Blog from QMUL's School of English and Drama (SED)
Author: 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.
Written by our BA Drama alumnus Reece Connolly, his show Chutney is having a full run at off-West End venue The Bunker.
“The world’s shaking. I’m seeing the murder in everything. A cat crosses my path, I fantasise about throwing a grenade at it.”
Gregg and Claire are a power couple. Well-to-do and up-and-coming. They’ve got the house. The car. The careers. They’re living out their parents dreams in blissful suburbia.
They also have an insatiable desire to murder animals.
This mutually discovered urge threatens to gut their world to its very core.
CHUTNEY is a pitch black comedy about love, happiness, and unleashing the beast within. Watch the fur fly.
An alternative cabaret night hosted by our very own PhD Drama graduate Daniel Oliver celebrating neurodiversity, featuring performers whose minds work a little differently…
Line up
Daniel Oliver: The cabaret night will be hosted by Daniel Oliver, a performance artist who makes participatory performances that aim to embrace dyspraxia.
Mawaan Rizwan: Mawaan is an actor, writer and comedian. He’s written for the New York Times and his comedy videos on YouTube have amassed over 18 million views.
Vijay Patel: Vijay Patel will present Asperger’s Question Time. A space where you (the audience) will be able to ask him any questions you like, any questions on your mind, think everyday, not any questions about his Asperger’s. He will have some things in place for his access, such as a respite, some care in case he might leave.
IndoorGoblin: ‘A solo project performed on keyboard, IndoorGoblin hopes to present the imagination clouds through a mixture of musical creations, combining spoken word with story-singing, hypnotic piano loops and glittery glockenspiel melodies.’
Don Biswas :Award winning ‘left wing conspiracy theorist with dyspraxia!‘ Twice winner of the London Comedy Store Gong Show.
Khia Spencer: Khia is a dancer and artist who has been identified with dyspraxic mind and ADD…
Join Rosie Vincent a BA Drama Gradutate to celebrate her identity as a Type 1 Diabetic as she attempts to transform the mass of her medical waste from the past 2.5 years.
On 14th November millions of people will come together to raise awareness of living with Diabetes for World Diabetes Day.
Rosie Vincent has been a Type 1 Diabetic for over 14 years. Je m’appelle Diabetic combines ritual, object, and projection to present the challenges of living with diabetes as well as celebrating the resilience of Rosie’s diseased body.
This piece reconnects the medical waste that is produced by the condition with Rosie’s own body to honour it as the means to keep her alive despite its hostile appearance.
Welcome to the November 2018 edition of our School of English and Drama newsletter.
Our main photo is from The Last of the London, a project led by Nadia Valman (English) as part of Being Human festival 2018. She is collaborating with projection artist Karen Crosby for ‘The Last of the London’ an event reanimating the derelict Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel Road with the ghosts of its past, using archive texts and spectacular photographic projections on the building’s facade.
As we celebrate the birth of the NHS 70 years ago, ‘The Last of the London’ remembers the struggle to provide health care to East Enders in the nineteenth century. See glimpses of the figures, illustrious and ordinary, that haunt its corridors; the doctors and nurses from across the globe who worked at the London; the impact of war and epidemic; and the patients whose lives began and ended here.
UCAS and Postgraduate applications are open for 2019 so please do apply. If you have applied we will be in touch regarding future events you can attend to get to know us better.
Wednesday 7 November 2018, 16:30-19:00
QMUL – Mile End
Applying for a PhD can be a long process and most funding opportunities close for applications in Janaury. So come along to our open evening to help plan your application and maximise your chances of finding funding.
Experts from our School of English and Drama come together to discuss Margaret Atwood’s famous dystopian novel. This panel discussion will explore the extent to which we can describe The Handmaid’s Tale as a feminist text.
It will challenge many opinions that readers hold regarding the novel, as well as placing it within the current political climate in the UK and USA. You will have the opportunity to question our experts, as well as having the chance to speak with undergraduates about what it is like to study literature at university level.
Our Centre for Poetry will co-host this event where Carla Harryman will read from her recent works including Sue in Berlin and Hannah Cut-In. Redell Olsen will be discussing and showing extracts from her recent performance and film works.
Inspired by African -American author Octavia Butler’s epigraph New Suns: A Feminist Literary Festival is a day of talks, workshops, screenings and feminist discussion at the Barbican features our very own Nisha Ramayya (English).
Writers, artists, academics, poets and publications will explore contemporary feminism through the lens of mythology, discussing topics as varied as the #MeToo movement, occult poetry, bodies and sex work.
Sir Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick Institute, and Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, revisit the “Two Cultures Debate” and set out the future of the arts and the sciences.
Friday 9-Sunday 11 November 2018, various times
The Rose Playhouse, South Bank
The Centre for Global Shakespeare at Queen Mary, in association with the Rose Playhouse and Anərkē hosts a revival of The Tragedy of King Richard II, performed in a directorless, race and gender-blind production inspired by the working conditions in which Shakespeare conceived his plays.
People’s Palace Projects’ new student theatre company at Queen Mary University of London performs Stage 3, a theatre experience that looks at the bureaucracy and power of the naturalisation system. A mock citizenship process generates discussion about migration, discrimination and belonging and challenges the process of being categorized based on race, age and class background. The production is strongly linked to young people’s sense of belonging and citizenship rights. Read more in this blog post.
Having recently travelled across Guyana in Raleigh’s footsteps, Jerry Brotton (English) offers a new perspective on Raleigh’s colonial adventures, situating him at the heart of a global network stretching from Munster to London’s livery companies to Munster, the Orinoco, and ultimately his execution at the Tower of London in October 1618.
Serena Ceniccola (MA in Victorian Literature) from the School of English and Drama- successfully presented her paper “Nobody/Nowhere: the alienation of the Hybrid in Sui Ishida’s Tokyo Ghoul” at the two-day student conference “Exploring alterity in fantasy and science fiction” at the University of Freiburg, making QMUL the only one London based University to take part in the event.
Matthew Ingleby and Shahidha Bari (English) hosted Frankenreads x QMUL to celebrate 200 years of Mary Shelley’s seminal gothic horror novel on Halloween 2018. Pic from left to right: David Duff (English), Shahidha Bari (English) and Cousin Itt i.e. Rupert Dannreuther (Marketing). See the Frankenreads x QMUL photo gallery
Tiffany Watt-Smith (Drama) has been awarded the Philip Leverhulme prize, which recognises all of her past work and supports her future project on the performance of sleep. Philip Leverhulme Prizes recognise the achievement of outstanding researchers whose work has already attracted international recognition and whose future career is exceptionally promising. Every year the prize scheme makes up to thirty awards of £100,000, across a range of academic disciplines.
Hetta Howes (English PhD graduate)‘s BBC New Generation Thinkers programme featuring the stories of the Passion as dreamed by medieval devouts is available on iPlayer now.
Contemporary Theatre Review 28.3 special issue on feminisms co-edited by Jen Harvie (Drama), Sarah Gorman, and Geraldine Harris came out in October including Jen Harvie (Drama)‘s article on Caryl Churchill’s Escaped Alone and Split Britches’ Ruff, co-written by Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw, starring Shaw, and directed by Weaver.
Press from last month
26/10/2018 Shahidha Bari (English) BBC 2 Front Row with Mike Leigh (pictured above)
Jen Harvie (Drama)‘s recently published book on Scottee: I Made It has some eye-popping (book porn) visuals see the book in all it’s glory in this blog post.
Pippa Sa (Drama graduate) is one half of Bechdel Theatre see their amazing work here: https://bechdeltheatre.com/
Julie Rose Bower (Drama PhD researcher) presents her show Foley Explosion at Hackney Showroom, 12-13 November.
Barbara Taylor (English): ‘Solitude and Loneliness in the Academy’ is the first event in ‘Pathologies of Solitude, 18th-21st century’ a major Wellcome-funded project hosted by the Schools of History and English and Drama at Queen Mary on 29 November in the People’s Palace. To RSVP email Clare Whitehead.
As part of the Write Idea Festival in Whitechapel, People’s Palace Projects (PPP) will be staging Stage 3 at the Idea Store Whitechapel, 321 Whitechapel Road, London, E1 1BU on the 17 November 2018 at 13:00.
Performed by People’s Palace Projects’ new student theatre company at Queen Mary University of London, Stage 3 is a participatory experience that uses a mock citizenship process to discuss migration, discrimination and belonging, challenging the process of being categorized based on race, age and class background.
The performance brings together young people, other members of the community, and council members and is currently touring across the country as local leaders unite to persuade councils to make pledges as part of Safe Passage’s national “Our Turn” campaign, whose goal is to resettle 1,000 children a year in the UK from Europe and other regions where refugees are at risk, over the next 10 years.
Stage 3 is a student theatre company of People’s Palace Projects at Queen Mary University of London, harnessing the power of participatory theatre to support citizen activism and community engagement with decision makers. It is supported by the Peace Development Fund and National Lottery Awards for All.
The company Thanks has presented in Brighton, Dover (20th Oct), Gate Theatre (23rd Oct) and has engagements in Hastings (3rd Nov), Watney Market (17th Nov) and Harwich (1st Dec).
A year abroad can really open up new opportunities and give you valuable life experience to take into your future career.
According to the UK Universities International Report (March 2017):
Graduates who were mobile during their degree were less likely to be unemployed (3.7% compared to 4.9%), and more likely to have earned a first class or upper second class degree (80.1% compared to 73.6%) and be in further study (15% compared to 14%).
Those in work were more likely to be in a graduate level job (76.4% compared to 69.9%) and earn 5% more than their non-mobile peers.
The study abroad experience is intense, and because of this special quality and the quality of emotional investment in this period students are likely to make particularly strong friendships and have particularly memorable experiences. There are all sorts of opportunities that students will find access to because of location or circumstance that they wouldn’t necessarily get in London- one former student was offered a role in a professional production in New York, students on exchange with Howard University have inbuilt work experience and opportunities on Capitol Hill with the US government, students in New York might seek out opportunities with the UN.
We’re delighted to announce that as from 2018 the following undergraduate BA (Hons) degrees can include a year abroad:
Please note we are still offering our Semester Abroad in the second year of all of our courses with the following institutions:
Columbia University, New York; Howard University, Washington DC; University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; The George Washington University, Washington DC; University of Miami, FL; University of Richmond, VA; The University of Texas at Austin; University of Melbourne; University of Sydney; The University of Toronto; University of Ottawa, Canada; The University of Auckland, NZ; University of Hong Kong; Nanyang Technological University, Singapore; Seoul National University; Waseda University, Tokyo; Renmin University, Beijing.
New opportunities for semester abroad and/or year abroad are being developed at universities in Europe, North America, New Zealand and elsewhere. These will be offered as they become available.
Advice and Guidance
If you would like any advice on Study Abroad opportunities within the School of English and Drama please contact:
The 2018 WasafiriNew Writing Prize winners are announced with winners in the following categories:
Fiction: ‘Plunder’ by Deirdre Shanahan;
Poetry: ‘In the Garden Where the Gorgons Live’ by Daniella Shokoohi;
Life Writing: ‘Diary of a Teenage Boy’ by Len Lukowski.
Picture caption: Back row L-R: Prize judges Kerry Young, Susheila Nasta, and Elleke Boehmer / Front row L-R: Winners Deirdre Shanahan and Len Lukowski, and prize judge Malika Booker / Photography by Ingrid Guyon
The three winners will be published in print by Wasafiri and receive a cash prize. They will also be offered the Chapter and Verse or Free Reads mentoring scheme in partnership with The Literary Consultancy, dependent on eligibility.
The judges of this year’s prize are Kerry Young (Fiction), Malika Booker (Poetry) and Elleke Boehmer (Life Writing). Each entry was judged blind and the winners for each category were decided by all three judges and the founding editor of Wasafiri and Chair of Judges, Susheila Nasta. Speaking on the prize this year, Susheila Nasta said, ‘representing fresh perspectives from around the world, this year’s entries were both innovative and ambitious, passionately engaging with subjects that are key to contemporary life and the conflicts of our times.’
The winning Poetry entry ‘is a mesmerizing poem that renders a beauty even while describing pain. From the first line you’re caught and taken on a journey. It’s a strong lyrical poem, but also experimenting and pushing,’ as described by judge Malika Booker.
Kerry Young said of the winning Fiction entry, “‘Plunder’ was original and fluently written with meticulous observation. It was engaging and poignant.”
On judging the winning Life Writing entry, Elleke Boehmer said, ‘The judges were impressed at the sensitivity and economy of this story. In particular, they commended how the story took us into the central character’s world and perspective, and shared its dilemmas over fallible memory and shifting identity in fresh, illuminating ways.’
This year’s prize event took place at The Blenheim Saloon within Marlborough House, with thanks to Routledge, Queen Mary University of London, Arts Council England and Commonwealth Writers, the cultural initiative of the Commonwealth Foundation. Testimonies from last year’s winners Julie Abrams-Humphries and Mehran Waheed about the impact of Wasafiri’s New Writing Prize on their careers were played to the audience, before each judge announced the winning entry in their category.
About the prize
Now in its ninth year, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize was launched to support new writers, with no limits on age, gender, nationality or background. With a list of high profile judges over the years including Brian Chikwava, Colin Grant, Maya Jaggi, Jackie Kay, Tabish Khair, Toby Litt and Blake Morrison, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize has boosted the confidence of writers in competitive times. The 2018 prize attracted entries from nearly one third of the countries in the world, with entries from a total of sixty countries.
About the Magazine: WASAFIRI – The Journal of International Contemporary Writing
Wasafiri is the UK’s leading magazine for international contemporary writing. Launched in 1984 by Susheila Nasta OBE, it is renowned for publishing some of the world’s most distinguished writers including Chinua Achebe, Kamau Brathwaite, Anita and Kiran Desai, Sam Selvon, Nadine Gordimer, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Michael Ondaatje, Vikram Seth, Nayantara Sahgal, Gillian Slovo and Ben Okri amongst many others. One of its inaugural, and continuous visions is to provide much needed literary and critical coverage of writers from BAME backgrounds who often struggle to get adequate attention in the mainstream. The magazine played a pioneering role in reviewing the first novels and early poetry of writers who are now well-known, challenging the predominant assumption that their work would only be of ‘minority interest’.
Serena Ceniccola (furthest right in picture above) – graduand with an MA in Victorian Literature from the School of English and Drama- successfully presented her paper “Nobody/Nowhere: the alienation of the Hybrid in Sui Ishida’s Tokyo Ghoul” at the two-day student conference “Exploring alterity in fantasy and science fiction” at the University of Freiburg, making QMUL the only one London based University to take part in the event.
The paper explores the relationship between hybridity and memory in the context of horror manga, which – in its contemporary form – has been heavily influenced by British Victorian Press and 19th century Gothic. Serena – who already earned an MA in Modern, Post-colonial and Comparative literature with Distinction (summa cum laude) from University of Bologna specializing in Japanese, Finnish and Anglo-American studies – is especially interested in the fields of identity, hybridity, and cultural contacts. According to her paper: “Exploring new representations of the Hybrid in fiction is very important if we want to really understand the world we live in today.”
The conference – that took place on October 19th and 20th – saw nineteen MA students and PhD candidates from different countries and with very different backgrounds discussing how otherness manifests in speculative fiction. Their works focused on novels, comics, podcasts, movies, manga, and videogames.
Dr Timothy Baker (lecturer in Scottish and contemporary literature at University of Aberdeen) gave one of the two key lectures scheduled on “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl vs The Capitalocene.” Dr Helena Ifill (University Teacher at University of Sheffield, co-organizer for the Victorian Popular Fiction Association and co-director for the University of Sheffield Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies) discussed the effects of mesmerism on the self with her lecture “Othering the Self: Speculative Psychological Fiction”.
Lucy Perman MBE will be in conversation with Dr Caoimhe McAvinchey discussing her role leading Clean Break over two decades.
Lucy was the Chief Executive of Clean Break from 1997 to 2018. In 2017 she won a Lifetime Achievement Award for work in criminal justice and she was also named in the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 list. She has held a number of roles across the arts and cultural sector and received her MBE for services to drama in 2005. She is a trustee of the Almeida Theatre.
Caoimhe McAvinchey is Reader in Socially Engaged and Contemporary Theatre at Queen Mary University of London. Prior to this she established the MA Applied Drama: Theatre in Educational, Community and Social Contexts at Goldsmiths. Her publications include Theatre & Prison (2011), Performance and Community: Case Studies and Commentary (2013), Phakama: Making Participatory Theatre (2018) with Fabio Santos and Lucy Richardson, and Applied Theatre: Women and the Criminal Justice System (forthcoming, 2018).
Caoimhe is currently collaborating with Clean Break theatre company on a book about the company’s four decades of innovative and radical theatre practice with and about women affected by the criminal justice system.
November 2018 marks the sixth year of Queen Mary University of London Drama’s strategic partnership with Europe’s largest festival of Bengali culture.
Selected from November’s events across six Tower Hamlets venues, we cordially invite you to a programme curated by Ruksana Begum (Tower Hamlets Arts) and Ali Campbell (QMUL Drama).
This leading international charity invites you to a panel discussion with academics, activists and Rohingya community leaders, plus spoken word pieces and a short film about the genocide in Myanmar.
Wednesday 7th November. Pinter Studio. 7.30 PM. (Doors open 7.00).
4 amazing opportunities to apply for further study…
London Interdisciplinary Social Science ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership (LISS DTP)
LISS Open Studentship Competition: this is our competition where we accept proposals directly from prospective students, for either a 1+3 award (1 year Masters + 3 year PhD) or +3 award (PhD only). You can find detailed information about eligibility criteria and the application process on the following two webpages:
The application deadline is 31 January 2019, 17:00 GMT for studentships to start 1 October 2019. Applicants should be encouraged to read the above webpages carefully to ensure all necessary application materials reach us by that date.
We are still able to accept applications from EU residents for this year and wherever possible we will ‘top-up’ the award to pay a stipend to high-calibre EU students from institutional contributions to the LISS grant (since the ESRC only covers fees for EU residents).
Proposed research must be at least 50% social science (but can have a strong interdisciplinary component) and must fall within the remit of at least 1 of our 13 Thematic Pathways
LISS Collaborative (CASE) Studentship Competition
this competition initially seeks proposals from academics based in one of our three partner institutions for 1+3 or +3 format studentship research projects which involve significant collaboration with a non-HEI partner, in the public, private or third sectors.
We welcome proposals where a proposed student to be awarded the project is already named, but this is not necessary and it does not reflect negatively on a proposal not to have a named student. Academic winners of the proposal stage will be informed by the end of November 2018 and recruitment of a student can begin after this point.
A financial contribution from the non-HEI partner is encouraged but not required. In any proposal, evidence of a strong, two-way plan of collaboration between the academic/student and non-HEI partner must be shown, along with in-kind benefits for the student such as: mentorship within the partner organisation, periods of time spent at the partner organisation, data sharing, access to specialised training through the partner etc.
Again, proposed research must be at least 50% social science (but can be strongly interdisciplinary) and must fall within the remit of at least 1 of our 13 Thematic Pathways.
LISS Postdoctoral Fellowships: administration of the ESRC’s one-year postdoctoral fellowship scheme has now been devolved to LISS DTP. Details about this scheme can be found here on the LISS website: https://liss-dtp.ac.uk/esrc-pdf/ . We do not have full details yet, but expect the timeline to be similar to last year, with the deadline for applications in mid-late March 2019 for fellowships to start in October 2019.
London Arts & Humanities Partnership AHRC (LAHP DTP)
London Arts & Humanities Partnership Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) Scheme
The London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP) is delighted to announce that its Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA) Scheme is open for proposals for studentship projects to commence in October 2019.
Collaborative Doctoral Awards (CDAs) provide funding for doctoral studentship projects, developed as a partnership between an HEI-based academic in collaboration with an organisation outside higher education. They are intended to encourage and develop collaboration and build partnerships.
CDA projects provide opportunities for doctoral students to gain first-hand experience of work outside the university environment and enhance the employment-related skills and training a research student gains during the course of their studies.
Those wishing to propose a CDA project to commence in the 2019/20 academic year can find full details of the scheme and download the LAHP DTP CDA Application Form on theLAHP website. The deadline for proposals from HEI academic staff/non-HEI partners for CDA studentship projects (commencing in the 2019/20 academic year) is Monday 3rd December 2018 at 09.00. Any queries should be directed to info.lahp@london.ac.uk
London Arts & Humanities Partnership Open Studentship Competition
The London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP) open studentship competition for PhD applications in the arts and humanities to begin in October 2019 will open at the end of November.
Further details will be published on the LAHP website
We have some eye-opening events coming up for those aged 16-18 including a Frankenstein themed Halloween event, a chance to hear from The Good Immigrant editor Nikesh Shukla, an expert discussion of The Handmaid’s Tale and a free A-Level revision day in early 2019.
Students are invited to a film screening, fancy dress lecture and Halloween Monster Mingle celebrating two hundred years of Mary Shelley’s gothic horror and feminist classic.
Queen Mary, University of London and Wasafiri invite you to a reading and conversation with Nikesh Shukla and Bidisha. This is a chance to engage in lively discussion with some ground-breaking writers of the moment.
Experts from our School of English and Drama come together to discuss Margaret Atwood’s famous dystopian novel. This panel discussion will explore the extent to which we can describe The Handmaid’s Tale as a feminist text.
It will challenge many opinions that readers hold regarding the novel, as well as placing it within the current political climate in the UK and USA. You will have the opportunity to question our experts, as well as having the chance to speak with undergraduates about what it is like to study literature at university level. This taster course is open to year 12 and 13 students. You must be studying English at A-level or SL/HL IB.
Schadenfreude – enjoying the pain and failures of others – is an all-too-familiar feeling. It has perplexed philosophers and psychologists for centuries but, in a time of polarised politics, twitter trolls and ‘sidebars of shame’, has never been more relevant. Recent studies have shown that we smile more at a rival’s loss than at our own success. But why can it be so much fun to witness another’s distress? And what, if anything, should we do about it?
In Schadenfreude, historian of emotions Tiffany Watt Smith offers expert insight and advice. Ranging across thinkers from Nietzsche to Homer Simpson, investigating the latest scientific research, and collecting some outrageous confessions on the way – she reveals how everyone, babies, nuns, your most trusted friends, are enjoying your misfortunes. But rather than an emotional glitch, she argues, Schadenfreude can reveal profound truths about our relationships with others and our sense of who we are.
Frank, warm and laugh-out-loud funny, Schadenfreude makes the case for thinking afresh about this much-maligned emotion – and perhaps, even, embracing it.
About the author
Tiffany Watt Smith is a Research Fellow at the QMUL Centre for the History of the Emotions, and was a 2014 BBC New Generation Thinker. She has also worked as a theatre director, including stints as Associate Director at the Arcola and International Associate Director at the Royal Court. Schadenfreude is published in association with Wellcome Collection, a free museum and library that aims to challenge how we think and feel about health. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Wellcome Collection exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects, including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology, identity and death.
Dr Charlotta Salmi who uses street art and comics to understand social movements has been awarded funding by the British Academy to carry out research on gender-based violence in Nepal.
Dr Charlotta Salmi, from Queen Mary’s School of English and Drama, will investigate representations of gender-based violence (GBV) in graphic art forms in Kathmandu and Pokhara, Nepal.
On Tuesday 25 September the streets of Whitechapel resonated with the sound of songs last heard there more than a century ago.
Year 7 students from five east London schools, including Mulberry School for Girls in Shadwell, Central Foundation School for Girls in Bow and Oaklands School in Bethnal Green are exploring how Victorian Londoners protested against their pay and working conditions. They sing Victorian protest songs, make placards expressing demands and write their own political speeches and chants. On Tuesday 25 September they took part in a parade with musicians in the streets where east Londoners protested in the Victorian period.
Watch the video of the protest
Workshop organisers Dr Vivi Lachs and Dr Nadia Valman, from Queen Mary University of London, drew on their research on the wave of strikes that spread across East London in 1889 and the culture of song and oratory that accompanied it. ‘Singing songs helped raise the morale of workers who were enduring terrible conditions in factories and workshops, and brought messages of hope that collective action could bring about change’ said Dr Lachs.
The songs were sung in Yiddish, the language spoken by the Jewish immigrant population, who made up the majority of poorly paid workers in Victorian Whitechapel. ‘We hope that this project will give students a glimpse of east London’s rich local history of protest,’ said Dr Valman.
This episode features Wasafiri magazine editor Susheila Nasta, Medieval broadcaster Hetta Howes, podcaster Raifa Rafiq (listen to her on BBC radio here), researcher Emma Shapiro and puppeteer Edie Edmundson.
After an exciting first outing we’re excited to welcome the following speakers for our next edition:
Tasters include:
Looking at Atrocity in Graphic
Narratives Charlotta Salmi
Devising from Games Mojisola Adebayo
Gothic magic and science in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Markman Ellis
Writing Now: Caryl Churchill Jen Harvie
And don’t miss special performances by our very own theatre company presenting Stage 3 which is an immersive theatre show about the citizenship processes.
The School of English & Drama at QMUL mark the 200th anniversary of the publication of Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” in suitably scary style on Halloween. Join us for a screening of early Frankenstein films and a fancy dress lecture, followed by some scary socialising.
London Modernism Seminar: Insects and Robots Saturday 6 October, 11:00-13:00
Senate House, London
Co-organised by our very own Suzanne Hobson (English) this first outing features: Rachel Murray (Bristol), ‘Shell Sense: Modernism and the Insect Body’ Alex Goody (Oxford Brookes), ‘Modernist Machine Women: Robots, Radio and Typewriters’.
The venue provides students with a 3×2 ticket deal and we are sharing the code with academics who might be interested in promoting the event among their students and we thought of you. (the booking code is: L0VEL3TTERS).
DICE Festival Saturday and Sunday 7 October 2018
Camden People’s Theatre, LondonDaniel Oliver (Drama) will host on the Sunday programme.
The Queen Mary Centre For Religion and Literature in English Seminar Series: “W. H. Auden—Bless what there is for being” Wednesday 10 October 2018, 12:00
ArtsOne Room 1.31, QMUL – Mile End
W. H.Auden who had a natural talent “bordering on wizardry” was the poetic voice of the younger generation in the 1930’s. About 1940 he rediscovered the Christian faith. Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, will argue that this took the form of giving Auden a relish for every aspect of life in all its details. This paper comes from Harries’ latest book “Haunted by Christ: Modern Writers and the Struggle for Faith”.
This presentation brings together a feminist scholar and an artist who have worked together on two projects, including a participatory art installation on unknowing. They will discuss how unknowability figures in their own work and what it enables.
The work of contemporary artist Anne Bean defies categorisation, encompassing performance art, public interventions, videos, and writings, all pursued as a ‘continuum’. Dominic Johnson explores Bean’s ‘life art’ project in the 1970s and considers her efforts to blur the boundaries between art and life in the context of theoretical writings she was working through at the time.
The Verbatim Formula: Making Listening Visible Wednesday 17 October 2018, 17:00-18:30
Senior Common Room, Queen’s Building, QMUL – Mile EndThe Verbatim Formula (TVF) is an AHRC funded participatory performance-based research project based at QMUL and which partners with other universities in London. In TVF, we ask care-experienced young people and care leaver students to share their experiences of higher education.
You are warmly invited to join us for the launch of the new series of the London-Paris Romanticism Seminar on Friday 19 October 2018. As our guest speaker for this opening event, we are delighted to welcome Marc Porée, Professor of English Literature at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. A renowned scholar, critic and translator, Marc is also Paris Director of the London-Paris Romanticism Seminar. His talk, entitled A Grammar of Surprise, will be followed by a discussion and wine reception, to which all are invited.
Marx In Bloomsbury Sunday 21 October 2018, 14:00-15:30
Senate House, London
This walking tour, led by author of Bloomsbury: Beyond the Establishment (2017), Matthew Ingleby (English), explores Bloomsbury’s links with Marx himself, in this his 200th anniversary year, but also the neighbourhood’s wider relationship to Marxism and socialism more broadly, exploring Bloomsbury’s significance for figures such as the arts and crafts revolutionary William Morris, the socialist feminist Isabella Ford, and the Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James.
Inspired by African -American author Octavia Butler’s epigraph New Suns: A Feminist Literary Festival is a day of talks, workshops, screenings and feminist discussion at the Barbican features our very own Nisha Ramayya (English).
Writers, artists, academics, poets and publications will explore contemporary feminism through the lens of mythology, discussing topics as varied as the #MeToo movement, occult poetry, bodies and sex work.
Charlotta Salmi (English) has been awarded funding by the British Academy to carry out research on gender-based violence in Nepal. Charlotta uses street art and comics to understand social movements. Read more
Susheila Nasta (English) will annoucnce SI Leeds prize with Bidisha at the Ilkley Festival on the 3rd October and also doing an event there on Writing post-Windrush with Bidisha and Jeremy Poynting.
Wasafiri magazine (based at QMUL) are announcing the winners of the Wasafiri New Writing Prize at Marlborough House on the 25th October. All staff invited and the news is that QM will be funding it from 2019 which is Wasafiri’s 35th Birthday year and the 10th year of the prize. Attend the event
Queen Mary Postcolonial Seminar is starting up again with the following events in September:Work-in-progress Seminar ‘Dinkar’s China Writings: The 1957 Chinese Literary Sphere in Hindi’*
Adhira Mangalagiri, QMUL
4 October, 18:00, ArtsTwo 2.17
*please email a.mangalagiri@qmul.ac.uk for a copy of the paper
Public Lecture
‘Reading for the Planet: Environmental Crisis and World Literature’
Jennifer Wenzel, Columbia University
30 October, 18:00, ArtsOne Lecture Theatre
Our contributions to Being Human Festival including The Last of The London (Nadia Valman – English) are now live for booking. Read our blog post for details
Our very own Daniel Oliver (Drama) is involved in these events:
