The Centre hosts workshops, seminars, conferences and public lectures, including an Annual Lecture, to address matters of interest to comparative literature in its broadest sense.
We are delighted that Marina Warner has agreed to give the Centre’s inaugural Annual Lecture, Viral Spiral: Multiple Shape-shifting from Ovid to Covid. (This event had been postponed and a new date will be announced in due course).
In the meantime, please see below all of our upcoming and past events, including those for our event series, ranging from Classical Reception (‘Sing in Me, Muse’) to auto/biographical fictions and autofictions (Auto / Bio / Fiction), to Postcolonial Theatre and early modern ‘Spectacular Orientalism’
A range of further events are being planned in conjunction with theatres – notably our partner the Gate Theatre – museums and galleries, in the UK and abroad, as well as with the Borough of Lewisham, London Borough of Culture 2022.
Our members belong to a range of networks and societies (for example, LINKS, the London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies; EAM, the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies; MDRN; Out of the Wings, the theatre collective of translators and theatre-makers; the Carl Einstein-Gesellschaft / Societé Carl Einstein; and many more), and regularly participate in or organise events with these networks.
All events and activities prioritize diversity and inclusivity, which is central to our ethos.
We pay special attention to the support of graduate students and early-career researchers. In particular, as members of networks such as LINKS, CHASE, Mnemonics, and the Emerging Translators Network, our staff regularly offer graduate and early-career training events.
Upcoming events & current event series
Annual Lecture:
12 October 2023 (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 Erichsychthon, 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.
Click on the event title to find out more and book to attend in person or online. Booking is free but required.
Event Series:
THE CCL POSTCOLONIAL THEATRE SERIES
The series has concluded for this year. We’ll be back in 2024 with a programme focused on comparative postcolonial dance. Watch this space for the announcements in early 2024!
Click below for information and view recordings of the previous series:
The CCL Postcolonial Theatre series, May 2023: South Asia and the Diaspora
The CCL Postcolonial Theatre series, May 2022
Event Series:
Auto / Bio / Fiction
Convened by Lucia Boldrini (Goldsmiths), Natasha Bell (Goldsmiths) and Lucia Claudia Fiorella (University of Udine, Italy) and running since Autumn 2022, Auto / Bio / Fiction includes talks, seminars, roundtables, readings, reading groups, book launches and live book reviews.
Our speakers are critics and practitioners. Our aim is to put in dialogue (and possibly in dispute) different interpretations and practices of biofiction, autofiction and neighbouring genres and art forms, and discuss the questions raised by these forms and their critical and textual encounters.
Find out more about the full series and watch recordings of past events…
Seminar Series: The London Beckett Seminar
The London Beckett Seminar meets eight times a year, and brings together national and international scholars, researchers, postgraduate students and the general public to discuss issues arising from the prose, theatre and poetry of Samuel Beckett that pertain to aspects of literary, philosophical and historical analysis with particular attention to translation studies, performance and practice, digital humanities and visual cultures. Inherently interdisciplinary in approach, the seminar has established a vibrant research network for postgraduate students, early-career researchers, and established academics on a national and international level.
Find out more about the 2022-23 programme… (this has now concluded; the 2023-24 programme will be published as soon as it’s available)
Event Series:
Sing in me, Muse: The Classical, the Critical, and the Creative
A Series of talks, workshops, readings, discussions on the social, political and cultural relevance of the classics to our times.
This series of Classical Reception Studies events, running since Autumn 2022 and convened by Isabel Hurst and Lucia Boldrini, will bring together scholars and students from a variety of disciplines with creative writers and other artists, to examine how the literary and material cultures of ancient Greece, the Near East and Rome have been adapted and rewritten at later times and other places.
Find out more about the full series and watch recordings of past events (when available)….