An Inter-Disciplinary Postgraduate Conference at the University of Stirling
Textual Revolutions
Friday 8 May & Saturday 9 May 2009
Key note speakers: Catherine Belsey & Christopher Norris
‘All revolutions, whether in the sciences or of world history, occur merely because spirit has changed its categories in order to understand and examine what belongs to it, in order to possess and grasp itself in a truer, deeper, more intimate and unified manner’G.W.F. Hegel
Hegel’s belief in the redemptive power of revolution – that revolution is part of an essentially benign process of history – is at odds with Friedrich Nietzsche’s position that revolution is a ‘source of energy in mankind grown feeble but never a regulator, architect, artist, [or] perfector of human nature’. This tension over the nature of revolution constitutes our point of departure in an interdisciplinary forum that seeks to explore ‘revolutions’ and the language of revolution. It is the aim of this conference to foster discussion and understanding of both bloody and bloodless revolutions throughout the history of the arts. How will the revolution in digital media affect the future of the book? Has Marxism been swept aside by the competing claims of racial, ethnic and gender groups? How is language itself overturned in the pursuit of revolutionary aims? Has ‘the subject’ really been liberated by postmodernity and poststructuralist critical theory?
While the overall focus of the conference is textual, the organisers welcome papers from a breadth of research areas, which may include, but are not limited to:
Book History and Textual Culture
Modern Languages and Translation
Publishing Studies
Film and Media Studies
Religious Studies
Medieval Studies
The Gothic
Queer and Feminist Studies
Popular Culture
Postcolonial Studies
Papers that present problems and questions rather than absolute conclusions are particularly welcome. The organisers are looking for contributions from fellow postgraduate students and early-career academics. Please send abstracts of 300 words for a 20-minute presentation plus brief biographical details to Gary Cape and Steven Craig at textual.revolution@stir.ac.uk by Friday 13 February 2009. (Please note the singular form of ‘revolution’ given in the conference email address)
http://textualrevolutions.wikidot.com/
Thursday 22 January 2009
Wednesday 21 January 2009
On teaching African literature
This semester at University of Stirling I will be teaching an anglo-phone African literature course to third year undergraduates. This module explores some of the major writings from Africa of the period from independence from colonialism to the present. It will begin in the early period with our reading Amos Tutuola’s fantastical novel The Palm-Wine Drinkard, ‘transliterated’ from Yoruba myths and fables, and written in a unique form of English, and Chinua Achebe’s classic text, Things Fall Apart, of historical and cultural reconstruction of a pre-colonial Nigerian society on the eve of colonisation. The module will also look at three major African poets (the modernist experiments of Christopher Okigbo, Soyinka’s epic mythologies, and Senghor’s Senegalese negritude poetics), before examining an Ama Ata Aidoo’s play and one of Wole Soyinka’s major tragic drama. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s controversial novel Matigari will be examined as an overtly political response to the post-colonial betrayal of the ideals of the struggle for Kenyan independence, and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions of a young woman’s coming of age mirrors wider issues in Zimbabwean society. The course will end with Ben Okri’s disturbing visionary narratives of an African postcolonial present.
The students will seek to examine the relationship between oral forms and literary texts, strategies of representing cultural histories, and the relationships between national and ethnic identities in emergent postcolonial states. The course will also encounter alternative and dissenting voices which express political and social discontent: insurgence, revolution, gender conflict, and the mythologies of the dispossessed. The aim of the course, first and foremost, is to introduce Scottish students to the vibrant, various, and accomplished literary culture of contemporary Africa. In addition, students taking this course will practise close readings of the set texts, engage with the critical positions within the field of postcolonial writing and theory, and encounter complex debates about how national and postcolonial identity is reflected in these writings.
Set Texts:
Amos Tutuola, The Palmwine Drinkard (Faber and Faber)
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Penguin)
Ama Ata Aidoo, Anowa (Longman)
Poetry from: Christopher Okigbo, Labyrinths; Wole Soyinka, Idanre; Leopold Senghor, Nocturnes
Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (Methuen)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o Matigari (Heinemann)
Tsitsi Dangarembga Nervous Condition (Ayebia Clarke)
Ben Okri, Incidents at the Shrine (Vintage)
The students will seek to examine the relationship between oral forms and literary texts, strategies of representing cultural histories, and the relationships between national and ethnic identities in emergent postcolonial states. The course will also encounter alternative and dissenting voices which express political and social discontent: insurgence, revolution, gender conflict, and the mythologies of the dispossessed. The aim of the course, first and foremost, is to introduce Scottish students to the vibrant, various, and accomplished literary culture of contemporary Africa. In addition, students taking this course will practise close readings of the set texts, engage with the critical positions within the field of postcolonial writing and theory, and encounter complex debates about how national and postcolonial identity is reflected in these writings.
Set Texts:
Amos Tutuola, The Palmwine Drinkard (Faber and Faber)
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Penguin)
Ama Ata Aidoo, Anowa (Longman)
Poetry from: Christopher Okigbo, Labyrinths; Wole Soyinka, Idanre; Leopold Senghor, Nocturnes
Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (Methuen)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o Matigari (Heinemann)
Tsitsi Dangarembga Nervous Condition (Ayebia Clarke)
Ben Okri, Incidents at the Shrine (Vintage)
Abstract for New Irish, Old Irish conference (Galway, June 2009)
Title of paper:
Representing immigrant experience within Ireland in Roddy Doyle’s The Deportees
Abstract:
Since the mid-1990s there has been an unparalleled increase in the number of immigrants settling in Ireland. My interest lies in understanding how Irish writers, such as Roddy Doyle in his short story collection The Deportees (2007), have responded to the formation of new social and economic contact zones between the Irish and these new immigrants. I argue that Doyle, through his collaboration with the newspaper Metro Eireann, represents immigrant experience within Ireland as alienating due to new economic inequalities and exploitative power relations between both groups. Firstly, this paper will offer brief contextual background information on Metro Eireann to highlight the political agenda behind Doyle’s short stories on immigrant experience. Secondly, through close textual analysis of one of Doyle’s stories, ‘The Pram’, it will be demonstrated how Doyle exploits different literary genres, such as the Gothic genre, to reflect the diversity of ways of expressing the conflicting nature of the experience of cultural assimilation and integration. His use of ‘uncanny’ images in ‘The Pram’, where a Polish immigrant who tells a ghost story becomes haunted by her own experience of immigration, is just one way Doyle represents the effects of immigration on both the Irish and the immigrants.
Representing immigrant experience within Ireland in Roddy Doyle’s The Deportees
Abstract:
Since the mid-1990s there has been an unparalleled increase in the number of immigrants settling in Ireland. My interest lies in understanding how Irish writers, such as Roddy Doyle in his short story collection The Deportees (2007), have responded to the formation of new social and economic contact zones between the Irish and these new immigrants. I argue that Doyle, through his collaboration with the newspaper Metro Eireann, represents immigrant experience within Ireland as alienating due to new economic inequalities and exploitative power relations between both groups. Firstly, this paper will offer brief contextual background information on Metro Eireann to highlight the political agenda behind Doyle’s short stories on immigrant experience. Secondly, through close textual analysis of one of Doyle’s stories, ‘The Pram’, it will be demonstrated how Doyle exploits different literary genres, such as the Gothic genre, to reflect the diversity of ways of expressing the conflicting nature of the experience of cultural assimilation and integration. His use of ‘uncanny’ images in ‘The Pram’, where a Polish immigrant who tells a ghost story becomes haunted by her own experience of immigration, is just one way Doyle represents the effects of immigration on both the Irish and the immigrants.
Abstract for PSA Conference (Waterford, May 2009)
Title of Paper:
Linguistic postcolonial concerns within the Irish Free State: Brian O’Nolan’s minor literature
Abstract:
In their study Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari define a minor writer’s role as one which deterritorialises major languages in order to negotiate textual spaces which question the assumptions of dominant groups. Considering this concept has been applied to colonial and postcolonial studies due to Deleuze and Guattari’s linguistic concerns, my interest lies in understanding how Irish writers’ use of English in their literary productions can illuminate the question of to what extent the end of empire and the installation of a Catholic nationalist state had an impact on Irish literature produced within the Irish Free State. This interest investigates how Brian O’Nolan’s use of the major language English in his first novel At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) is a deterritorialising linguistic strategy in post-independence Ireland. If the novel is read within the light of Deleuze and Guattari’s first principle of a minor literature, whereby a minor literature is constructed within a major language, I argue that O’Nolan expresses similar linguistic concerns to other postcolonial writers. Firstly, this paper will offer a brief review of how Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature as a combative and anti-hegemonic writing strategy has been applied to postcolonial literary studies, particularly within an Irish context. Secondly, through close textual analysis of O’Nolan’s novel, I will demonstrate that O’Nolan takes pre-existing dominant models of cultural expression that define Ireland as nationalist, Gaelic and Catholic, and disrupts these traditional structures by exaggerating and amplifying their assumed signifying practices. I will concentrate on two episodes in the novel where O’Nolan makes his reader aware of the constructed nature of Irish identity by dominant discourses. Finally, it will be argued that O’Nolan’s language, in order to avoid reterritorialising within these episodes, creates ambiguous political metanarratives which avoid easy signification or clear definitions of Irish identity.
Linguistic postcolonial concerns within the Irish Free State: Brian O’Nolan’s minor literature
Abstract:
In their study Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari define a minor writer’s role as one which deterritorialises major languages in order to negotiate textual spaces which question the assumptions of dominant groups. Considering this concept has been applied to colonial and postcolonial studies due to Deleuze and Guattari’s linguistic concerns, my interest lies in understanding how Irish writers’ use of English in their literary productions can illuminate the question of to what extent the end of empire and the installation of a Catholic nationalist state had an impact on Irish literature produced within the Irish Free State. This interest investigates how Brian O’Nolan’s use of the major language English in his first novel At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) is a deterritorialising linguistic strategy in post-independence Ireland. If the novel is read within the light of Deleuze and Guattari’s first principle of a minor literature, whereby a minor literature is constructed within a major language, I argue that O’Nolan expresses similar linguistic concerns to other postcolonial writers. Firstly, this paper will offer a brief review of how Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of minor literature as a combative and anti-hegemonic writing strategy has been applied to postcolonial literary studies, particularly within an Irish context. Secondly, through close textual analysis of O’Nolan’s novel, I will demonstrate that O’Nolan takes pre-existing dominant models of cultural expression that define Ireland as nationalist, Gaelic and Catholic, and disrupts these traditional structures by exaggerating and amplifying their assumed signifying practices. I will concentrate on two episodes in the novel where O’Nolan makes his reader aware of the constructed nature of Irish identity by dominant discourses. Finally, it will be argued that O’Nolan’s language, in order to avoid reterritorialising within these episodes, creates ambiguous political metanarratives which avoid easy signification or clear definitions of Irish identity.
Tuesday 20 January 2009
Information on the PSA: Postcolonial Studies Association
I am currently the spokesperson for the postgraduate committee of the Postcolonial Studies Assocation. http://www.postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk/
The Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA) is a professional organisation that aims to bring together scholars working on postcolonial topics in any discipline or language.
Our Objective:
To promote and encourage the development of postcolonial studies, creating an interdisciplinary forum for information exchange, networking opportunities, research collaborations and other activities.
Though based in the UK and Ireland, the PSA’s scope and membership are international, and the Association actively welcomes scholars dealing with non-Anglophone literatures and languages - particularly those that are not represented by existing research centres and groups.
This Association wishes to acknowledge the input and contribution of all such early initiatives and warmly to welcome all those who have an interest in exploring and promoting postcolonial networks in the UK, Ireland and beyond.
A start-up meeting, hosted by Professors Janet Wilson and Elleke Boehmer, was held in Oxford on Saturday 8 March in order to discuss and formalise the PSA’s identity, functions, and future development. We already have over a hundred people on our mailing list and have received very positive feedback from them as well as from parallel institutions and research centres. A full committee structure is now in place, with Dr Chris Warnes as Chair, and Dr Ranka Primorac as Vice-Chair.
The Association actively seeks to engage in productive collaborations with other national and international groups, and it has already established formal relations with the European Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (EACLALS) and other institutions.
We would like to encourage representatives from other associations, centres and research groups to get in touch and attend future PSA meetings in order to identify potential affinities and synergies.
The Postcolonial Studies Association (PSA) is a professional organisation that aims to bring together scholars working on postcolonial topics in any discipline or language.
Our Objective:
To promote and encourage the development of postcolonial studies, creating an interdisciplinary forum for information exchange, networking opportunities, research collaborations and other activities.
Though based in the UK and Ireland, the PSA’s scope and membership are international, and the Association actively welcomes scholars dealing with non-Anglophone literatures and languages - particularly those that are not represented by existing research centres and groups.
This Association wishes to acknowledge the input and contribution of all such early initiatives and warmly to welcome all those who have an interest in exploring and promoting postcolonial networks in the UK, Ireland and beyond.
A start-up meeting, hosted by Professors Janet Wilson and Elleke Boehmer, was held in Oxford on Saturday 8 March in order to discuss and formalise the PSA’s identity, functions, and future development. We already have over a hundred people on our mailing list and have received very positive feedback from them as well as from parallel institutions and research centres. A full committee structure is now in place, with Dr Chris Warnes as Chair, and Dr Ranka Primorac as Vice-Chair.
The Association actively seeks to engage in productive collaborations with other national and international groups, and it has already established formal relations with the European Association for Commonwealth Language and Literature Studies (EACLALS) and other institutions.
We would like to encourage representatives from other associations, centres and research groups to get in touch and attend future PSA meetings in order to identify potential affinities and synergies.
Report on RHUL Postgraduate Research Day
Postgraduate Research Day
Conference report: ‘Interrogating the Postcolonial’
Royal Holloway Postcolonial Research Group, 29 July 2008
The inaugural Royal Holloway Postcolonial Research Group postgraduate research day, entitled ‘Interrogating the postcolonial’, was held on 29 July 2008. Attended by 25 postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers from RHUL and beyond, the day began with a short introduction to the history of the group by co-convenor, Dr David Lambert (Geography, RHUL). Dr Yasmin Kahn (Politics, RHUL) then introduced some of key intellectual themes for the day by considering the continuing salience of postcolonialism. Attention next turned to the first presentation panel. I began proceedings with an account of new directions in Irish postcolonial theory organised around a case-study of Irish novelist Flann O’Brien. This was followed by Lucy Watson’s (Southampton) discussion of whiteness, femininity and Australian nationalism in the travel writings of Mary Gaunt, and Andy Pursell’s (RHUL) discussion of space and the theatricality of empire in the writings of Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad. The second session opened with a paper on colonial Colombo and postcolonial geographies by Lois Jones (St Andrews). Dan Haines (RHUL) then talked on the recovery of abducted women in post-Partition India and Pakistan, before Humaira Saeed (Manchester) completed the panel with a paper on trauma and representations of the partition of India in film. Following lunch, the participants broke into three smaller groups to discuss their work and its relationship to postcolonial studies. The day concluded with a keynote discussion, led by Dr Lambert and Professor Elleke Boehmer (Oxford), structured around readings selected by the speakers and involving all attendees. Themes addressed included the nature and status of ‘the archive’, cartographic representations of (post)colonial London, problems with postcolonial canon-formation, and questions of interdisciplinarity. The stimulating discussion offered by all attendees demonstrated that postcolonialism in its many forms continues to be interrogated at great length by early-career researchers across the disciplines. Given its success, it is likely that similar events will be forthcoming in future years.
Conference report: ‘Interrogating the Postcolonial’
Royal Holloway Postcolonial Research Group, 29 July 2008
The inaugural Royal Holloway Postcolonial Research Group postgraduate research day, entitled ‘Interrogating the postcolonial’, was held on 29 July 2008. Attended by 25 postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers from RHUL and beyond, the day began with a short introduction to the history of the group by co-convenor, Dr David Lambert (Geography, RHUL). Dr Yasmin Kahn (Politics, RHUL) then introduced some of key intellectual themes for the day by considering the continuing salience of postcolonialism. Attention next turned to the first presentation panel. I began proceedings with an account of new directions in Irish postcolonial theory organised around a case-study of Irish novelist Flann O’Brien. This was followed by Lucy Watson’s (Southampton) discussion of whiteness, femininity and Australian nationalism in the travel writings of Mary Gaunt, and Andy Pursell’s (RHUL) discussion of space and the theatricality of empire in the writings of Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad. The second session opened with a paper on colonial Colombo and postcolonial geographies by Lois Jones (St Andrews). Dan Haines (RHUL) then talked on the recovery of abducted women in post-Partition India and Pakistan, before Humaira Saeed (Manchester) completed the panel with a paper on trauma and representations of the partition of India in film. Following lunch, the participants broke into three smaller groups to discuss their work and its relationship to postcolonial studies. The day concluded with a keynote discussion, led by Dr Lambert and Professor Elleke Boehmer (Oxford), structured around readings selected by the speakers and involving all attendees. Themes addressed included the nature and status of ‘the archive’, cartographic representations of (post)colonial London, problems with postcolonial canon-formation, and questions of interdisciplinarity. The stimulating discussion offered by all attendees demonstrated that postcolonialism in its many forms continues to be interrogated at great length by early-career researchers across the disciplines. Given its success, it is likely that similar events will be forthcoming in future years.
Call for Papers: Globalisation and the Gothic
CFP: Globalisation and the Gothic
University of Stirling, Scotland
28-29 July 2009
The AHRC Global Gothic Network, in association with the University of Stirling, Scotland, invites proposals for a multidisciplinary conference on the topic of ‘Globalisation and the Gothic’. Our main concerns are with the production of gothic in a global marketplace, and the ways in which globalisation has led to new forms of Gothic and to a plethora of appropriations and adaptations.We are interested in proposals which consider film, literature, music, dance, performance, painting, photography, fashion, digitalisation, etc.
Possible topics include, but are not limited, to the following:
• Examples of Gothic from around the world (e.g. Kiwi Gothic, Japanese Gothic, Mexican Gothic, Australian Gothic).• Cross cultural exchanges: hybrid forms, cultural translations• Modernity against tradition: ‘gothic’ technologies, local cultures and global contexts• Appropriation/ adaptation• The transformation of local myths and beliefs into a gothic mode.• Visual/ Digital forms and media (screen/ computer games /)• Gothic and performance (art/ music/ dance)• The impact of J-horror (or K-horror….etc)• Goth as globalised mode• Differences between globalised gothic forms and postcolonial gothic• Questions of genre: The extent to which the term ‘gothic’ is being appropriated and attached to genres previously defined by other terms (e.g. magical realism) and why.• The role played by technology /visual media / music / subcultures in the emergence of gothic in a globalised world.• Translation issues for gothic as a global mode.• Globalisation as a gothic manifestation.
Delivery time for presentation is 20 minutes. Some support will be available for postgraduates giving papers. Deadline for the receipt of 200 word abstracts is 12 February 2009. Abstracts and queries to glennis.byron@stir.ac.uk or mail to Glennis Byron, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, FK9 4LA.
See also the AHRC Global Gothic network website: http://www.globalgothic.stir.ac.uk/
Associates of the AHRC Global Gothic network include Katarzyna Ancuta, Colette Balmain, Francesca Billiani, Fred Botting, Steven Bruhm, Glennis Byron, Ian Conrich, Justin Edward, Ken Gelder, Terry Hale, Avril Horner, Sarah Neely, Andrew Hock Soon Ng, Charles Inouye, David Punter, Victor Sage, Tabish Khair, Abigail Lee Six, Marilyn Michaud, Barry Murnane, Amy Palko, Brian Rock, Andrew Smith, Aspasia Stephanou, Dale Townshend, Isabella van Elferen and Sue Zlosnik.
University of Stirling, Scotland
28-29 July 2009
The AHRC Global Gothic Network, in association with the University of Stirling, Scotland, invites proposals for a multidisciplinary conference on the topic of ‘Globalisation and the Gothic’. Our main concerns are with the production of gothic in a global marketplace, and the ways in which globalisation has led to new forms of Gothic and to a plethora of appropriations and adaptations.We are interested in proposals which consider film, literature, music, dance, performance, painting, photography, fashion, digitalisation, etc.
Possible topics include, but are not limited, to the following:
• Examples of Gothic from around the world (e.g. Kiwi Gothic, Japanese Gothic, Mexican Gothic, Australian Gothic).• Cross cultural exchanges: hybrid forms, cultural translations• Modernity against tradition: ‘gothic’ technologies, local cultures and global contexts• Appropriation/ adaptation• The transformation of local myths and beliefs into a gothic mode.• Visual/ Digital forms and media (screen/ computer games /)• Gothic and performance (art/ music/ dance)• The impact of J-horror (or K-horror….etc)• Goth as globalised mode• Differences between globalised gothic forms and postcolonial gothic• Questions of genre: The extent to which the term ‘gothic’ is being appropriated and attached to genres previously defined by other terms (e.g. magical realism) and why.• The role played by technology /visual media / music / subcultures in the emergence of gothic in a globalised world.• Translation issues for gothic as a global mode.• Globalisation as a gothic manifestation.
Delivery time for presentation is 20 minutes. Some support will be available for postgraduates giving papers. Deadline for the receipt of 200 word abstracts is 12 February 2009. Abstracts and queries to glennis.byron@stir.ac.uk or mail to Glennis Byron, Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, Stirling, Scotland, FK9 4LA.
See also the AHRC Global Gothic network website: http://www.globalgothic.stir.ac.uk/
Associates of the AHRC Global Gothic network include Katarzyna Ancuta, Colette Balmain, Francesca Billiani, Fred Botting, Steven Bruhm, Glennis Byron, Ian Conrich, Justin Edward, Ken Gelder, Terry Hale, Avril Horner, Sarah Neely, Andrew Hock Soon Ng, Charles Inouye, David Punter, Victor Sage, Tabish Khair, Abigail Lee Six, Marilyn Michaud, Barry Murnane, Amy Palko, Brian Rock, Andrew Smith, Aspasia Stephanou, Dale Townshend, Isabella van Elferen and Sue Zlosnik.
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