD candidate and a Graduate Teaching Assistant at Kingston University, London. She is currently writing up her doctoral thesis which explores the idea of (un)belonging in post-1990s black British and Former Yugoslav women’s writing. She is also organising a Life Writing Seminar Series within the Centre for Life Narratives at Kingston to be held throughout the Spring semester 2010, and co-organising a postgraduate conference titled "Migrancy and/in the Text" to be held at Kingston University in July 2010. She has recently had a book chapter on the Former Yugoslav writer Dubravka Ugresic, based on part of her research, published in Literature in "Exile of East and Central Europe" (New York: Peter Lang, 2009). She is particularly interested in exploring the intersections between postcolonial and black British studies/literatures and the studies/literatures of "Eastern Europe" and The Balkans.

Senate House Library Friends Visit
Seminar
Venue: Other
Time: 14:30
Senate House Library Friends Afternoon Visit: Eton College Library

Charge: £5. Maximum group: 25. Friends members only. If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
Click here for other SHL Friends events.

Textual Scholarship Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G21a (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30
Speakers: Professor Henry Woudhuysen (UCL), 'The History of the Book and Textual Scholarship: Strange Companions?'

Ezra Pound Cantos Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Alex Pestell (University of Sussex), Canto 109

The Charles Peake Ulysses Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G16 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
**Please note change of usual room**

Suburban Childhoods
Lecture
Venue: Other
Time: 18:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Michael Frayn, Dennis Marks
A joint King's College London and English PEN event.

Venue: Edmond J Safra Lecture Theatre, Strand, KCL. CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION.

Open University Book History and Bibliography Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:00
Speakers: Barbara Ryan (National University of Singapore), 'Reading "Ben Hur" '
Barbara Ryan teaches in the University Scholars Programme at the National University of Singapore. She is the co-editor of "Reading Acts: U.S. Readers' Interactions with Literature, 1800-1950" (Tennessee, 2002) and the author of "Love, Wages, Slavery" (Illinois, 2006). A more recent project is "Rubbed and polished: Reflecting on Zora Neale Hurston's 'The Conscience of the Court'" (American Literature, 2007). She is currently working on a history of the "Ben-Hur" event between 1880 and 1924.

Open University Romantic Period Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room 274 (Stewart House)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Julian North (Leicester), 'Letitia Landon: Biography and the Poetess'
READING:
Letitia Landon, "Lines of Life" (1829); "Corinne at the Cape of Mesina" (1831)
Glennis Stephenson, "Letitia Landon: The Woman Behind L. E. L." (Manchester UP, 1995), ch 1.
Emma Roberts, 'Memoir of L. E. L.', in "The Zenana and Minor Poems of L. E. L." (London: Fisher, Son &Co.; Paris [1839?]. Available at The British Women Romantic Poets Project online archive.

Dr Julian North is a lecturer at the University of Leicester, specialising in nineteenth-century literature. Her most recent book, "The Domestication of Genius: Biography and the Romantic Poet" (Oxford University Press, 2009), explores the biographical afterlives of the Romantic poets – including Byron, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Felicia Hemans and Letitia Landon – and the creation of biography as a popular form. She is one of the editors of "The Works of Thomas De Quincey" (2000-2003) and the author of "De Quincey Reviewed" (1997). Her current research is on Mary Shelley, T. J. Hogg and nineteenth-century life-writing, in relation to vitalism and the reanimated body.

T. S. Eliot Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G34 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: 'I am not a linguist, nor was meant to be', Iman Javadi (Institute of English Studies, T. S. Eliot Research Project)
Drawing on unpublished and uncollected writings, this seminar will assess T. S. Eliot’s command of modern languages and discuss his familiarity with some major works of European literature.

John Coffin Memorial Palaeography Lecture
University Event
Venue: The Chancellor's Hall (Senate House, First Floor)
Time: 18:00
Speakers: Dr Teresa Webber (Trinity College, Cambridge), 'Reading in the Refectory: monastic practice in England from the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries'.
The readings delivered to monastic communities each day in the refectory, and the books used for this purpose, have received comparatively little detailed attention. This lecture will examine the surviving evidence and explain the principles underlying the selection of texts for the readings. It hopes to bring a new perspective to the history of monastic book production and the formation of book collections in England in the central middle ages.

Dr Teresa Webber, FSA, FRHistS, is a Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, and University Senior Lecturer in Palaeography and Codicology in the Faculty of History. She has published "Scribes and Scholars at Salisbury Cathedral c.1075-c.1125" (1992), and co-edited "The Libraries of the Augustinian Canons", Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, 6 (British Library/British Academy, 1998) and with Elizabeth Leedham-Green Vol I of the "Cambridge History of Libraries in Britain and Ireland".

The lecture will be followed by a wine reception. All welcome. If you would like to attend please contact jon.millington@sas.ac.uk | tel. +44 (0)207 664 4859.

London Theatre Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room 102 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 18:30 - 20:30
Speakers: Chris Megson (Royal Holloway), Amanda Stuart Fisher (Central School of Speech and Drama), Derek Paget (University of Reading): Panel on Documentary Theatre

London Nineteenth Century Studies Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Speakers: Politics and "Race" in the East End
Ella Dzelzainis (Newcastle), ' "Thou cursed Moloch-Mammon": Jews and the Economics of White Slavery in Radical Fiction'

David Glover (Southampton), 'From Tottenham to Houndsditch: Aliens, Terror and Popular Fiction in Edwardian London'

History of Communication: Seminars 3 & 4
Seminar
Venue: Room G16 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 16:00
Speakers: Seminar 3: LIBRARIES AS RELAY STATIONS: Eleanor Robson, 'Libraries and textual mobility in Assyria and Babylonia'; Matthew Nicholls, 'Libraries in the Ancient World'; Rowan Watson, 'Travelling by proxy'

Seminar 4: ANTHOLOGIES AND ANTHOLOGIZING: Stephen Quirke, 'The Spirit of Anthology in ancient Egyptian writings'; Michelle Brown, 'Anthologies in Anglo-Saxon England'; Abigail Williams, 'The shaping of literary taste in the eighteenth century poetic miscellany'
Arrive 10.30am for coffee.

Seminar 3: 11.00am-1.00pm
Seminar 4: 2.00pm-4.00pm

Attendance is open to all but please let us know you wish to attend by emailing Jon Millington.

The Communist Manifesto - London 1848
Lecture
Venue: British Library
Time: 18:30
Speakers: Eric Hobsbawm; chair, Gareth Stedman Jones (Professor of Political Science, King’s College, Cambridge)
Marx and Engels’ "Manifest der Kommunistichen Partei" is one of the most famous and influential political documents in world history. It was written for a group of German revolutionary exiles based in London during November–December 1847, and printed in February 1848 as a clandestine pamphlet for private distribution.

Despite a flurry of interest at the time, there are relatively few surviving copies of this slim 23–page pamphlet. To mark the recent acquisition of a copy of the first edition by the British Library, this talk by one of our most eminent historians, Eric Hobsbawm, will explain how and why the Manifesto emerged, before going on to play its extraordinary role in world history.

Cost: £7.50 / £5 concessions. Tickets available at British Library Box Office, tel. 01937 546546 (9am-5pm Mon-Fri), or in person at The British Library.

Inter-University Postcolonial Studies Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Ipshita Ghose (University of Kent), 'Desirous daughters: women, performance, and popular culture in Shobha De’s "Starry Nights" (1991) and Anurag Kashyap’s "Dev D" (2009)'
Ipshita Ghose is a doctoral candidate and an assistant lecturer at the University of Kent. Her research interests include postcolonial and diasporic fictions, visual culture, and urban literature in India, and she is currently working on a thesis titled "Fictions of the postcolonial city: reading Bombay-Mumbai as the 'locus classicus' of modernity in India", supervised by Dr. Alex Padamsee and Prof. Abdulrazak Gurnah. Ipshita has recently contributed a book chapter to "The Idea of the City: Early Modern, Modern and Postmodern Locations and Communities" (2009) and is writing an article on post-liberalization trends in Indian Writing in English, which has been selected for publication early next year.

Senate House Library Friends Book Group
Seminar
Venue: Room 102 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 19:00 - 20:30
Speakers: Sally Dugan, The Scarlet Pimpernel
Senate House Library Friends Book Group. All welcome. Attendance free. If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
Click here for other SHL Friends events.

Finnegans Wake Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

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Postgraduate Feminist Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room 276 (Stewart House, Second floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
READING: Patricia Williams: 'On Being the Object of Property' in "The Alchemy of Race and Rights" (1991)

Mari J. Matsuda: 'When the First Quail Calls: Multiple Consciousness as Jurisprudential Method' and 'We the People: Jurisprudence in Colour' in "Where is Your Body? And Other Essays on Race, Gender and the Law" (1996)

Zora Neale Hurston: Excerpt from "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937)

Reading for the session will be available HERE.

History of Libraries Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Dr. James Willoughby (University of Oxford), 'The medieval library of St George's Chapel, Windsor'
English collegiate libraries of the middle ages are poorly known outside those of the two ancient universities. The royal collegiate chapel of St George at Windsor possessed one of the finer collections, as witnessed by several medieval booklists as well as many surviving books.

Wyndham Lewis Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Charlotte DeMille (Courtauld Institute), 'Keep with Blasted Devolution'

Open University Book History and Bibliography Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:00
Speakers: Nicola Watson (Open University), ‘Storied Vicinities: Romantic Acts of Reading on the Very Spot where...’
Nicola Watson taught at Oxford, Harvard, Northwestern and Indiana before joining the Open University. A specialist in the romantic period with a longstanding interest in reception studies, she is the author of a number of books: "Revolution and the Form of the Novel" (OUP, 1994), "England's Elizabeth: an Afterlife in Fame and Fantasy" (OUP, 2002 with Michael Dobson) and most recently "The Literary Tourist" (Palgrave, 2006), together with two edited collections of essays, "At the Limits of Romanticism" (1994, with Mary Favret) and "Literary Tourism and Nineteenth-century Culture" (Palgrave 2009), as well as articles and editions. Her most recent exercise in 'reading on the spot' was in Hannibal, Missouri, in the cave-system in which Tom Sawyer got lost, an enterprise associated with her current project on American literary sites.

Senate House Library Friends Talk
Seminar
Venue: Room 102 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Karen Attar, 'The M. S. Anderson Collection: A New Old Collection of Writings on Russia, printed 1525-1917'
Senate House Library Friends Talk. The M. S. Anderson Collection, recently presented to the University, is newly catalogued and preserved. Dr Attar will introduce the travel narratives, works of fiction, histories and other items it contains.

The talk will be followed by a reception in the Grand Lobby to launch the M. S. Anderson Collection.

All welcome. Attendance free. 5.30 for 6.00pm.

If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
Click here for other SHL Friends events.

University College London English Graduate Conference: NIGHTMARE
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: Amy Billone, Lawrence Rainey
Creatively and comparatively, the 2010 UCL English Graduate Conference will examine ideas of nightmare in literature, art and film. The sessions are broadly organised to cover six major paradigms of nightmare, from the nightmarish geographies of Gogol's St Petersburg and Dos Passos's Manhattan, to transgression and boundary-crossing in Titus Andronicus , late Medieval Britain, and postmodern fantasy fiction. Recurring nightmares, waking nightmares and existential nightmares, from Gothic literature to Kurdish politics to Philip Larkin's Aubade, will be explored and discussed. The event will also host performance art, a poetry reading, a selection of artwork, and a screening of short films followed by an open discussion. Invited presenters, Professor Lawrence Rainey and Professor Amy Billone, will frame the day with talks, respectively, on disempowered figures in Gothic spectacles from Romanticism to the present, and the dream/nightmare of woman and modernity. CLICK HERE FOR REGISTRATION AND FURTHER INFORMATION.

Irish Studies Seminars
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Dr Bill Kissane (LSE), 'The 1922 Constitution in the European context'

Seaside Autobiography
Lecture
Venue: Other
Time: 18:00 - 19:30
Speakers: Michael Bracewell, Lara Feigel, Andrew Kotting, Alan Read
A joint King's College London and English PEN event.

Venue: Old Anatomy Theatre, Strand, KCL. CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER INFORMATION AND REGISTRATION.

Modernism Research Seminar Series
Seminar
Venue: STB3/6 (Stewart House, basement)
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Speakers: Angelique Richardson (University of Exeter), 'Biology, Morality and the Novel'
Ronan McDonald (University of Reading), 'Darwinism, Modernism and the Irish Revival'
Chair: Suzanne Hobson (Queen Mary, University of London)
**Please note room change for this session**

EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination)
Seminar
Venue: STB3/6 (Stewart House, basement)
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Speakers: John Henry (University of Edinburgh), Gravity and "De gravitatione": The development of Newton's concept of action at a distance'
NB: NOTE ROOM CHANGE FOR THIS MEETING.

London Shakespeare Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G34 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:15 - 19:00
Speakers: Alison Shell (Durham University), 'Shakespeare and the God Terminus: The Winter's Tale and Cymbeline'

Farah Karim-Cooper (Shakespeare's Globe), 'Performing Concealed and Missing Hands in Early Modern Drama'

Djuna Barnes Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G21a (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: [Speaker TBC], "The Antiphon", discussion lead by Dr Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes)

Inter-University Postcolonial Studies Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Maria Ridda (University of Kent), 'Inside "The Temple of Modern Desire": Re-Collecting and Re-Locating Bombay'
Maria Ridda is a doctoral candidate at the University of Kent. Her thesis, supervised by Professor Abdulrazak Gurnah, concerns the mapping of transnational urban spaces in South Asian diasporic texts, with a particular focus on the reconfigurations of "India" from abroad. Her research interests include South Asian diasporic writing, postcolonial theory, early 20th century English, American and Italian literature. Maria has presented at a number of academic conferences on topics which include intertextuality, memory and the glocal city in postcolonial literature. She is currently teaching a course on American and European Modernist poetry and fiction. She has contributed a chapter to a collection on the reception of Indian Writing in English, and is preparing another about the Indian diaspora in the United States.

Open University Book History and Bibliography Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:00
Speakers: Danielle Fuller (University of Birmingham), ‘“Everything Becomes Alive!”: Mass reading events, 21st-century readers and the pleasures of performance’
Danielle Fuller is Senior Lecturer and Director, Regional Centre for Canadian Studies within the Department of American & Canadian Studies at the University of Birmingham. She is the author of "Writing the Everyday: Atlantic Canadian Women's Textual Communities" (MQUP, 2004) and various articles about late-20c./contemporary Canadian literature and book cultures. She is currently working with DeNel Rehberg Sedo (Mount Saint Vincent U, Canada) on a book about the meanings of reading which arises from the interdisciplinary research project, 'Beyond the Book: Mass Reading Events and Contemporary Cultures of Reading in UK, Canada and the USA' (funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK, 2005-8).

Open University Romantic Period Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room 274 (Stewart House)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Jacqueline Labbe (Warwick), 'Reading Jane Austen after reading Charlotte Smith'
READING:
Magee, William, 'The Happy Marriage: The Influence of Charlotte Smith on Jane Austen', in "Studies in the Novel" 7 (1975), 120-32.
Derry, Stephen, 'The Ellesmeres and the Elliots: Charlotte Smith’s Influence on "Persuasion" ', in "Persuasions" 12 (1990), 69-70.
Ehrenpreis, Anne, 'Northanger Abbey: Jane Austen and Charlotte Smith', in "Nineteenth-Century Fiction" 25 (1970), 343-8.
Ford, Susan Allen, ' "No business with politics": Writing the Sentimental Heroine in Desmond and Lady Susan', in "Persuasions On-line" 26 (2005).
Labbe, Jacqueline, 'Narrating Seduction: Charlotte Smith and Jane Austen', in "Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism", ed. Labbe (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2008), 113-28.
Ty, Eleanor, 'Ridding Unwanted Suitors: Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park and Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline', in "Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature" 5 (1986), 327-9.

Jacqueline Labbe is Professor of English at Warwick, Director of Graduate Studies in English, and Chair of Graduate Studies in the Arts Faculty. She is currently finishing a book entitled "Writing Romanticism" which argues that Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth in effect "co-wrote" Romantic poetry into being. Her next project will place Smith as the most significant influence on Austen.

Medieval Manuscripts Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room 103 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 18:45
Speakers: James Clarke (Bristol), 'Monastic Manuscripts and their Readers in Late Medieval England'

London Seminar in Digital Text and Scholarship
Seminar
Venue: Room 275 (Stewart House)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Wybo Wiersma, 'LogiLogi: Philosophy beyond the Paper'
LogiLogi tries to find an informal middle-road between good philosophical conversations and journal-papers by providing a form of quick, informal publication, peer-review, and annotation of short texts.
It is intended for all those ideas that one cannot turn into a full sized paper, but that one deems too interesting to leave to the winds.
It does not make use of forum-threads (avoiding their many problems), but of tags and links that can also be added to texts by others. And it features a rating- system modeled after journal-based reviewing in which well-rated texts earn authors more voting-power.

LogiLogi is free software. It has been under development by between 2 and 10 people for 3 years. A public beta is already online and fully functional at www.LogiLogi.org.

In the presentation I will explain what LogiLogi is, elaborate on some of the ideas & design-choices behind it & hope to inspire some discussion and constructive criticism.

Biography
Wybo Wiersma is currently doing the MA in Digital Humanities at KCL, and holds 3 (hons) BA-degrees: in Philosophy, History and in Humanities Computing. He initiated the LogiLogi project and presented it at DH and ECAP conferences, and also has co-authored various papers on computational linguistics together with Professor John Nerbonne
(Groningen) and others.

For more information on LogiLogi see:
http://www.logilogi.org/pub/beyond/paper.pdf or:
http://en.logilogi.org/Logi_Logi=Admin_User_4

London Theatre Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room 102 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 18:30 - 20:30
Speakers: P A Skantze (Roehampton University), 'Weathered Thresholds, Itinerancy, Sebald and Devotional Spectating'

Ezra Pound Cantos Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: David Barnes (Queen Mary’s), Canto 3

The Charles Peake Ulysses Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

London Nineteenth Century Studies Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Speakers: East End to West End, West End to East End

Susan Bernstein (Wisconsin-Madison), 'Reading Room Geographies of Late Victorian London: Constance Black Garnett, the British Museum and the People's Palace'

Anne Witchard (Westminster), 'Bedraggled Ballerinas on a "Bus Back to Bow": the "Fairy Business" '

London Old and Middle English Research Seminar (LOMERS)
Seminar
Venue: Room G34 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Joyce Hill (University of Leeds), 'Two bishops and a manuscript: Wulfstan, Leofric, and CCCC 190'

Open University Book History and Bibliography Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:00
Speakers: Mike Esbester, Paul Dobraszczyk, and Paul Stiff (University of Reading), ‘Interactions with information: designing and reading in everyday life, 1815-1914’
Paul Stiff is Principal Investigator and Mike Esbester and Paul Dobraszczyk are Postdoctoral Researchers at the Department of Typography & Graphic Communication, University of Reading. They work on the AHRC-funded project, 'Designing information for everyday life, 1815-1914.' Paul Stiff, who worked in book published before returning to the academy, edited "Information Design Journal" 1985-2000 and in 1996 founded the annual series "Typography Papers", which he still edits. Paul Dobraszczyk is the author of "Into the Belly of the Beast: Exploring London's Victorian Sewers" (Spire Books, 2009) and has published many articles on Victorian visual culture. Mike Esbester is a social historian, and has recently published articles in "Book History" and the "Journal of Design History"; he completed his doctoral thesis at the University of York, on twentieth-century safety education and railway safety.

T. S. Eliot Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G34 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30

The Good of Criticism: The Value of Literary Studies
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Other
Time: 00:00
This conference aims to articulate the public value of literary criticism and scholarship. It will explore the ‘good’ of literary studies in the broadest sense. How might we practise a commitment to an ethics and politics of literature? Is it appropriate or possible for scholars to speak about aesthetics and literary merit within the works they study? Can we articulate the contribution that research in literature makes to culture and society? ATH THE UNIVERITY OF READING.Click here for further information.

Finnegans Wake Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

History of Communication
Seminar
Venue: Room G16 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 16:00
Maps and diagrams.
Tabulating information.

Lecture and Book Launch: "Gandhi: Naked Ambition"
Lecture
Venue: The School's Common Room
Time: 18:00
Speakers: Jad Adams (IES Visiting Research Fellow)
'A semi-repressed sex maniac'? - Gandhi's experiments in chastity' by Jad Adams. Followed by the launch of "Gandhi: Naked Ambition" (Quercus, 2010).

All welcome. If you would like to attend please email Jon Millington.

Senate House Library Friends Talk
Seminar
Venue: Room 102 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Rosemary Ashton and Deborah Colville, 'Progressive Bloomsbury: the accumulation of reforming institutions in 19th century Bloomsbury'
Senate House Library Friends Talk. The Bloomsbury Project involves a range of researchers across disciplines in creating an archive illustrating 19th-century Bloomsbury's development. It will trace the foundation of many local institutions, including UCL, University College Hospital, the Homoeopathic Hospital, Great Ormond Street Hospital, and the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital and Women's Medical School, and incorporate biographical information.

All welcome. Attendance free. 5.30 for 6.00pm. If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
Click here for other SHL Friends events.

Irish Studies Seminars
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Dr Clare Wallace (Charles University, Prague), ' "Don't mention the war": The Emergency and after in contemporary Irish literature and theatre'

EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination)
Seminar
Venue: STB3/6 (Stewart House, basement)
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Speakers: Michael J. B. Allen (UCLA), 'Renaissance Platonism, the lost Eurydice, and Orphic Song'
NB: NOTE ROOM CHANGE FOR THIS MEETING.

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The Charles Peake Ulysses Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Postgraduate Feminist Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room 276 (Stewart House, Second floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
READING: Drucilla Cornell: ‘Introduction: Feminism, Justice and Sexual Freedom’ in "At the Heart of Freedom: Feminism, Sex & Equality" (1998)

Helene Cixous: Excerpt from 'Coming to Writing' (1977) in "Coming to Writing and Other Essays", trans. Deborah Jenson (1987)

H.D.: Excerpt from "HERmione"(1981)

Reading for the session will be available HERE.

Ezra Pound Cantos Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Speakers: David Moody (University of York), Canto 41
NB: THIS SESSION ONLY WILL BE HELD 2-4PM.

EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination) cancelled
Seminar
Time: 14:00 - 16:00

London Old and Middle English Research Seminar (LOMERS)
Seminar
Venue: Room G34 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Graduate Seminar
Jennifer Jahner (University of Pennsylvania/King's College London), Title TBC
Second Speaker TBC

Finnegans Wake Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Djuna Barnes Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G21a (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: [Speaker TBC], Late poetry

History of Libraries Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Scott Mandelbrote (Peterhouse, Cambridge), 'The history and archaeology of a seventeenth-century library: Peterhouse, Cambridge, from Andrew Perne (d. 1589) to John Cosin (d. 1672)'
At the death of Andrew Perne, Peterhouse received a bequest that transformed its library. This talk reconstructs the effects of that bequest and of subsequent decisions about the library of the College on buildings, furniture, catalogues, and the management of the collection. It reconstructs a hitherto unknown early seventeenth-century library, describes the relationship of the College with the London Stationers' Company, and charts the rise and fall of a library that, from 1595 to 1655, might reasonably be described as the finest in Cambridge.

Senate House Library Friends Visit
Seminar
Venue: Other
Time: 14:30
Senate House Library Friends Visit. The Goldsmiths’ Company, one of the City of London’s mediaeval craft guilds, founded in 1327, set up a special library in the 1950s to cover the subject areas of silver, jewellery and hallmarking. Visitors will have the opportunity to see the 1835 Hall, the library and the archives which date back to 1334.

Maximum group: 12. Friends members only. If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
Click here for other SHL Friends events.

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History of Libraries Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Stephen Massil (National Trust), 'Libraries of the National Trust: some houses in Kent and Sussex - Shakespeare, landscape and the in-laws'
Some observations and experience of cataloguing for the National Trust where place, family, and changing generations put `provenance' at the heart of the process.

Modernism Research Seminar Series
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Speakers: Sam Halliday (Queen Mary, University of London), 'Modernism and the Seashell'
John Michael Gomez-Connor (University of Cambridge), 'Death by Modernity: Sound, Identity, and Interruption in William Faulkner'
Chair: Gail McDonald (University of Southampton)

London Nineteenth Century Studies Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G22/24 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Seth Koven (Rutgers), title tbc

Senate House Library Friends Talk
Seminar
Venue: Room 102 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Frances Boyle (UKRR), 'The UK Research Reserve (UKRR) - securing knowledge for research'
Senate House Library Friends Talk. The UKRR Scheme for preservation of national holdings in research libraries in a period of de-duplication and rationalisation is at the heart of current library policy in the UK.

All welcome. Attendance free. 5.30 for 6.00pm. If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
Click here for other SHL Friends events.

London Theatre Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room 102 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 18:30 - 20:30

Ezra Pound Cantos Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Stoddard Martin (Independent Scholar), Canto 84

The Charles Peake Ulysses Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination)
Seminar
Venue: Room G34 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Speakers: Wouter Hanegraaff (University of Amsterdam), 'Historians of Error: The Protestant Attack on Platonic Orientalism'

Looking at the Acropolis in the Age of Enlightenment
Lecture
Venue: Room G22/24 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 00:00
Speakers: William St Clair (Institute of English Studies Senior Research Fellow)
Co-hosted with the Institute of Classical Studies. Details to be confirmed.

MMSDA Public Lecture
Lecture
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30
Speakers: Simon Tanner (King's College London Digital Consultancy Services) Details to be confirmed.
Offered in conjunction with the AHRB funded course Medieval Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age.

History of Libraries Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Other
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Visit to Dulwich College Library. Numbers will be limited. Bookings to Keith Manley.

Alleyn's legacy at Dulwich - the College of God's gift, now Dulwich College - preserves in its Archives one of the world's major resources of Jacobean theatre history, reflecting the interests and career of its founder Edward Alleyn, contemporary of Marlowe, Donne, Jonson et al. Its Fellows' Library of nearly 6,000 books represents the acquisitions of 350 years by gentlemen clerics, sometimes academic, sometimes schoolmasterly in taste, with the flavour of the country house library closet dispersed throughout. The group will be given a taste of the collections' history, shown the Archives premises and some of the gems of the collections, which in addition to theatre material span medieval MSS, incunabula, and exploration and literary figures among former alumni (Wodehouse, Chandler, Shackleton, etc.).

Finnegans Wake Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

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History of Libraries Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Michelle Johansen (University of East London, Bishopsgate Institute, Birkbeck), 'An "unglamorous" profession?: the public librarian in late-Victorian London'
A variety of occupational identities were available to the first generation of chief librarians working in London's rate-assisted libraries ca. 1900. The identities these quasi-professionals adopted and `performed' (in their modes of leadership and methods of library management, in their inter-institutional allegiances and enmities and in the journal articles and correspondence they wrote) tell us much about late-Victorian public library history. They also shed light on wider historical issues relating to such themes as gender, family, location and social class.

Wyndham Lewis Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Anthony Paraskeva (Dundee University), 'Garbo, Nabokov and The Revenge for Love'

London Nineteenth Century Studies Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G34 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Professor Isobel Armstrong (Birkbeck College), title tbc

EMPHASIS (Early Modern Philosophy and the Scientific Imagination)
Seminar
Venue: Room G34 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 14:00 - 16:00
Speakers: William Poole, Richard Serjeantson and Rhodri Lewis, 'Early Modern Heterodoxies'

Ezra Pound Cantos Reading Group
Seminar
Venue: Room G35 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Speakers: Eric White (Oxford Brookes University), Canto 32

The Charles Peake Ulysses Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Djuna Barnes Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G21a (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 13:00
Speakers: Professor Daniela Caselli (Manchester), presenting from "Improper Modernism: Djuna Barnes' Bewildering Corpus", followed by [weather permitting] picnic in Russell Square Gardens.

Comics and Medicine: Medical Narrative in Graphic Novels
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 09:30 - 18:00
Speakers: Paul Gravett, Marc Zaffran
This one-day interdisciplinary conference aims to explore medical narrative in graphic novels and comics. Although the first comic book was invented in 1837 the long-format graphic narrative has only become a distinct and unique body of literary work relatively recently. Thanks in part to the growing Medical Humanities movement, many medical schools now encourage the reading of literature and the study of art to gain insights into the human condition. A serious content for comics is not new but representation of illness in graphic novels is an increasing trend. The melding of text and visuals in graphic fiction and non-fiction has much to offer medical professionals, students and, indeed, patients. Among the growing number of graphic novels, a sub-genre exploring the patients' and the carers' experiences of illness or disability has emerged. CLICK HERE FOR CALL FOR PAPERS.

Senate House Library Friends Talk
Seminar
Venue: Room 102 (Senate House, 1st Floor)
Time: 17:30 - 19:30
Speakers: Bill Simpson, 'Libraries across cultures: developing a new academic library in Egypt'
Senate House Library Friends Talk. All welcome. Attendance free. 5.30 for 6.00pm. If you would like to attend please contact Library Office, Senate House Library, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel. 020 7862 8411.
Click here for other SHL Friends events.

LOMERS annual conference: Studies in Cotton Nero a.x (the Gawain-Manuscript)
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: include Alcuin Blamires, Helen Cooper, Tony Davenport, Rosalind Field, Susanna Fein, Julian Harrison, Derek Pearsall, Ad Putter
CLICK HERE FOR CALL FOR PAPERS.

London Palaeography Summer School
Summer School
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: David D'Avray, Debby Banham, Charles Burnett, Carol Farr, David Ganz, Peter Kidd, Patricia Lovett, Dorothea McEwan, Marigold Norbye, Nigel Ramsay, Jane Roberts, Anna Somfai, Jenny Stratford, Hanna Vorholt, Rowan Watson
A series of intensive courses in Palaeography and Diplomatic. Courses range from a half to two days duration and are given by experts in their respective fields from a wide range of institutions. Subject areas include Latin palaeography, Medieaval music notation, pigments, German palaeography, Papal diplomatic, illuminated manuscripts and Books of Hours. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND APPLICATION.

Patrick White: Modernist impact / Critical futures
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
This international conference will forge new perspectives on the work of Patrick White, winner of the 1973 Nobel Prize for Literature. Invited speakers from around the world will explore White's impact in Australia, America, Britain, Europe, and Asia and speculate on critical futures for White and for literary modernism. CLICK HERE FOR CALL FOR PAPERS.

Finnegans Wake Research Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G37 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 18:00 - 20:00

Women Writers of the fin de siecle
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: Linda Peterson (Yale University), Lyn Pykett (Aberystwyth University)
Proposals are invited for an international conference on Women Writers of the Fin de Siècle. CLICK HERE FOR CALL FOR PAPERS.

London Rare Books School: Week 1
Summer School
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: Michelle Brown, Alan Cole, Catherine Delano-Smith, Anthony Edwards, John Feather, Irving Finkel, Arnold Hunt, Giles Mandelbrote, Matthew Nicholls, Marigold Norbye, Kathryn E. Piquette, Jill Shefrin, Sarah Tyacke
A series of five-day, intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects to be taught in and around Senate House, which is the centre of the University of London's federal system. The courses will be taught by internationally renowned scholars associated with the Institute's Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, using the unrivalled library and museum resources of London, including the British Library, the British Museum , the Victoria and Albert Museum, the University of London Research Library Services, and many more. All courses will stress the materiality of the book so you can expect to have close encounters with remarkable books and other artefacts from some of the world's greatest collections. Each class will be restricted to a maximum of twelve students in order to ensure that everyone has plenty of opportunity to talk to the teachers and to get very close to the books. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND APPLICATION.

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London Nineteenth Century Studies Seminar
Seminar
Venue: Room G16 (Senate House, Ground Floor)
Time: 11:00 - 13:00

Catherine Maxwell (Queen Mary), title tbc

London Rare Books School: Week 2
Summer School
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: Martin Davies, Catherine Delano-Smith, Jane Everson, Paul Goldman, James Mosley, Douglas Muir, Nicholas Pickwoad, Denis Reidy, Iain Stevenson, Peter Stokes, Simone Testa, Sarah Tyacke, Rowan Watson, Laurence Worms
A series of five-day, intensive courses on a variety of book-related subjects to be taught in and around Senate House, which is the centre of the University of London's federal system. The courses will be taught by internationally renowned scholars associated with the Institute's Centre for Manuscript and Print Studies, using the unrivalled library and museum resources of London, including the British Library, the British Museum , the Victoria and Albert Museum, the University of London Research Library Services, and many more. All courses will stress the materiality of the book so you can expect to have close encounters with remarkable books and other artefacts from some of the world's greatest collections. Each class will be restricted to a maximum of twelve students in order to ensure that everyone has plenty of opportunity to talk to the teachers and to get very close to the books. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND APPLICATION.

Literary London 2010: Representations of London in Literature
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: Professor Michael Slater (Birkbeck, University of London): Hilda Hulme Memorial Lecturer 2010; Professor Susan Alice Fischer (Medgar Evers College, City University of New York); Professor Roger Luckhurst (Birkbeck, University of London)
Literary London 2010 aims to:
• Read literary and dramatic texts in their historical and social context and in relation to theoretical approaches to the study of the metropolis.
• Investigate the changing cultural and historical geography of London.
• Consider the social, political, and spiritual fears, hopes, and perceptions that have inspired representations of London.
• Trace different traditions of representing London and examine how the pluralism of London society is reflected in London literature.
• Celebrate the contribution London and Londoners have made to English literature and drama
CLICK HERE FOR CALL FOR PAPERS.

John Buchan and the Idea of Modernity
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: Plenary speakers: Douglas Gifford (University of Glasgow), Douglas Kerr (University of Hong Kong)
The conference seeks to build on recent efforts to re-establish Buchan as more than a writer of thrillers, by considering his views and influence on 20th-century politics, culture, and aesthetics. An increased level of attention to the comparatively neglected areas of his output has demonstrated his significance within early twentieth-century popular culture, and laid the groundwork for considerations of his contributions to debates about the nature of modernity. Proposals for papers on Buchan’s historical, philosophical, and political writings, and his multiple roles as a facilitator of print and periodical culture will be especially welcome. CLICK HERE FOR CALL FOR PAPERS.

The T. S. Eliot International Summer School
Summer School
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: The T.S. Eliot International Summer School will bring together some of the most distinguished scholars of T.S. Eliot and Modern Literature, including Massimo Bacigalupo (University of Genoa), Jewel Spears Brooker (Eckerd College), Ron Bush (St. John's College, Oxford), David Chinitz (Loyola University Chicago), Professor Nancy Duvall Hargrove (Mississippi State University), Mark Ford (University College, London), Iman Javadi (University of Cambridge), Hermione Lee (Wolfson College, Oxford), Jim McCue (London), Gail McDonald (University of Southampton), Marjorie Perloff (Stanford University), Stephen Romer (University of Tours), Ronald Schuchard (Emory University) and Wim Van-Mierlo (Institute of English Studies, University of London).
The T.S. Eliot International Summer School welcomes to Bloomsbury all with an interest in the life and work of this Bloomsbury-based poet, dramatist, and man of letters. It is hosted by the Institute of English Studies of the University of London, which has a national research promotion and facilitation mission for advanced study and research across the field of English Studies. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION AND APPLICATION.

Reading Conflict: Open University Postgraduate Conference
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 00:00
Speakers: Keynote Lecture by Sarah Brouillette (MIT)
This one day-conference aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum for postgraduate students. As a critical discipline postcolonial studies has challenged traditional ways of reading and engaging with the canon, but has also often been in conflict with other literary disciplines. This conference examines the role of postcolonial studies in relation to other critical disciplines, and asks what is the role of the creative voice in conflict zones? How do we read during conflict? And what is the role of publishing during conflict? CLICK HERE FOR CALL FOR PAPERS.

Victorian Popular Culture: Prose, Stage & Screen
Conference / Symposium
Venue: Institute of English Studies
Time: 09:30 - 17:30
Speakers: Professor Kate Newey (University of Birmingham) and Dr Nickianne Moody (Liverpool John Moores University)
Adapting the Victorian popular novel develops our contemporary interest in nineteenth century print culture, and our understanding of the different ways in which a single text might be consumed, to acknowledge the role of theatrical, and later film, adaptations of popular fiction in maintaining the popularity of particular novels, and particular genres. Theatrical adaptations were an important means by which the Victorian popular novel found new audiences, and because of the lack of theatrical copyright such adaptations abounded. CLICK HERE FOR CALL FOR PAPERS.