Welcome to the festive edition of our English and Drama newsletter. The picture above is of our Drama graduates MEGANDALEX ahead of their show Bodies (broken 4 u) at Camden People’s Theatre in January.
Events in December
FEATURED EVENT
English and Drama Offer Holder Day
Wednesday 13 December, 12:00-18:00, QMUL – Mile End
Staging Atmospheres – Theatre and the Atmospheric Turn
Friday 8 and Saturday 9 December, all day, QMUL – Mile End
Conference organisers, Martin Welton and Penelope Woods, are keen to encourage dialogue amongst artists and academics across a range of disciplines beyond theatre and performance studies and internationally.
Selector Responder: Sounding out the Archives
Friday 8 December 2017 19.00 – 21.30
Knowledge Centre, The British Library
Ten quick-fire responses to sound collections from the British Library and beyond, curated by our very own Drama lecturer Ella Finer.
RA Lates: Rrose Sélavy’s Dada Extravaganza | Saturday 9 December 2017 | 7-11.45pm
Our very own Dr. Benjamin Poore will be presenting ‘Estranging Objects: Fetish – Artwork – Freud’, exploring the unconscious forces shaping our encounters with surrealist objects. ‘ at this DaDa inspired Royal Academy lates event.
Digitising William Godwin’s Manuscripts
Monday 11 December, 17:30-19:30, V&A Museum
For the first time, the sole surviving manuscripts of Political Justice and Caleb Williams, by the anarchist philosopher William Godwin (1756-1836), will be digitised and made freely available on the Shelley-Godwin Archive. Celebrate this collaborative project announced in April 2017 by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), and Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH).
Negative Theatrics: A Conversation with Writer and Director Julia Jarcho
Tuesday 12 December, 18:00-20:00, QMUL – Mile End
Join us for a reading and conversation with the Obie-award winning playwright and scholar Julia Jarcho – who will be in London for the UK-premiere of her play Grimly Handsome at the Royal Court Theatre.
Writers @QMUL: John D’Agata reading & in conversation with Patrick Flanery
Friday 15 December, 18:00, Arts One Lecture Theatre , QMUL – Mile End
On 15 December at 6pm acclaimed essayist John D’Agata will be reading and in conversation with Patrick Flanery. D’Agata is the author of About a Mountain (2011) and The Lifespan of a Fact (2012) and is editor of Graywolf Press’s three-volume anthology series New History of the Essay.
Save the date for these events
- Queen Mary Eighteenth-Century Studies Seminar 2017-18: Peter de Bolla on Distributional Concept Analysis (Tuesday 12 December). More info
- Raphael Samuel Memorial Lecture 2017:
Peter Burke: Two Diasporas: the place of exiles in the history of knowledge (Wednesday 13 December). RSVP here - Queen Mary Centre for Religion and Literature Seminars (Wednesdays from 24 January) and Conference (Friday 6 July). Download the programme
News
Catherine Maxwell’s new book Scents and Sensibility: Perfumes in Victorian Literary Culture is out now and was featured in an article on perfume in The Guardian here.
Nadia Valman’s The Great Yiddish Parade is covered on the inspiring local blog Spitalfields Life.
The new Queen Mary Arts and Culture strategy was launched in November. Read all about the event here.
Links
1. Our students Charlotte Stockton and Adna Ahmed are working on the Mayor’s Entrepreneur Competition 2017. As well as a £20k prize for the winner to bring their idea to life, the competition can improve skills and future employability, and offers free mentoring and workshops from business experts (and there is the chance for students to pitch their ideas Dragon Den’s style at City Hall).
2. The story of Joseph Merrick re-told in an immersive Whitechapel tour app with a script written by our very own Nadia Valman.
3. Discover the academic side of one of our favourite terms; Schadenfreude, in this article by our very own Shahidha Bari and why not listen to her round up of the Being Human Festival on BBC Radio 3 here.
4. Listen to the history of QMUL and The People’s Palace in this interesting podcast here. The original Mile End site hosted a vibrant calendar of social events and facilities, including swimming baths, concerts and a winter garden enclosed in glass.
