Brian Rock

Abstract for Crosscurrents conference, University of Aberdeen, April 2009.

2009-08-02T18:20:00.000+01:00

Title of Paper:

Myles na gCopaleen, flanerie and the language revival movement in post-independence Ireland.

Abstract:

Studies of Brian O’Nolan’s journalism have assessed his verbal wit in relation to the socio-political context of post-independence Ireland. This talk contributes to this contextualisation of O’Nolan’s work, under his pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen, and will address O’Nolan’s journalistic style through a consideration of how modernity enabled Ireland to develop a collective mass culture of general agreement that adhered to the social, cultural and political ethos of dominant cultural nationalism. I use Walter Benjamin’s definition of a flaneur to illuminate the relationship between modernity, nationalism and language in O’Nolan’s work. Benjamin defines a twentieth-century flaneur as a salaried employee, like a journalist, who produces news and literature for the entertainment and persuasion of his contemporaries. This form of flanerie encourages the notion that passive observation is adequate for knowledge of social reality. In contrast to this, Benjamin’s nineteenth-century flaneur’s goalless loitering and irresolution acted as a point of resistance to the homogenisation of mass production. I argue that O’Nolan, a twentieth-century salaried journalist, employs the tactics of mass production to consume the staged extravagances of post-independence nationalism in its promotion of ‘Irish Ireland’. Rather than adopting a passive acceptance of the values of cultural nationalism, O’Nolan’s use of parody, hyperbole and aimless narratives resist both modernity and nationalism’s control of national forms and identities. I will offer close readings of extracts from Cruiskeen Lawn, focusing on how O’Nolan highlights the ridiculous aspects of the Irish language movement which attempt to create a purer ethnicity, to emphasise the value of framing O’Nolan’s linguistic and journalistic response to modernity and nationalism in terms of a loitering flaneur.

ENG9PW: Colonial and Postcolonial Imagination: Africa

2009-08-02T18:18:00.002+01:00

Please find below details on the module I will convene at the department of English Studies at University of Stirling in Sprin 2010:

Department of English Studies
ENG9PW: Colonial and Postcolonial Imagination: Africa
Convenor: Brian Rock
(Spring 2010)
This module explores some of the major writings from Africa of the period from independence from colonialism to the present. It will begin with Achebe’s classic text of historical and cultural reconstruction of a pre-colonial Nigerian society on the eve of colonisation. The module will then look at two major African poets (Soyinka’s epic mythologies, and Senghor’s Senegalese negritude poetics), before examining Ama Ata Aidoo’s play Anowa and Soyinka’s major tragic drama Death and the King’s Horseman. Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s controversial novel is an overtly political response to the post-colonial betrayal of the ideals of the struggle for Kenyan independence, and Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel of a young woman’s coming of age mirrors wider issues in Zimbabwean society. The course will end with Okri’s disturbing visionary narratives of an African postcolonial present.
We 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 students to the vibrant, various, and accomplished literary culture of contemporary, postcolonial 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:
Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart (Penguin)
Ama Ata Aidoo, The Dilemma of the Ghost and Anowa (Longman)
Wole Soyinka, Death and the King’s Horseman (Methuen)
Ngugi wa Thiong’o Matigari (Heinemann)
Tsitsi Dangarembga Nervous Conditions (Ayebia Clarke)
Ben Okri, Incidents at the Shrine (Vintage)
Course Reader includes:
Poetry from: Wole Soyinka, Idanre; Leopold Sédar Senghor, Nocturnes
Essays on colonial and postcolonial theory and topics.
A list of secondary reading will be issued at the beginning of the course, but the following are helpful and provocative introductions to the subject:
John McLeod 2000, Beginning Postcolonialism, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Ania Loomba 1998. Colonialism/Postcolonialism, London: Routledge
Stephanie Newell 2006, West African Literatures: Ways of Reading, Postcolonial Studies Series, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Caroline Rooney 2000, African literature, animism and politics London: Routledge.

NEICN conference details

2009-08-02T17:52:00.002+01:00

This November I hope to present a paper on Patrick McGinley at 'Fantasy Ireland:
Imaginings and Re-Imaginings', the seventh annual Irish Studies conference organised by University of Sunderland in Association with NEICN (North East Irish Culture Network). See below for details on the conference's call for papers:

http://www.neicn.com/NEICN/conference2009.html

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Following the success of the previous six international Irish Studies conferences, the University of Sunderland, in association with NEICN, is soliciting papers for an interdisciplinary conference, which will run from 13-15th November 2009. The conference will begin with a plenary lecture on 13th November; there will be a book launch and wine reception on the Friday evening and a ceilidh and conference banquet on Saturday 14th November.

The conference organisers hope to represent a wide range of approaches to Irish culture from academics and non-academics alike. Performances, roundtables, collaborative projects, and other non-traditional presentations are encouraged in addition to conference papers. We welcome both individual submissions and proposals for panels. As with previous year’s conference, we welcome submissions for panels and papers under the thematic headings of Fantasy Ireland : Imaginings and Re-imaginings in the following areas: Literature, Performing Arts, History, Politics, Folklore and Mythology, Ireland in Theory, Gender and Ireland Anthropology, Sociology, Geography, Tourism, Art and Art History, Music, Dance, Media and Film Studies, Cultural Studies, and Studies of the Diaspora. North American and other international scholars, practitioners in the arts, and postgraduate students are all encouraged to submit proposals to the conference organisers.

Each session will include three or four 20-minute presentations each followed by discussion. A selection of the accepted papers will be subsequently published in the conference proceedings.

The University of Sunderland houses the North East Irish Culture Network, established in 2003 to further the study of Irish Literature and Culture (see www.neicn.com). It has held six previous conferences. Previous speakers include Terry Eagleton, Robert Welch, Luke Gibbons, Ailbhe Smith, Kevin Barry, Siobhan Kilfeather, Shaun Richards, Lance Pettitt, Stephen Regan, Lord David Puttnam, Andrew Carpenter, John Nash and Willy Maley, with readings from Ciaran Carson Medbh McGuckian, Bernard O’Donoghue and Eilis Ni Dhuibhne. In 2008, the English department at Durham was the recipient of a Leverhulme Major Research Grant to sponsor its project ‘Consumer Culture, Advertising and Literature in ireland 1848-1921’.

Keynote speakers confirmed to date include:
Dr Benjamin Colbert
Professor John Strachan (second annual Leverhulme plenary speaker)

Paper Submission

Please submit your proposals (title and 300-word maximum abstract) by 30th August to Dr Alison O’Malley-Younger: alison.younger@sunderland.ac.uk
copying in Mr Colin Younger: colin.younger@sunderland.ac.uk

Abstract for NEICN conference, University of Sunderland, November 2009

2009-08-02T17:48:00.001+01:00

Title of Paper: Fantasy landscapes for the English traveller: Patrick McGinley’s textual indebtedness to Flann O’Brien in The Trick of the Ga Bolga

Abstract:
Donegal born author and émigré Patrick McGinley (1937-) is currently undergoing a critical reassessment in Irish Studies, mainly thanks to the work of Thomas F. Shea. Often praised for his dry wit and dark psychological realism, McGinley develops fantasy landscapes and disquieting local and national identifications in his novels, which include Bogmail (1978), Goosefoot (1982), Foxprints (1983), The Devil’s Diary (1988) and The Lost Soldier’s Song (1994). Considering McGinley dedicated his fourth novel The Trick of the Ga Bolga (1985) ‘To Myles’, my interest lies in tracing the influence of the writings of Brian O’Nolan (Myles na gCopaleen/Flann O’Brien) on McGinley’s text. Set in the Emergency period, the novel re-imagines O’Nolan’s depiction of the Irish rural landscape as an absurd and indecipherable space for the traveller protagonist in The Third Policeman (1967). In McGinley’s novel, Englishman George Coote comes to Donegal seeking solitude and a discovery of a sense of self away from the chaotic modernity of World War Two. Just as the narrator of The Third Policeman has to navigate a landscape where things do not cohere, Coote, like the previous English traveller Arthur Spragg, attempts to decode the key to the mysterious trick of the Ga Bolga in order to uncover a sense of communion with the Irish landscape as an outsider. Coote must constantly re-imagine the Donegal landscape based upon the codes available to him, whether they be mythological, geographical, linguistic or sexual, as his level of integration into the community is reflected in his level of understanding of the trick. However, McGinley, like O’Nolan, blurs the narrative distinction between the real and the fantastic in his novel, as identities and meanings are obscured and refuse be easily reduced to the level of ‘truth’. Instead, rather than being a place of refuge for the English traveller during World War Two, McGinley’s unsettling landscapes play a sly and ambiguous game with the reader who, like Coote, must also traverse the text in search of meaning.

Abstract for IASIL conference, Glasgow University July 2009

2009-07-21T16:32:00.001+01:00

Title: Flann O’Brien’s minor modernism: deconstructing Anglo-Irish heritage in At Swim-Two-Birds

In their study Kafka: Towards a Minor Literature, Deleuze and Guattari define a minor writer’s role as one which deterritorializes or decodes major discourses in order to negotiate textual spaces which question the assumptions of dominant groups. My interest lies in understanding how post-independence Irish writers decode nationalist discourses contained in realist literary texts by employing modernist techniques. In an attempt to re-configure their subjectivities in the politically and culturally conservative post-revolutionary era, Irish authors often re-empowered themselves through an experimental quest for alternative modernist forms which reached beyond the constraints of nationalist literary discourses and identifications contained in much contemporary realist Irish literature. This paper investigates how Flann O’Brien decodes his Anglo-Irish heritage in the novel At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) within the context of post-revolutionary Ireland. Through an exploration of O’Brien’s modernist style, and a comparison with Kafka’s short story ‘The Burrow’, I will demonstrate how O’Brien produces a minor literature which subverts the signifying processes of Irish texts which confirm a stable national identity and territory. O’Brien takes pre-existing dominant models of cultural expression that define Ireland as nationalist and Gaelic and disrupts these traditional structures by exaggerating and amplifying their assumed signifying practices. O’Brien’s literary production, due to its openness to experimentation and refusal to reterritorialize Irish identity, should be placed in a minor relation to other Irish texts. By engaging with modernist techniques relating to the fragmented nature of modern subjectivity, O’Brien develops an elaborate structure and political metanarrative about the nature of post-revolutionary Irish nationalism and identification.

CFP: Textual Revoultions (postgraduate conference, Stirling, May 2009)

2009-01-22T10:10:00.000Z

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/

On teaching African literature

2009-01-21T18:16:00.000Z

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)

Abstract for New Irish, Old Irish conference (Galway, June 2009)

2009-01-21T18:12:00.000Z

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.

Abstract for PSA Conference (Waterford, May 2009)

2009-01-21T18:07:00.000Z

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.

Information on the PSA: Postcolonial Studies Association

2009-01-20T17:09:00.000Z

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.

Report on RHUL Postgraduate Research Day

2009-01-20T17:07:00.000Z

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.

Call for Papers: Globalisation and the Gothic

2009-01-20T16:50:00.000Z

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.

Royal Holloway Postgraduate Research Day

2008-06-12T17:25:00.000+01:00

I am hoping to attend the following event below which sounds like a valuable event for further discussion on the direction of postcolonial studies:

Postgraduate Research Day 2008: Interrogating the Postcolonial
Tuesday 29 July
9:30am-5:30pm
Royal Holloway building, 11 Bedford Square, London

Interrogating the Postcolonial is a free research day that aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum for postgraduate students to discuss the contemporary meaning, direction and relevance of ‘postcolonial studies’.
Proposals for papers of 10-15 minutes are invited for presentation in the morning – spaces are very limited for this section. Topics may include (but are by no means limited to):
· Moving beyond the postcolonial canon?
· Visions of empire and imperialism
· Performing colonialism and postcolonialism
· Borders, boundaries and bodies – colonial and postcolonial migrations
· Colonial and postcolonial power, resistance and violence
· Culture and commodities of colonialism
· Multiculturalism, hybridity and diaspora
· Colonialism, decolonization and development

The due date for abstracts is Friday 13 June 2008, with acceptance decided by Friday 20 June. Abstracts should be 200-250 words in length, and should be sent to D.J.Whittall@rhul.ac.uk.

The day will feature papers delivered by postgraduate students, an academic dialogue between Professor Elleke Boehmer (Oxford University) and Dr David Lambert (RHUL), and smaller ‘break-out’ discussion groups.

For more information please see our website at https://mail.stir.ac.uk/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.cameronius.com/helen/RHPRG; our Facebook event ‘Interrogating the Postcolonial’, which can be found through our Facebook group ‘RHUL Postcolonial Research Group’; or email Dan Whittall at D.J.Whittall@rhul.ac.uk.

Teaching and Research in English: Making the Links

2008-06-11T12:34:00.000+01:00

Teaching and Research in English: Making the Links
City: Edinburgh
Venue: University of Edinburgh, Conference Room, Ground Floor, David Hume Tower
Date: 13 Jun 08
Time: 10:00

Event Description: Bringing together subject-specific current practice and theory in the area of Teaching-Research Linkages, this workshop will encourage teacher-researchers (including postgraduate students) from the areas of Creative Writing, Language and Literature to share ideas. Possible areas to be addressed may include:
The relationship between research skills/methods and the skills passed on to students
The effect teaching has on research practice (eg how far is research teaching-driven?)
The importance of diverse research interests in curriculum development and provision
The limitations which research may place on teaching skills (eg what effects, good and/or bad, does the specialisation inherent in research have on teaching?)
Do our students mind/care if we are an 'expert' in what we teach?
Programme: (subject to alteration)
Time
Theme/Session
10:00
Registration and Coffee
10:30
Teaching-Research: issues in the Scottish ContextDr Vicky GunnUniversity of Glasgow
11:30
Coffee
11:45
Living on the Border(s): Perspectives on Researching and Teaching Scottish LiteratureAssociate Professor Carla SassiUniversity of Verona
12:45
Lunch
13:45
Teaching to Research: Scottish Women WritersResearch to Teaching: The Carlyle LettersMs Aileen ChristiansonUniversity of Edinburgh
14:45
Coffee
15:00
Summary and DiscussionTeaching-Research: an eternal balancing act OR a happy relationship?Dr Keith HughesEnglish Subject Centre
15:45
Close

Latin American and Caribbean Studies in Scotland Workshop

2008-06-04T09:51:00.000+01:00

One Day Workshop (LACNET), University of Stirling

Friday 6 June 2008; 10:30 – 16:30
Pathfoot Building B2

Latin American and Caribbean Studies in Scotland: The State of the Question

The purpose of the workshop is to establish a forum for discussion within and across Latin American and Caribbean Studies in Scotland. Presentations introduce major themes of significance from a range of disciplines and will be followed by roundtable discussions open to everyone to foster debate and possible future collaborations.

10:30 Opening and welcome (Charlotte Lange)

11:00 - 1:00 New Practices in Latin American Studies (Charlotte Lange)
Jesús Rodero, University of Strathclyde: ‘Political Fiction, Allegory and the Fantastic in the Contemporary Latin American Short Story’
Fiona J. Mackintosh, Carolina Orloff, Iona MacIntyre, University of Edinburgh: ‘River Plate Research Cluster: Plans and Possibilities’
Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar, University of Stirling: ‘Early Colonial Languages and Cultures in the Andes – Interlacing Wor(l)ds’
Tristan Platt, University of St Andrews: ‘The Anthropology of History and Change’ (tbc)

1:00 – 2:00 lunch

2:00 – 4:00 Placing Caribbean and Latin American Studies (Gemma Robinson)
Trevor Stack, University of Aberdeen: ‘Visions of Citizenship in Mexico and California’
Isobel Anderson, University of Stirling: ‘A Changing Cuba? Implications for Domestic Policy – the Case of Housing’
Mark Harris, University of St Andrews: ‘Some problems in the Study of the Brazilian Amazon’ (tbc)
Karen P. Peña, University of Glasgow: ‘The Brazilian Question’
Mariángeles Navarrete Lopez, University of Glasgow: ‘An Approach to Pablo Neruda: Love Metaphors through Cognitive Poetics’

4:00 – 4:30 Closing session: Future Directions in Latin American and Caribbean Studies

The workshop is open to all academics and postgraduate students working in the field of Latin American and Caribbean Studies in Scottish universities.

Translating Christianity

2008-06-04T09:28:00.000+01:00

Last week I participated in a colloqium 'Translating Christianity' hosted by the School of Languages, Cultures & Religions (SLCR) of the University of Stirling in conjunction with the ‘Colonialism and Postcolonialism network’ and the ‘Critical Religion Category Network (CRCN)’ (http://www.crcn.stir.ac.uk/). Here are some more details about the event:

In this research colloquium we focused on issues of translation and particularly, the
translation of texts, practices and concepts identified as Christian, from one
language and (sub)culture into another, reflecting an interest in translation both in its
linguistic and in its socio-cultural sense. Apart from written texts we hoped to reflect
on other genres as well, such as dramatic and ritual performances, visual
representations and oral traditions.

Objectives
To entertain multiple perspectives and methodological approaches (religious studies,
history, languages studies & linguistics, anthropology, literary and gender studies) in
addressing the issue of how cultural contents such as religious canons, beliefs and/or
practices found in mainstream, dominant, elite sectors of society both change and are
changed in the process of translation into minority, marginalised or subaltern
contexts.

Translating Christianity Colloquium · Programme
Stirling University, 28 May 2008
10.00-10.10 Welcome
10.10-10.20 Brian Murdoch
The Apocryphal Adam
10.20-10.30 Kerstin Pfeiffer
Staged Interpretations: Exegesis and the Question of
Representation in Late Medieval Drama
10.30-10.40 Stephen Penn
John Wyclif and the Meaning of Veritas in Scholastic Exegesis
10.40-11.10 Discussion
11.10-11.40 Break
11.40-11.50 Nara Improta Franca
The Translation of the Bible into the Yoruba Language –
the Concept of 'Nation' and 'Nationality'
11.50-12.00 Fiona Darroch
Rastafarian 'Translations' of the King James Bible
12.00-12.10 Sabine Dedenbach-Salazar
The Construction of Chipaya Origins – Interlacing Andean and
Christian Beliefs
12.10-13.00 Discussion
13.00-14.00 Lunch
14.00-14.10 Alison Jasper
Virgen María: 'The Holy Translator of God’s Desires to Women'
14.10-14.20 Christine Lindner
The Use of Evangelical Literature and Revival Narratives by
Protestant Women in Ottoman Syria during the Mid-nineteenth
Century
14.20-14.30 Michael Marten
Locating Metropoles and Peripheries
14.30-15.00 Discussion
15.00-15.10 David Bebbington
Translating Evangelical Christianity in the Modern World
15.10-15.20 Tim Fitzgerald
Protestant Mission Strategies in Mexico and Vietnam: Religion,
Secular and Profane as Categories
15.20-15.40 Discussion
15.40-16.10 Break
16.10-17.00 Final discussion: Crystallising themes.

Global Gothic Symposium

2008-06-04T09:25:00.001+01:00

The first symposium arranged in association with the AHRC Global Gothic Network is being held on the afternoon of Friday July 11 and Saturday July 12 at University of Stirling. The list of participants in the discussions follows at the end of this post and the issues to be discussed are described on the Network's website at http://www.globalgothic.stir.ac.uk/

If anyone is interested in sitting in on the discussions, either or both days, please email Glennis (glennis.byron@stir.ac.uk). Lunch provided, and a chance to meet some of these people over a glass of wine.

List of participants:
Katarzyna Ancuta, Assumption University
Elizabeth Andrews, University of Stirling
Colette Balmain, Buckinghamshire New University
Francesca Billiani, University of Manchester
Fred Botting, Lancaster University
Steven Bruhm, University of Western Ontario
Glennis Byron, University of Stirling
Ian Conrich, Birkbeck College, University of London
Justin Edwards, University of Wales
Ken Gelder, University of Melbourne
Giulio Giusti, University of Manchester
Terry Hale, University of Hull
Andrew Hock Soon Ng, Monash University, Malaysia
Avril Horner, Kingston University
Sarah Neely, University of Stirling
Charles Shiro Inouye, Tufts University
Tabish Khair, University of Aarhus
Barry Murnane, Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg
David Punter, Bristol University
Victor Sage, University of East Anglia
Aspasia Stephanou, University of Stirling
Abigail Lee Six, Royal Holloway, University of London
Dale Townshend, University of Stirling
Isabella van Elferen, Utrecht University

French Slavery Study Day

2008-06-04T09:23:00.000+01:00

On Saturday 28th June I will be participating in the French Slavery Study Day hosted by University of Stirling. Here are some more details about the event:
---
University of Stirling, Saturday 28 June 2008

Interested colleagues and postgraduates are invited to a study day on the French Slave Trade and its Aftermath. The event is free (this includes lunch), but advanced registration is essential. For registration and any other enquiries, please contact:

Bill Marshall
Professor of Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies
School of Languages, Cultures and Religions
Pathfoot Building
University of Stirling
Stirling FK9 4LA
Scotland, UK.

Email: w.j.marshall@stir.ac.uk

Programme:

The sessions will take place in Room C1/C2 in the Pathfoot Building, University of Stirling,

Presentations will last for 30 minutes followed by 15 minutes of discussion.

Tea and coffee are available from about 10.15.

10.45 Welcome and opening remarks

Chaired by Bill Marshall:

11.00 Nick Nesbitt (University of Aberdeen): “Slavery, Populist Reason, and the Atlantic Enlightenment in the Haitian Revolution”.

11.45 Peter Hallward (Middlesex University): “Self-Emancipation and Political Will”.

12.30 LUNCH

Chaired by Charles Forsdick (University of Liverpool):

1.30 Susan Castillo (King’s College London): “The Caribbean Gothic: Victor Séjour and George Washington Cable”.

2.15 Lorna Milne (University of St Andrews): “The Curse of Slavery in Contemporary Antillean Fiction”.

3.0 TEA & COFFEE

Chaired by David Murphy (University of Stirling):

3.30 Dominic Thomas (University of California at Los Angeles):
“The Global Circulation of Bodies: Immigration, National Identity and
Co-Development”.

4.15 Richard Watts (Tulane University): “The Myth of the Ecological Slave”.

5.00 CLOSE

Caribbean-Scottish Passages Conference

2008-06-04T09:17:00.000+01:00

At the end of June I will be attending the Caribbean-Scottish Passages Conference hosted by University of Stirling. Here are some more details about the event:

Caribbean-Scottish Passages: History, Language and Literature
Tuesday 24 - Wednesday 25 June 2008
Stirling University

Participants include:
Joan Anim-Addo (Goldsmiths, University of London)
Giovanna Covi (University of Trento)
Douglas Hamilton (University of Hull)
Kei Miller (University of Glasgow)
Velma Pollard (Mona, University of the West Indies)
Alan Riach (University of Glasgow)
Carla Sassi (University of Verona)

This 2-day conference will provide a forum for debate on historical, literary and linguistic interconnections between the Caribbean and Scotland. Studies of imperialism have only recently begun to investigate Scotland's role in the making of the Atlantic world, and the Caribbean’s role in Scottish life. To date, research has focused on remapping colonial history. A central aim of the conference is to assess past work, including a project funded by the University of Trento that resulted in Caribbean-Scottish Relations (2007), a co-authored book by four of our speakers: Anim-Addo, Covi, Pollard and Sassi. We believe that it is now necessary to reflect on past and current work that links the Caribbean and Scotland. This will be the first conference to present research in the combined fields of Scottish, Postcolonial and Caribbean Studies.The conference will focus on the complex cultural, social and political relationships between the Caribbean and Scotland, including discussions of Caribbean peoples/the Caribbean in Scotland; Scots/Scotland in the Caribbean; reparation and memorialisation across the Caribbean and Scotland; diasporic identities; Wilson Harris and Scottish literary traditions; the Caribbean, Scotland and the Enlightenment; abolitionist writing and campaigns in the Caribbean and Scotland; Scottish and Caribbean song traditions; aspects of language: Caribbean Creoles, Scots and Gaelic.

This conference is funded by the British Academy, the Dipartimento di Anglistica of the University of Verona, Stirling University's Centre for Commonwealth Studies, Centre for Scottish Studies and Department of English Studies.

Update -Postgraduate Events at Stirling University

2008-03-10T14:31:00.000Z

Postgraduate Conference: The annual interdisciplinary postgraduate conference will be held on May 24th-25th and the theme this year is 'Exploding the Canon'. We have three plenaries: Dr Darryl Jones, who will speak on Irish and Welsh Gothic; Prof Bill Marshal, who will speak on Francophone postcolonialism; and Prof Graham Holderness, who will speak on nationality and Shakespeare. There will also be three workshops during the conference focusing on canonicity in relation to publishing, research and teaching. All Masters and PhD students are invited to present a paper at the conference. This could be a 20 minute paper or a 5 minute position paper outlining a PhD/Masters dissertation. The deadline for abstracts is March 21st, and if any staff member or postgraduate who will not present would like to attend the conference please let us know by April 25th (so we can decide on final numbers for catering). Email explodingthecanon@stir.ac.uk or see www.explodingthecanon.stir.ac.uk for further information.

Postcolonial Studies Postgraduate Symposium: In a similar fashion, you are also invited to attend a Postcolonial Studies symposium on April 26th. This symposium aims to bring together PhD students from around Scotland to present their research within the field of Postcolonial Studies. We'd be delighted if you would like to attend and contribute to the discussions. If you would like to attend please email pcsymposium@stir.ac.uk by April 11th. See http://supostcolonialsymposium.wikidot.com for more details.

Poetry and Translation Conference

2008-02-15T18:50:00.000Z

There will be a Poetry and Translation academic conference organised by the English department at Stirling University this July. See http://www.poetryandtranslation.stir.ac.uk/ for more details. I'm particularly interested in attending this conference as there are quite a few Irish authors presenting their work, including Ciaran Carson and Eilean Ni Chuilleanain.

Providing Effective Feedback to Enhance Student Learning

2008-02-12T11:21:00.000Z

Three times a semester the postgraduates at the English department at Stirling University organise teacher training sessions for teaching assistants. I began teaching in the departement on September 2007 on the first year undergraduate module called 'Author, Reader, Text', and this semester I will be teaching on another first year module 'Texts and Contexts'. See http://www.english.stir.ac.uk/undergraduate-current/modules/index.php for more details on the current modules being offered through the department. In order to improve upon my teaching practices I am actively involved in helping to run the sessions on offer for teaching assistants, and next week I'll be giving a paper on the importance of giving effective feedback to students to enhance their learning and improve communication between tutors and students and between a student and his or her peers. If you have any ideas or suggestions of things that you use in tutorials in your feedback practices, feel free to contact me. Next week I'll publish the paper I will give at this session and give an overview of what other teaching assistants see as being effective feedback.

Postcolonial Studies Reading & Film Group at Stirling University.

2008-02-12T11:15:00.000Z

This spring at Stirling University I am setting up a new Postcolonial Studies Reading and Film Group run under the Centre of Commonwealth Studies. The group will meet three times a semester to discuss postcolonial cultural texts and films on Wednesdays from 1pm to 230pm in room A7, Pathfoot. This group welcomes all staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students and provides a space for those who are interested in postcolonial studies to meet outside of seminars and classes over lunch. Please find attached a poster with this semester's schedule. For further information contact me at brian.rock@stir.ac.uk.

Spring Semester Schedule

20th February @ 1pm in A7
Come watch and discuss Abderrahmane Sissako’s film Bamako, a critical exposition of the World Bank and the IMF regarding Africa's poverty. http://www.bamako-themovie.com/

26th March @ 1pm in A7
Franz Fanon’s ‘On National Culture’ in The Wretched of the Earth.

23rd April @ 1pm in A7
Naeem Murr’s novel The Perfect Man. Regional Winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2007. http://www.naeemmurr.com/

Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Symposium in Postcolonial Studies: New Research in Scotland

2008-01-25T15:17:00.000Z

Hosted by the Centre for Commonwealth Studies,
University of Stirling

Saturday 26th April, 2008

Call for Papers

This symposium aims to foster discussion and understanding of new research in postcolonial studies undertaken by postgraduate students at Scottish universities. We intend for the meeting to stimulate productive new networks amongst students in postcolonial studies nationwide, in order to plan similar future events that encourage interdisciplinary study within the field. We are looking for submissions from fellow postgraduate students and support contributions from as wide a scope of research areas and disciplines as possible. As the term ‘postcolonial’ itself transcends a strict definition, papers outlining problems and questions are most welcome. We encourage discussions, suggestions and criticism in an informal environment rather than formal presentations with absolute conclusions.

We therefore suggest that you prepare a short position paper that sets out your research topic in terms of

general subject
methodology
key research questions
examples of how you are dealing with research problems

Feel free to adjust the weighting of these topics, according to your interests and the stage you are at in your research.

Please send abstracts of 200-250 words for a 10 to 15 minute presentation plus brief biographical details to Gary Cape, Brian Rock, and Stefanie Van De Peer at pcsymposium@stir.ac.uk by Friday 4th April.

Deadline for symposium registration, whether presenting a paper or attending, is Friday 11th April.

See http://supostcolonialsymposium.wikidot.com/ for further details.

Crosscurrents Conference: Abstract

2008-01-14T13:45:00.000Z

In April 18-20th 2008 Strathclyde University will be holding the 7th annual Crosscurrents conference which is funded by the AHRC Centre for Irish and Scottish Studies. The conference provides a forum for postgraduates and research fellows who are working in the field of Scottish and/or Irish Studies. My abstract to present at this conference has been accepted. I would be interested to know what you think about my re-reading of Flann O'Brien's text At Swim-Two-Birds from a postcolonial perspective and if you agree that the subaltern subject has agency to define themselves and write back their own historiography.

Crosscurrents Abstract (278 words)

Title of Paper: Subaltern politics and metafiction in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds.

There is a consensus within academia that Flann O’Brien’s novel At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) is a key example of playful and sophisticated metafiction. Unlike his Irish language novel An Béal Bocht (1941), At Swim-Two-Birds has received little critical attention within the area of Irish postcolonial research because of these postmodern elements. My interest lies in understanding how instances of subalternity are grounded in the novel’s metafiction. This interest investigates what politics of identity can be found in the novel’s stylistic strategies if it is read within the light of postcolonial theories, particularly in relation to the work of the Subaltern Studies Group. I would argue that O’Brien asserts the right of Irish citizens to linguistic and cultural self-determination by negotiating their own narratives. This paper will fall into three parts. Firstly, this paper will offer a brief literature review of the novel’s critical reception to highlight the need to re-assess his metafiction within postcolonial studies. Secondly, through close textual analysis I will demonstrate that O’Brien encourages subaltern minorities, such as the working class within post-independence Ireland, to achieve greater creative power through parody of dominant discourses and the production of fragmented narratives. I will concentrate on episodes where characters conspire to end the despotism of their author and re-write the narratives that they are forced to exist in. Finally, I will argue against Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s assertion that the subaltern subject cannot gain agency through writing their own narrative. In contrast to this, I argue that O’Brien encourages his reader to reflect on the construction of postcolonial experiences by offering a series of manipulations and reactions to social and cultural subjectivities enforced by dominant narratives in the Irish state.