| Welcome to your October newsletter from the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London. We can’t wait to meet you this Saturday for our undergraduate open event or on Wednesday 25 October for our online postgraduate event. Ru (who compiles this communication) is moving to a new role of BLOC Venue Manager to run the new cinema/arts lab for 18 months so this will be his last newsletter for a while. Follow BLOC on Instagram to keep in touch or add Ru on Linkedin or Instagram. Things to Do in October Come to Undergraduate Open Day Get student-designed freebies, books by our academics and tasters of our courses. Book now Get application tips and start your UCAS application Read the No-Nonsense Applicant Guide by graduate Saarah Ahsan-Shah. Read our research newsletter Find out about our groundbreaking research here |
| October Events |
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| Lisa Jardine Annual English Lecture: Professor Alan Stewart The First Coming of the Strangers: An Experiment in Elizabethan Immigration Thursday 19 October – Queen Mary University of London Mile End CampusIn 1561, the town of Sandwich in Kent petitioned the Privy Council to allow a significant influx of immigrants to settle in their town, and practice their skills working with ‘says, bay and other clothe’—a model that was to spread across the south-east of England. Within six years, immigrants in Sandwich outnumbered the previous inhabitants, provoking a predictable backlash. While this immigration is often claimed as a masterstroke of state policy to introduce artisanal skills lacking in England, this paper explores it as a multi-faceted experiment, of importance not only to trade, but also to social relations, religion, education, and the period’s literature. Alan Stewart is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, and currently a Visiting Lecturer at Queen Mary, where he received his PhD, held a British Academy postdoc, and helped to found the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters with Lisa Jardine. He is the author of several books including, most recently, The Oxford History of Life-Writing, volume 2, Early Modern (2018). He is also Director of the Oxford Francis Bacon, for which he has edited volume 1, Early Writings, 1584-1596, and is now editing volume 2, Late Elizabethan Writings, 1596-1602. |
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| ‘Islamic Communities in Victorian Britain’ Monday 30 October, 2-3pm. Room 0.14, iQ East, QMUL Mile End Campus. Join us to hear Yahya Birt and Hamid Mahmood in conversation about some of the earliest Muslim communities in Britain. Birt and Mahmood have both written extensively on this topic, their most recent book being Our Fatima of Liverpool: The Story of Fatima Cates, the Victorian woman who helped found British Islam. All staff and students are welcome. |
| Book ahead |
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| All Borders Blur: Mapping Intersections and Genre Crossings in UK Spoken-Word Poetries Since 1965 11-12 November 2023 A two day hybrid (in person and online) conference at QMUL Keynote speakers are Joelle Taylor and Dr. Anthony Joseph. Full schedule of speakers can be found here: https://allbordersblur.univie.ac.at/?page_id=157 |
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| Events & Workshops Round Up Wars Within Wars: Black History’s Warning to the World Tuesday 17 October 2023 – 6pm, Peston Lecture Theatre Register here for this event Interdisciplinary Workshop with Vince Brown Tuesday 17 October This interdisciplinary workshop will be based around the rough cuts of two films made by Professor Vincent Brown (Harvard) on the commemoration of slavery and slave revolts. Please email Miles Ogborn (Geography) on m.j.ogborn@qmul.ac.uk to confirm a place. Bibliodiversity: A Book History Workshop Friday, 27 October, 12.30-6.00pm, Graduate Centre GC603, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Campus This workshop will explore the variety of book formats from the nineteenth century to the present day. Whereas the term ‘bibliodiversity’ is sometimes used in relation to a book’s contents, this workshop extends that term to the book’s contours. Bringing together scholars associated with the fields of literature, media history, and disability studies, it will take up the following questions: What are some of the different configurations through which books have reached audiences? What effect have these alternative designs had on their relationship to readers? What can these books contribute to our understanding of book history? Register here |
| News |
| New book by Matthew Mauger published: ‘William Blake and the Visionary Law”This book examines the difficult relationship between individual intellectual freedom and the legal structures which govern human societies in William Blake’s works, showing that this tension carries a political urgency that has not yet been recognised by scholars in the field. In doing so, it offers a new approach to Blake’s corpus that builds on the literary and cultural historical work of recent decades.’ Find out more |
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| Professor Dominic Johnson honoured with Fulbright Scholar Award at University of Southern California’ Dominic Johnson will be based at the Roski School of Fine Art, University of Southern California in Downtown Los Angeles for four months from January 2024. His larger project is to produce the first scholarly study of the work of the British South Asian artist Hamad Butt, in the context of art and HIV/AIDS. Butt made a series of sculptures that used toxic or noxious materials in volatile-seeming setups, creating environments that threaten or provoke fear in those who encounter them. Johnson is also curating the first comprehensive retrospective exhibition of Butt’s work, which will tour to major museums in the UK and Europe in 2024-25. While in Los Angeles, Johnson will research how artists, scholars and curators approach ‘recalcitrant’ art that can be difficult to make, show, or acquire, and that rethinks what art does and why it matters.’ Find out more |
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| Round up Graduate Carrot has been nominated for Drag AwardGraduate Joshua Young has been nominated by Pink News for Drag Artist of the Year 2023 in their annual awards. Vote for CARROT here SED Writer Katherine Angel to speak at New York eventKatherine will be speaking at event on Sexuality, Consent, and Trauma at the New School in New York on 30 October, with psychoanalysts Jamieson Webster and Avgi Saketopoulou. Follow Katherine on Instagram for updates Ruth Ahnert’s new book ‘Tudor Networks of Power’ is published on 12 October ‘Tudor Networks of Power is the product of a groundbreaking collaboration between an early modern book historian and a physicist specializing in complex networks. Together they have reconstructed and computationally analysed the networks of intelligence, diplomacy, and political influence across a century of Tudor history (1509-1603), based on the British State Papers.’ Find out more about the book Nisha Ramayya appearances in October Friday 13 October: Ignota Gathering: The Spiral at St James Picadilly – Join us at the Ignota Gathering: The Spiral to celebrate Ignota’s fifth birthday on Friday 13 October at St James’s Church, Piccadilly, London, with Ignota’s friends and family to explore the spiral through resonance, poetry and philosophy. Wednesday 25 October: Wordriver: Celebrating Ursula K Le Guin at Southbank Centre Ursula K Le Guin’s work is celebrated at this performative reading, marking the publication of Space Crone, a new collection of her writing. Wordriver explores the confluence of the written and spoken, the currents of truth in fiction, and the flows between daughters and mothers in a matrilineal society still marked by the legacies of militarism and toxic masculinity. |
| Opportunities For more opportunities see our regular Opportunities Digest blog post |
| Apologies if we missed any listings or made any errors, do let us know and we can post on social media. Also if you have any news for our next newsletter please do reply or get in touch. Best wishes, Ru Rupert Dannreuther |
EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT, NOTHING HAS CHANGED
