Next Generation: Arts Lecture Series

Wednesday 26 April @ 1-2PM

Life, Legacy, Fact, Fiction, and Form: How research shapes creative practice in a novel about Gertrude Bell

As a distant relative of political officer, archaeologist and writer, Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) Rebekah has always been fascinated by Bell’s achievements and legacies.

This talk will explore how Practice-research works, and the impact fiction can bring to redressing the past for modern audiences, through the specific lens of Gertrude Bell who helped to build the nation state of Iraq.

Rebekah Lattin-Rawstrone (English and Creative Writing)

The Limitations of Historical and Fictional Representations of Jewish People in the Nineteenth Century

How did historians and novelists construct an idea of Jewishness during the nineteenth century? This talk will consider a historiographical approach to examine novels and histories about Jewish people in the period.

Antonia will examine the ideological perspective of the writer, the narrative strategies in both novels and histories, and how each historian and novelist responded to contemporary events and movements, and to social anxieties about the so-called 'Jewish Question'. 

Antonia Saunders (English and Creative Writing)

Elizabeth I: Emotion and her Effigy

This talk will focus on the emotional impact of Elizabeth I’s funeral effigy. 

This event was the catalyst for Claire’s research, and thesis subject ‘Emotion and Elizabethan Royal Ceremonies’.

Claire’s research comes at a significant moment in British history particularly, as we live through the passing of a long reigning Elizabethan monarch more than 400 years later.  

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Claire Ashwell (History)

From Here to Eternity’: Non-linearity in Creative Writing, Physics, and the Romantic Sublime.

Zoe’s talk will focus on depictions of non-linear time within contemporary ‘time slip’ novels, and question how these may be linked – especially through the work of Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite writers and artists – to a growing understanding of the fluid, non-linear properties of time as posited in modern theoretical physics.

By utilising practice-based creative research, as well as sharing some of her own creative work-in-progress, she will detail the pursuit of fresh ways to authentically represent our human experiences of time.

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Zoë Marriott (English and Creative Writing)

Style over Substance? Stylistic analysis as a tool for the study of bronze figurines from pre-Roman Italy

Mirjam researches a group of bronze votive figurines, c. 6th-3rd century BCE. These figurines are our main surviving source for understanding the religious practices and beliefs of the people who inhabited the region of Umbria before the Roman conquest.

In this lecture, Mirjam will discuss how stylistic analysis has been used to study these enigmatic figurines in the past, and how it can be used today to find new answers to questions about their production, use, and meaning.

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Mirjam von Bechtolsheim (Classical Studies)

The Nineteenth Century Inquest: A Social History of Sudden Death

In the nineteenth century, inquests were public community events, drawing people from all social classes together to investigate the circumstances of a sudden death.

Sophie’s talk will examine the role of the inquest as an important legal function, and a gateway into the justice system following a suspicious death.

The proceedings – often reported verbatim in the local press – are a fascinating insight into Victorian life, death and society, lifting the curtain on domestic life, working practices, and interpersonal relationships. 

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Sophie Michell (History)

Beyond the joke: cartoons in early post-war France, 1944-1946

Despite the joy and relief of the Liberation, the French had to face many challenges in the immediate post-Second World War. They were hungry and cold, and many had lost their homes and family members, still displaced or deceased. The country was ideologically divided and had suffered much destruction. And yet, a surprising number of humorous drawings were printed in French publications between 1944 and 1946.

This talk explores, through cartoons from the Chadwyck-Healey Liberation Collection, what people were laughing about at the end of this terrible conflict, and what functions humour had in rebuilding the French nation. 

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Sophie Dubillot (History)

"A vision which no one who saw it forgot to the day of his death": dreams of flight in late-Victorian scientific romance

The late-nineteenth century saw an increasing interest in powered flight, an interest reflected in the early science fiction of the time.

Adam’s talk will explore the parallels and the divergences in the inventions of the real world and the imaginative ideas of what writers such as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, and how these authors imagined powered flight might change the world.  

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Adam Baldwin (English and Creative Writing)

Decolonisation and Immigration: What We Can Learn from Kamala Markandaya's ‘The Nowhere Man'

This talk will focus on the novel ‘The Nowhere Man’, published in 1972 by the British-Indian novelist Kamala Markandaya.

Set in a south London suburb in the 1960s, Markandaya’s novel recounts the experience of an elderly Indian, Srinivas, who becomes the target of racially motivated attacks perpetrated by Fred Fletcher, his neighbours’ unemployed son, who blames recent immigrants for his own misfortunes. 

Anne will explore the ways in which the novel provides a complex picture of race relations in 1960s Britain, and ask what it can tell us about today’s multi-cultural society.

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Anne Wetherilt (English and Creative Writing)