English and Drama Newsletter – April 2022 Edition

Welcome to April in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary University of London.

Booking is now open for:

SAVE THE DATE Peopling the Palaces festival 2022 from 9-19 June 2022. Please get in touch with Lois Weaver if you’d like to take part.

Events

Open Events

A wall with Spitalfields market sign and white text saying ' Everyone could be the one who can bring a story to life'

Final Undergraduate Offer Holder Day

Our offer holder days are a great chance to meet students and staff from the course to get a feel for the course and inspiring community you could join.

DateTimeVirtual/on-campus Wednesday 20 April 10:30-15:30 Virtual – Booking Now Live

Book for April

Book now for June Open Days

17-18 June – In Person at QMUL Mile End | 18 June – Online

Come and discover our canalside campus and discover what makes English, Drama and Creative Writing at Queen Mary so special.

Book for our June Open Days

Events Listings

English Postgraduate Research Seminar – Spring Festival
7 April, Prof. Tiffany Stern
Product Placement and Marketing in the Early Modern TheatreGet a Zoom link here 13 April, S. Pearl Brilmyer When the Native Returns: The Indexicality of Race in Darwin and HardyGet a Zoom link here

Find out more

Free tickets for students: Hannes Schüpbach & Stephen Watts | Explosion of Words

Thursday 7 April 2022 – 6.30-7.45pm  – In Person at Nunnery Gallery in Bow
Chaired by Nisha Ramayya (Creative Writing at QMUL), join a panel of established speakers, writers, and academics including Stephen Watts, Hannes Schüpbach, Jo Catling, and Chris McCabe as they dig into the significance of Watts’ Bibliography and its crucial place in a full consideration of modern poetry in translation.

Book now

Notes on Gesture, Response-ability, and the Interstice – Online

Wednesday 13 April 2022 – Online

Thinking about media such as film, performance, and photography as gestural, Schneider draws on Black Feminist Thought and materialist phenomenology to consider flesh as responsive materiality, given to transposition — the viscous, reverberant, and interstitial substance of our ongoing afterlives in the age of bioeconomic Man. Among artworks and actions addressed may be Glenn Ligon’s Hands, Carrie Mae Weems’s Monument, Laura Aquilar’s Grounded #111, and Schneider’s own daily walk while white to her office through a Triumphal Arch on unceded Narragansett territory. The talk is incomplete, composed of incommensurable parts, and pitched toward discussion.

Book now

The Paradis Files
Commissioned by The Stables for IF: Milton Keynes International Festival
A Graeae Theatre Company production in partnership with BBC Concert Orchestra and Curve Theatre

13-14 April – Southbank Centre

Our QMUL PhD alum Selina Mills has co-written the libretto for an opera named ‘The Paradis Files’, which is touring the UK

An extraordinary blind musician. A family hell-bent on a cure.

In the glittering salons of 18th-century Vienna, Maria-Theresia von Paradis is a star. Pianist, composer, touring musician; this pupil of Salieri and friend (and alleged lover) of Mozart has captivated Europe with her own sensational talent. They call her The Blind Enchantress.

Book now

Latin American Decolonial Feminisms Workshop

Thursday 14 April 2022, 10:00-17:00 – Online

This one-day interdisciplinary workshop on Latin American decolonial and feminist studies brings together doctoral researchers, early career researchers, senior scholars, and activists working on subjects that overlap with this framework in Britain. The workshop will explore both the challenges and the potential of this process, and it hopes to be the basis for the creation of a scholars and activist network.

The event will include simultaneous interpretation into English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Encuentro de Feminismos Decoloniales Lationamericanos

Book now

More Than Skin Deep: Inspiring the Foster Carers of the Future

21-26 April – Online 

The Verbatim Formula is a university research project for care-experienced young people, which uses creative practices such as performance, film and poetry.
 

In our current research we are telling positive stories around experiences and journeys of care. We aim to inspire the foster carers of the future. If you are a foster carer, we would love to hear from you.

Find out more about this research project

Book now

Thawra’s Spoken Poetry Night

Wednesday 27 April 2022 – Online

Want to see some brilliant Muslim poets perform their work AND donate money to a brilliant cause?

Thawra is running this Spoken Poetry Night in Ramadan to showcase the work of some of the brilliant Muslim poets that have come their way — and new ones!

With 50% of ticket sales being donated to Muslim Youth Helpline, Thawra (run by English with Creative Writing grad Asia Khatun) wanted to further give back to one of the many diverse communities that we wish to represent on our platform.

Get ready for an incredible evening of poetry that explores spirituality, identity, socio-politics and highlights the importance of the literary arts!

Buy tickets at the link below before they run out!

Book now

Witnessing: Readings and Conversation, with Andrea Brady and Rachel Zolf

Wednesday 27 April – Online via Zoom with Live Captioning

Join us online for readings and conversations about witnessing. Featuring Andrea Brady and Rachel Zolf. Rachel Zolf, in No One’s Witness: A Monstrous Poetics (Duke University Press, 2021), ‘activates the last three lines of a poem by Jewish Nazi holocaust survivor Paul Celan—“No one / bears witness for the / witness”—to theorize the poetics and im/possibility of witnessing.’ Andrea Brady, in The Blue Split Compartments , ‘draws on chatroom logs, military policy manuals, pattern of life archives, and accounts by witnesses around the world to document the consequences of the perpetual and ‘everywhere war.’

Book now

The C-Word Debates: Class & Stand Up Comedy

Thursday 28 April – 7pm
  Chaired by Eddie Nestor with a panel including comedian Suzi Ruffell and our very own Dr Huw Marsh (English). The panel discuss authenticity and humour.
  As the generation of comics who honed their craft in working men’s clubs move over and stand-up comedy has evolved into huge arenas and big money, is there a danger that working class voices will be squeezed out? 
  Are caricatures like Al Murray’s Pub Landlord who invite audiences to laugh at, rather than with another threat to authentic working-class voices on the circuit.
  In an era of cancel culture are class jokes only allowed to be told by working class comics?  

Book now

Events from around QMUL

7-8 April
Conference – More Than Just a Game 2022: The power of games and interactive entertainment

News

Hanna Silva  is a guest on BBC Radio 3’s The Verb talking about the appeal of risk and chance.

Listen now

The Drop Out - Image from Aeon featuring a colourful mix of people all posed in front of a two storey house

Last few months to submit your work to our Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize 2022

Read more

Abbie Jukes (English) is starting a PhD and Early Career Research Blog around challenges in academia

Email Abbie or DM on Twitter

The White Review features an interview by Zara Dinnen with Zach Balas
  Artist Zach Blas discusses psychedelics, Silicon Valley futurism and the history of a speculative US military weapon known as the ‘gay bomb’.

Find out more

Alumni Round Up

Laura Mucklow (English BA, 2014) shares her journey into marketing and what she loves most about working for a company that has a ‘start-up mentality’:

“I studied English Literature which places a big emphasis on research, creativity, and finding evidence to support arguments. My role in Marketing now is a mixture of figures, logic, and creativity so it definitely helped steer me into the role.”

Read the whole interview

Cathy Hayward (English and History BA, 1997) recently published her debut novel, The Girl in the Maze, and has a second (and third!) novel on the way. In her profile, Cathy talks about the historical and personal influences in her books, her career in journalism and PR, and shares her advice for anyone interested in writing.

Read Cathy’s profile

Open Calls for Students, Staff & Alumni

Call for Participation – Performance and State Violence Conference

QMUL Mile End campus and online, 15-16 June 2022

Free registration, abstract deadline April 17
Find out more

Artistic Contributions Wanted for Mad Hearts

10-11 June 2022

Submit your creative work

Charlie Pullen’s award-winning essay is published in writes for Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism Charlie writes about progressive art teacher Marion Milner (who taught girls in Derby in the 1910s to paint with their eyes shut) and her relationship with modernist culture and the democratisation of arts education is out now in the latest issue of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism. This was the article he wrote that won the Raymond Williams Society Simon Dentith Memorial Essay Prize in 2019.

About the journal & how to access

People’s Palace Projects Update
Recently People’s Palace Project hosted Marcus Faustini Secretary of Culture from Rio de Janeiro and met with many key arts organisations and the Greater London Assembly on climate change and the arts.

Find out more about People’s Palace Projects

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All Things SED Editor

I am the Web and Marketing Administrator in the School of English and Drama. Amongst my various roles, I run the School's website (www.sed.qmul.ac.uk) and its Twitter feed (@QMULsed). I also manage the running of the School's Open Days and draft promotional materials.

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