Literature
Ethel Maqeda presents, The Book of Memory: A Novel by Petina Gappah (Macmillan, 2016)
Ethel Maqeda gives a talk for the workshop, What is a Decolonial Curriculum? Held at TORCH on 28th November 2018. Decolonising the curriculum must mean more than simply including diverse texts. As Dalia Gebrial, one of the editors of the new book, Decolonising the University (Pluto Press, 2018) has written, any student and academic-led decolonisation movement must not only 'rigorously understand and define its terms, but locate the university as just one node in a network of spaces where this kind of struggle must be engaged with. To do this...is to enter the university space as a transformative force
What is a decolonial curriculum soapbox?
Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford, gives a talk for the workshop, What is a Decolonial Curriculum? Held at TORCH on 28th November 2018.
Singing in the Age of Anxiety
Laura will be joined an expert panel to discuss the book and its themes; Dr Benjamin Walton (Jesus, Cambridge), Professor Kate McLoughlin (Harris Manchester, Oxford). Chaired by Professor Philip R. Bullock (Wadham, Oxford). In New York and London during World War I, the performance of lieder -German art songs- was roundly prohibited, representing as they did the music and language of the enemy. But as German musicians returned to the transatlantic circuit in the 1920s, so too did the songs of Franz Schubert, Hugo Wolf, and Richard Strauss. Lieder were encountered in a variety of venues and media-at luxury hotels and on ocean liners, in vaudeville productions and at Carnegie Hall, and on gramophone recordings, radio broadcasts, and films. Laura Tunbridge explores the renewed vitality of this refugee musical form between the world wars, offering a fresh perspective on a period that was pervaded by anxieties of displacement. Through richly varied case studies, Singing in the Age of Anxiety traces how lieder were circulated, presented, and consumed in metropolitan contexts, shedding new light on how music facilitated unlikely crossings of nationalist and internationalist ideologies during the interwar period.
Laura Tunbridge is Professor of Music and Henfrey Fellow and Tutor, St Catherine's College, at the University of Oxford. Editor of the Journal of the Royal Musical Association from 2013-2018, in 2017 she was elected to the Directorium of the International Musicological Society. Laura’s research has concentrated on German Romanticism, with a particular interest in reception through criticism, performance, and composition. Among her publications are the books Schumann’s Late Style (Cambridge, 2007) and The Song Cycle (Cambridge, 2010).
Laura will be joined an expert panel to discuss the book and its themes; Dr Benjamin Walton (Jesus, Cambridge), Professor Kate McLoughlin (Harris Manchester, Oxford). Chaired by Professor Philip R. Bullock (Wadham, Oxford)
Postcolonial Poetics: A Book at Lunchtime
A Book at Lunchtime seminar with Elleke Boehmer, author of Postcolonial Poetics, joined by Dr Malachi McIntosh, Professor Ben Morgan, Professor Richard Drayton and Professor Robert Young (chair). Postcolonial Poetics is about how we read postcolonial and world literatures today, and about how the structures of that writing shape our reading. The book’s eight chapters explore the ways in which postcolonial writing in English from various 21st-century contexts, including southern and West Africa, and Black and Asian Britain, interacts with our imaginative understanding of the world. Throughout, the focus is on reading practices, where reading is taken as an inventive, border-traversing activity, one that postcolonial writing with its interests in margins, intersections, subversions, and crossings specifically encourages. This close, sustained focus on reading, reception, and literariness is an outstanding feature of the study, as is its wide generic range, embracing poetry, essays, and life-writing, as well as fiction. The field-defining scholar Elleke Boehmer holds that literature has the capacity to keep reimagining and refreshing how we understand ourselves in relation to the world and to some of the most pressing questions of our time, including resistance, reconciliation, survival after terror, and migration.
About the author
Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, UK, and a founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial literary studies. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of over twenty books, including monographs and novels. Her monographs include Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995/2005), Stories of Women (2005), and Indian Arrivals (winner of the ESSE 2015-16 Prize). Her novels include The Shouting in the Dark (2015) and Screens Against the Sky (1990).
About the panel
Dr Malachi McIntosh (Runnymede Trust)
Professor Ben Morgan (Worcester College, Oxford)
Professor Richard Drayton (King's College London)
Professor Robert Young (NYU)
Ibsen, Scandinavia, and the Making of a World Drama: A Book At Lunchtime
Henrik Ibsen's drama is the most prominent and lasting contribution of the cultural surge seen in Scandinavian literature in the later nineteenth century. When he made his debut in Norway in 1850, the nation's literary presence was negligible, yet by 1890 Ibsen had become one of Europe's most famous authors. Contrary to the standard narrative of his move from restrictive provincial origins to liberating European exile, Narve Fulsas and Tore Rem show how Ibsen's trajectory was preconditioned on his continued embeddedness in Scandinavian society and culture, and that he experienced great success in his home markets. This volume traces how Ibsen's works first travelled outside Scandinavia and studies the mechanisms of his appropriation in Germany, Britain and France. Engaging with theories of book dissemination and world literature, and re-assessing the emergence of 'peripheral' literary nations, this book provides new perspectives on the work of this major figure of European literature and theatre.
Narve and Tore will be joined an expert panel to discuss the book and its themes, Professor Kirsten Shepherd-Barr (St Catherine's, Oxford), Professor Julia Mannherz (Oriel, Oxford) Chaired by Professor Peter McDonald (St Hugh's, Oxford).
Making Oscar Wilde
A Book at Lunchtime seminar with Michele Mendelssohn, literary critic and cultural historian. Dr Sos Eltis (Brasenose, Oxford), Dr Charles Foster (Green Templeton, Oxford), Chaired by Professor Dame Hermione Lee (Wolfson, Oxford). Witty, inspiring, and charismatic, Oscar Wilde is one of the Greats of English literature. Today, his plays and stories are beloved around the world. But it was not always so. His afterlife has given him the legitimacy that life denied him. Making Oscar Wilde reveals the untold story of young Oscar's career in Victorian England and post-Civil War America. Set on two continents, it tracks a larger-than-life hero on an unforgettable adventure to make his name and gain international acclaim. 'Success is a science,' Wilde believed, 'if you have the conditions, you get the result.'
Combining new evidence and gripping cultural history, Michele Mendelssohn dramatizes Wilde's rise, fall, and resurrection as part of a spectacular transatlantic pageant. With superb style and an instinct for story-telling, she brings to life the charming young Irishman who set out to captivate the United States and Britain with his words and ended up conquering the world. Following the twists and turns of Wilde's journey, Mendelssohn vividly depicts sensation-hungry Victorian journalism and popular entertainment alongside racial controversies, sex scandals, and the growth of Irish nationalism. This ground-breaking revisionist history shows how Wilde's tumultuous early life embodies the story of the Victorian era as it tottered towards modernity. Riveting and original, Making Oscar Wilde is a masterful account of a life like no other.
About the Author
Michele Mendelssohn is a literary critic and cultural historian. She is Associate Professor of English Literature at Mansfield College, Oxford. She earned her doctorate from Cambridge University and was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University. Her previous books include Henry James, Oscar Wilde, and Aesthetic Culture and two co-edited collections of literary criticism, Alan Hollinghurst and Late Victorian Into Modern (shortlisted for the 2017 Modernist Studies Association Book Prize). She has published in The New York Times, The Guardian, African American Review, Journal of American Studies, Nineteenth Century Literature, and Victorian Literature and Culture. She is joined by Dr Sos Eltis (Brasenose, Oxford), Dr Charles Foster (Green Templeton, Oxford), Chaired by Professor Dame Hermione Lee (Wolfson, Oxford).
Forward with Classics
A Book at Lunchtime seminar with Dr Arlene Holmes-Henderson, Steven Hunt, Dr Mai Musie, Dr Peter Jones (Co-founder, Classics for All), Dr Alex Pryce (Head of Student Recruitment, Oxford), Chaired by Professor Fiona Macintosh (St Hilda's Oxford). Despite their removal from England's National Curriculum in 1988, and claims of elitism, Latin and Greek are increasingly re-entering the 'mainstream' educational arena. Since 2012, there have been more students in state-maintained schools in England studying classical subjects than in independent schools, and the number of schools offering Classics continues to rise in the state-maintained sector. The teaching and learning of Latin and Greek is not, however, confined to the classroom: community-based learning for adults and children is facilitated in newly established regional Classics hubs in evenings and at weekends, in universities as part of outreach, and even in parks and in prisons.
This book investigates the motivations of teachers and learners behind the rise of Classics in the classroom and in communities, and explores ways in which knowledge of classical languages is considered valuable for diverse learners in the 21st century. The role of classical languages within the English educational policy landscape is examined, as new possibilities exist for introducing Latin and Greek into school curricula. The state of Classics education internationally is also investigated, with case studies presenting the status quo in policy and practice from Australasia, North America, the rest of Europe and worldwide. The priorities for the future of Classics education in these diverse locations are compared and contrasted by the editors, who conjecture what strategies are conducive to success.
About the Authors
Edited by Arlene Holmes-Henderson, Steven Hunt and Mai Musie.
Arlene Holmes-Henderson is the postdoctoral researcher for the Classics in Communities project in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford, as well as an experienced teacher of Classics in both Scotland and England.
Steven Hunt is the Subject Lecturer of the PGCE in Classics at the University of Cambridge. He taught Classics for over twenty years in state comprehensive schools and is author of Starting to Teach Latin (Bloomsbury, 2016).
Mai Musie is a co-founder of the 'Classics in Communities' project and Knowledge Exchange Officer within the Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team, Oxford. She has recently completed her PhD thesis on the Representation of Persians in the Ancient Novel.
Contributors: Mary Beard, Arlene Holmes-Henderson, Steven Hunt, Mai Musie, Emma Searle, Lucy Jackson Michael Scott, Emily Matters, Paula Corrêa, John Bulwer, Barbara Bell, Jane Maguire, Rowlie Darby, Lorna Robinson, Xavier Murray-Pollock, Peter Olive, Olivia Sanchez, and Nicola Felton, Corrie Schumann, Lana Theron, Patrick Ryan, Francesca Richards, Evelien Bracke, Aisha Khan-Evans, James Robson, Emma-Jayne Graham, Kathryn Tempest and Edith Hall.
Remembering the Jagiellonians
A Book at Lunchtime seminar with Natalia Nowakowska, Somerville College, University of Oxford, Professor Julia Mannherz (Oriel, Oxford) Professor Hannah Skoda (St John’s, Oxford) Chaired by Professor Katherine Lebow (Christ Church, Oxford). Alongside the Renaissance dynasties of the Tudors, Valois, Habsburgs, and Medici once stood the Jagiellonians. Largely forgotten in Britain, their memory remains a powerful element within modern Europe.
Remembering the Jagiellonians is the first study of international memories of the Jagiellonians (1386–1596), one of the most powerful but lesser known royal dynasties of Renaissance Europe. It explores how the Jagiellon family has been remembered across Central, Eastern and Northern Europe since the early modern period. The book considers their ongoing role in modern-day culture and politics and their impact on the development of competing modern national identities
Offering a wide-ranging panoramic analysis of Jagiellonian memory over five hundred years, this book includes coverage of numerous present-day European countries, ranging from Bavaria to Kiev, and from Stockholm to the Adriatic. It explores how one family are still remembered in over a dozen neighbouring countries. Contributors use memory theory, social science and medieval and early modern European history to engage in an international and interdisciplinary exploration of the relationship between memory and dynasty through time.
Edited by Natalia Nowakowska, Fellow and Associate Professor in History at Somerville College, University of Oxford, and Principal Investigator of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project 'Jagiellonians: Dynasty, Memory and Identity in Central Europe'. Her previous publications include King Sigismund and Martin Luther: The Reformation before Confessionalization (2018) and Church, State and Dynasty in Renaissance Poland: The Career of Cardinal Fryderyk Jagiellon (1468-1503) (2007).
Contributors: Natalia Nowakowska, Giedre Mickunaite, Stanislava Kuzmova, Ilya Afanasyev, Dusan Zupka, Susanna Niiranen, Simon M. Lewis, Tetiana Hoshko, Olga Kozubska-Andrusiv
Reading Beyond the Code
A Book at Lunchtime Seminar with Terrence Cave, Deirdre Wilson, Ben Morgan (Worcester College, Oxford), Professor Robyn Carston (Linguistics, UCL). Chaired by Professor Philip Bullock (TORCH Director). Is language a simple code, or is meaning conveyed as much by context, history, and speaker as by the arrangement of words and letters?
Relevance theory, described by Alastair Fowler in the LRB as 'nothing less than the makings of a radically new theory of communication, the first since Aristotle's', takes the latter view and offers a comprehensive understanding of language and communication grounded in evidence about the ways humans think and behave.
Reading Beyond the Code is the first book to explore the value for literary studies of relevance theory. Drawing on a wide range of examples-lyric poems by Yeats, Herrick, Heaney, Dickinson, and Mary Oliver, novels by Cervantes, Flaubert, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton-nine of the ten essays are written by literary specialists and use relevance theory both as a broad framing perspective and as a resource for detailed analysis. The final essay, by Deirdre Wilson, co-founder (with Dan Sperber) of relevance theory, takes a retrospective view of the issues addressed by the volume and considers the implications of literary studies for cognitive approaches to communication.
Edited by Terence Cave, Emeritus Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow, St John's College, Oxford, and Deirdre Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, UCL and Research Professor in Philosophy, IFIKK, University of Oslo.
Terence Cave is recognized as a leading specialist in French Renaissance literature, but has also made landmark contributions to comparative literature and the history of poetics. His most recent work focuses on cognitive approaches to literature.
Deirdre Wilson's book Relevance: Communication and Cognition, co-written with Dan Sperber, was described in Rhetoric Society Quarterly as 'probably the best book you'll ever read on communication.' Translated into twelve languages, it has had a lasting influence in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics and is now regarded as a classic.
Contributors: Kathryn Banks, Elleke Boehmer, Guillemette Bolens, Terence Cave, Timothy Chesters, Neil Kenny, Raphael Lyne, Kirsti Sellevold, Wes Williams, Deirdre Wilson.
James Joyce and the Phenomenology of Film
Book at Lunchtime, James Joyce and the Phenomenology of Film James Joyce and the Phenomenology of Film reappraises the lines of influence said to exist between Joyce's writing and early cinema and provides an alternative to previous psychoanalytic readings of Joyce and film. Through a compelling combination of historical research and critical analysis, Cleo Hanaway-Oakley demonstrates that Joyce, early film-makers, and phenomenologists (Maurice Merleau-Ponty, in particular) share a common enterprise: all are concerned with showing, rather than explaining, the 'inherence of the self in the world'. Instead of portraying an objective, neutral world, bereft of human input, Joyce, the film-makers, and the phenomenologists present embodied, conscious engagement with the environment and others: they are interested in the world-as-it-is-lived and transcend the seemingly-rigid binaries of seer/seen, subject/object, absorptive/theatrical, and personal/impersonal. This book re-evaluates the history of body- and spectator-focused film theories, placing Merleau-Ponty at the centre of the discussion, and considers the ways in which Joyce may have encountered such theories. In a wealth of close analyses, Joyce's fiction is read alongside the work of early film-makers such as Charlie Chaplin, Georges Méliès, and Mitchell and Kenyon, and in relation to the philosophical dimensions of early-cinematic devices such as the Mutoscope, the stereoscope, and the panorama. By putting Joyce's literary work—Ulysses above all—into dialogue with both early cinema and phenomenology, this book elucidates and enlivens literature, film, and philosophy.