ECLS Research seminar
We run a series of seminars intended to provide a forum for discussion of literary research projects underway both within and outside of the department. The programme timetable and schedule changes annually.
Dr Laura Salisbury (Exeter University), Title 'Waiting Machines: Occupying Time'
This paper tracks the emergence of specific forms of embodied waiting in Western modernity. Using textual examples ranging from Beckett, through Heidegger, to Dr Seuss, it examines the particular influence of industrialised warfare on the experience of waiting, and how concerns about
‘waiting with’ emerge when any ‘waiting for’ that could be brought to a tolerable conclusion has sheered away. This work forms part of the Wellcome-funded ‘Waiting Times’ project (PIs Lisa Baraitser and Laura Salisbury) that is examining what it means to wait in and for healthcare.