This week at the CCL: Barbara Graziosi on Reading Homer with Virginia Woolf

This week, the Sing in Me, Muse series welcomes Barbara Graziosi (Princeton), who will give a talk on “‘The chancy story of the Phoenician woman’: Reading Homer with Virginia Woolf”

Thursday, 2 November 2023, at 6.00pm GMT, in person and online.

Click here for more information and to book.

We look forward to seeing you!

The Goldsmiths Centre for Comparative Literature.

Call for Papers for the Conference Work and Smell: Comparative Perspectives

The Centre for Comparative Literature will hold a conference on Work And Smell: Comparative Perspectives on 25 April 2024. For more information, please visit https://sites.gold.ac.uk/comparative-literature/work-and-smell-comparative-perspectives/.

The call for papers (deadline: 8 December 2023) is at https://sites.gold.ac.uk/comparative-literature/cfp-work-and-smell-comparative-perspectives/.

With best wishes,

The Goldsmiths Centre for Comparative Literature

Coming up this week at the CCL: Auto / Bio / Fiction and the London Beckett Seminar

On Thursday 19 October, 5.30 BST, our Auto / Bio / Fiction series resumes with

Alexandra Effe, “Thinking (Im-)Possibilities: Probability Estimations and Cognitive Feedback Loops in Processing Autofiction”
and
Natasha Bell, “Autofiction and the Implied Author”

The seminar will be online. Go to https://sites.gold.ac.uk/comparative-literature/the-auto-bio-fiction-series-alexandra-effe-and-natasha-bell/ for more information on the speakers and their papers, and to register to receive the Zoom link.

See https://sites.gold.ac.uk/comparative-literature/events-series-auto-bio-fiction/ for the full 2023-24 series.

 

On Friday 20 October, 6pm BST (online), the London Beckett Seminar will feature Prof Lucas Margarit (University of Buenos Aires), on “Beckett’s Presence in the South: Notes from Buenos Aires”.

Please visit the London Beckett Seminar page for more information and to register.

 

We look forward to seeing you!

At the CCL this week: Marina Warner, “Viral Spiral: Multiple Shape-shifting from Ovid to Covid” 

Marina Warner’s CCL Annual Lecture, “Viral Spiral: Multiple Shape-shifting from Ovid to Covid” is this week, Thursday 12 October 2023, at 6.00pm BST.

If you haven’t booked yet, you can still do so, in person or online – go to the Annual Lecture’s page for more information and to book.

We look forward to seeing you!

CCL programme for the 2023-24 event series published!

Dear CCL friends,

The 2023-24 programmes for:

the Auto / Bio / Fiction series

the Sing in Me, Muse: The Classical, the Critical and the Creative series

and the London Beckett Seminar (first event tonight at 6pm, online!)

have been published. Keep an eye on our website: other events are being planned and will be announced when details are finalised.

A reminder also that the Annual Lecture by Marina Warner, Viral Spiral: Multiple Shape-shifting from Ovid to Covid, will be on 12 October 2023, 6pm (online and in person).

All events are free to attend.

We hope to see (or e-see) you at some or all of those!

All best wishes from the CCL

The CCL Annual Lecture: Marina Warner, “Viral Spiral: Multiple Shape-shifting from Ovid to Covid” (12 October 2023)

The Centre for Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London, is delighted to confirm the new date of Marina Warner’s inaugural Annual Lecture (rescheduled from January 2023):

The Centre for Comparative Literature’s Annual Lecture

12 October 2023, 6.00pm UK time
(in person and online)

Marina Warner, “Viral Spiral: Multiple Shape-shifting from Ovid to Covid”

A group of metamorphoses in myths and legends features gods and in between creatures, who are not quite divine and not quite mortal either, who can change their shape multiple times. For example, Mestra, the daughter of Erisychthon, is given this gift by the gods when her father sells her, and she is able to elude the clients he panders her to.
Marina Warner will explore stories of multiple transformations in and out of different bodies, and reflect on their significance in relation to today’s concerns with fluid identities and interspecies contact and contagion.

 

Attendance is free but booking is required. Those who had already booked for the earlier planned date should have received an email and *do not need to book again*. If you still need to book, please visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/marina-warner-viral-spiral-multiple-shape-shifting-from-ovid-to-covid-tickets-721200880247.

The Lecture will be in the Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Goldsmiths, New Cross, London SE14 6AD, and will be followed by an informal reception. (For directions and a campus map: https://www.gold.ac.uk/find-us/)

Those who select to attend online will receive a Zoom link shortly before the event.

Visit the Lecture’s webpage for more information, directions, and updates.


Marina Warner writes fiction and cultural history. Her award-winning books explore myths and fairy tales; they include From the Beast to the Blonde (1994) and Stranger Magic: Charmed States & The Arabian Nights (2011). She has published five novels and three collections of short stories, including Fly Away Home (2014). Her most recent book, Inventory of a Life Mislaid (2021) is an ‘unreliable memoir’ about her childhood in Egypt where her father opened a bookshop in 1947. She contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books and to artist’s catalogues, for example for Paula Rego’s retrospective at Tate Britain (2021). She is Professor of English and Creative Writing at Birkbeck College, a Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy. In 2015, she was awarded the Holberg Prize in the Arts and Humanities, and in 2017 she was given a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. Since 2016, she has been working with the project www.storiesintransit.org in Palermo, Sicily, and is currently writing a book about the concept of Sanctuary. She lives in London.

 

This week at the CCL: Auto / Bio / Fiction in Practice: A Symposium

Join us on Thursday 8 June from 9.45am to 6.30pm (London time) for the Auto / Bio / Fiction in Practice: A Symposium

In a scintillating conclusion to our 2022-23 Auto / Bio / Fiction series, this Symposium will bring together a diverse range of writers and practice-led researchers, each worrying in different ways the boundaries between truth and fiction, life and art, self and character.

The Keynote Speaker will be Jarred McGinnis, in conversation with Natasha Bell.

The Conference will take place online.

For programme, abstracts and speakers’ biographies, and for a registration link, please go to https://sites.gold.ac.uk/comparative-literature/auto-bio-fiction-in-practice-a-symposium/.

This week at the CCL: The Performance of Adaptation as a Postcolonial Strategy

Join us on Thursday this week at 6pm for the rescheduled seminar in our 2023 Postcolonial Theatre series, with Jerry Daboo‘s talk on The Performance of Adaptation as a Postcolonial Strategy. The talk will be online.

For more information and booking link: https://sites.gold.ac.uk/comparative-literature/performance-and-the-quest-for-identity-among-communities-of-bangladeshi-heritage-in-the-uk/

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Centre for Comparative Literature

This week at the CCL: Performance and the Quest for Identity among Communities of Bangladeshi Heritage in the UK

Join us on Thursday this week at 6pm for the next seminar of our May 2023 Postcolonial Theatre series, when Sudip Chakroborthy will be talking about Performance and the Quest for Identity among Communities of Bangladeshi Heritage in the UK. The talk will be online.

For more information and booking link: https://sites.gold.ac.uk/comparative-literature/performance-and-the-quest-for-identity-among-communities-of-bangladeshi-heritage-in-the-uk/

We look forward to seeing you there!

The Centre for Comparative Literature

This week at the CCL: Bazaar Art, Bazaari Women: Nautch, Bibis and Courtesans in Nineteenth Century Kalighat Paintings (Bengal)

Join us on Thursday this week at 6pm for the second seminar of the CCL Postcolonial Theatre series, May 2023, when Prarthana Purkayastha will be talking about Bazaar Art, Bazaari Women: Nautch, Bibis and Courtesans in Nineteenth Century Kalighat Paintings (Bengal). The talk will be online.

For more information and booking link: https://sites.gold.ac.uk/comparative-literature/bazaar-art-bazaari-women-nautch-bibis-and-courtesans-in-nineteenth-century-kalighat-paintings-bengal/

Looking forward to seeing you there!