It is with great sadness that the department has learned of the death of our esteemed colleague, Gloria Cigman, who passed away on 13 December aged 90. The funeral will be on Friday December 28th at 16.00 at the Oxford Crematorium, Bayswater OX3 9RZ. The family would like to welcome anyone who knew Gloria to the funeral: please contact Emma Mason for contact details.

A former colleague, Peter Mack, writes:

Gloria Cigman, a much loved teacher of medieval literature in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, has died in Oxford at the age of ninety. Born into a London East End Jewish family she married young and put herself through a BA at UCL and a BLitt at Oxford as a mature student, the single mother of two daughters. At Warwick she was a mainstay of the Medieval English Studies course for more than thirty years. She also taught modules on Dickens, Victorian poetry and the literature of evil. She was devoted to her students, many of whom continued to visit her in her retirement. She founded the Medieval Sermon Studies Newsletter which encouraged and co-ordinated research in that then neglected but now flourishing sub-field. Her publications include an EETS edition of Lollard Sermons, a study Exploring Evil through the landscape of literature, and a novel A Wife there was, about Chaucer’s Wife of Bath, which was translated into French. In her retirement she divided her time between her family house in Oxford and an apartment in Paris. She will be greatly missed by her former colleagues and students. Her family will organise a memorial event in Oxford in the spring.

'Love on Blue Canvas, 1890' was written by Tara Morgan (who graduated with a first-class degree in English Literature in July 2018) and Chlöe Standen. Sold out at the Edinburgh Fringe, the play is now premiering in London at the Bridewell Theatre, 14/15 December 2018, 19.45. Follow the links to get tickets; and find the play on Facebook (https://en-gb.facebook.com/LoveOnBlueCanvas/), Twitter (https://twitter.com/Blue_Moon_TC) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/bluemoon_tc/?hl=en). They are also crowdfunding here https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/lobc1890.

The open-access journal Feminist Dissent is based the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies at the University of Warwick, and its latest issue is a special on 'Challenging Binaries to Promote Women's Equality'. You can read it here.

Belladonnaby Daša Drndić, translated from Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth and published by Maclehose Press, has been announced as the 2018 winner of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation.

Ben Kulvichit (BA Theatre and Performance Studies, 2018) and Clara Potter-Sweet (BA English Literature 2018) are the most recent Warwick alumni to make a splash on the UK theatre scene; read about their new show in The Guardian.