2023-24
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 explores 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 about the event and to watch the video recording of the lecture.
2022-23
Conferences:
Auto / Bio / Fiction in Practice: A Symposium
8 June 2023
A multi-disciplinary inquiry into the critical and creative practices of autofiction, biofiction and their neighbouring genres, as part of, and culmination of, our ongoing Auto / Bio / Fiction seminar series for 2022-23.
Click on the event title to find out more.
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Spectacular Orientalism in Early Modern Europe II: Asia and the Far East (C16th-C18th)
27-28 April 2023 (online)
The second ‘Spectacular orientalist’ conference, organised by the CCL in collaboration with the Society for European Festivals Research.
Following the success of the first Spectacular Orientalism conference in June 2022, largely devoted to the Ottoman Empire and the image of the Turk, it is our hope that papers for the follow-up conference will focus more specifically on Asia and the Far East. These two further days of talks and discussion will explore new perspectives on the representation of the Orient in early modern European art and performance in a period that witnessed the founding of the first Christian mission in Japan by the Portuguese (1549), the establishment of the English, Dutch and French East India Companies at the turn of the seventeenth century, the rise of European travel to Persia under the Safavid dynasty and the resulting spate of publications.
Click on the event title to find out more.
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Decadence and the Fairy Tale
24 March 2023 (in person)
Organised by the British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS) and the Goldsmiths’ Decadence Research Centre in association with the CCL.
Click on the event title to find out more.
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Seminar series:
The CCL Postcolonial Theatre series, May 2023 (online)
The talks in this series included:
Prarthana Purkayastha, ‘Bazaar Art, Bazaari Women: Nautch, Bibis and Courtesans in Nineteenth Century Kalighat Paintings (Bengal)’. 18 May 2023
Sudip Chakroborthy, ‘Performance and the Quest for Identity among Communities of Bangladeshi Heritage in the UK’. 25 May 2023.
Jerri Daboo, ‘The Performance of Adaptation as a Postcolonial Strategy’. 1 June 2023.
Click on the series title for more details and to watch the video recordings of the seminars.
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The Auto / Bio / Fiction series (online)
This series is ongoing (click on the title above to see this year’s programme). The 2022-23 series included:
Michael Lackey, ‘Zora Neale Hurston and Thomas Mann: Moses Biofictions as Political Interventions’ and Virginia Rademacher, ‘Derivative Lives: 21st Century Spanish Biofictions in Speculative Times’, 27 October 2022. Read more about the speakers and their papers, and watch the video recording.
Hywel Dix, ‘Autofiction and Cultural Memory’ and Hanna Meretoja, ‘Metanarrative Life-Writing: Intersections of Life and Narrative in Autofiction and Biofiction’, 17 November 2022. Read more about the speakers and their papers, and watch the video recording.
Varsha Panjwani, ‘The Many Lives of Judith Shakespeare: Feminist Life-Writings’ and Laura Cernat, ‘Portraits of the Artist’s Wife in a Slanted Mirror: Reader, Mother, Lover, Sorceress’, 15 December 2022. Read more about the speakers and their papers and watch the video recording.
Anna Borgarello, ‘Of Adventurers and Storytellers: Narrations of the Self and the Other in Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone and Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère’ and Riccardo Castellana ‘Biofiction in Italy: Typologies, Traditions and Reception’, 26 January 2023. Read more about the speakers and their papers and watch the video recording.
Lorenzo Marchese, ‘A Brief History of Italian Autofiction’ and Julia Kritsikokas, ‘The Writing of Trauma in French Women’s Autofiction: Annie Ernaux and Nina Yargekov’, 9 March 2023. Read more about the speakers and their papers and watch the video recording.
The series culminated in the one-day Auto / Bio / Fiction in Practice: A Symposium, on 8 June 2023, a multi-disciplinary inquiry into the critical and creative practices of autofiction, biofiction and their neighbouring genres. Click on the title to find out more and watch the recording of the event.
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The Sing in Me, Muse: the Classical, The Critical and the Creative series
This series is ongoing (click on the title above to see this year’s programme). The 2022-23 series included:
Abigail Ardelle Zammit, ‘#wearedaphne – Retelling the Assassination of Malta’s Foremost Investigative Journalist through Ovid’s Metamorphoses’, 3 November 2022, online. Read more about the speaker and the topic and watch the video recording.
Sophie Corser, ‘Imagined Authors: Reading the Homeric Question in Joyce’s Ulysses’, 8 December 2022, in person and online. Read more about the speaker and the topic and watch the video recording.
Michael Simpson and Barbara Goff, ‘Votes for Medea: The British women’s suffrage movement and the classical franchise’, 2 February 2023, in person. Read more about the speakers and the topic.
Emily Hauser ‘Recovering the Women of the Trojan War’, 23 March 2023, online. Read more about the speaker and the topic and watch the video recording.
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The London Beckett Seminar
This series is ongoing (click on the title above to see this year’s programme).
Click here for the 2022-23 programme.
2021-22
Conferences:
Spectacular Orientalism in Early Modern Europe (1529-1683)
8-9 June 2022, online.
Click on the event title to find out more.
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Seminar series:
The CCL Postcolonial Theatre series, May 2022 (online)
The talks in this series included:
Clare Finburgh-Delijani, ‘”Hear the Bones Sing”: Postcolonial Ghost Plays’. 5 May 2022.
Tiziana Morosetti, ‘Reimagining the Victorian Past in African and in Black Diasporic Theatre’. 19 May 2022.
Sola Adeyemi, ‘Refracted from the Canon: The Transmuted Form of Europe’s Ambassador to Africa’. 26 May 2022.
Click on the series title for more details and to watch the video recordings of the seminars.
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Remnants of the Iraq Wars: Iraqi Literature Twenty Years after 9/11. September 2021 (online).
Two events organised by Hanan Jasim Khammas, Visiting Doctoral Scholar at the CCL:
Iraq: Corporeality & Memory. Iraqi literary production, twenty years after the 9/11 attacks. With Sinan Antoon, Dunya Mikhail, Adnan Al-Sayegh, Jenny Lewis, Haytham Bahoora, and Hanan Jasim Khammas. 7 September 2021.
Aftermath Bodies: Corporeality in Contemporary Iraqi fiction. With Hanan Jasim Khammas, Ikram Masmoudi and Hanna Simpson. 22 September 2021.
Click on the series title for more details and to watch the video recordings of the seminars.
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The London Beckett Seminar
This series is ongoing (click on the title above to see this year’s programme).
Click here for the 2021-22 programme.
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Talks:
Margaret M. McGowan † (1931-2022), Dance, Performance and Politics: A Study of how Choreography developed in Court Ballets to meet changing political needs (online).
Click on the event title to find out more and watch the recording of the talk.
2020-2021
Seminar:
In, on, around, across the Mediterranean: Displacement, ethics & the challenge of representation in fiction, drama, life writing & the arts. 4 December 2020 (online).
Click on the title of the event for more details on the speakers and papers, and to watch a recording of the seminar.
