Congratulations to all the winners.

Eloisa Ocando Thomas and Jingyang Xu (both History): EDIBLE BOUNDARIES: Food, Identity, and the Material Culture of Eating and Drinking

Xiaoyan Tan (SMLC and Gustavo Ruiz da Silva (Philosophy): (Neo)Colonial Images and Literature: The Construction of the Other

Archana Vinod (English) & Malvika Nair (SMLC): Is a Better World Possible? - Solidarity as a Conversation across Temporalities

Edited by Charlotte Spear and Madeleine Sinclair (Warwick) January 2025

The twenty-first century has been deemed the “Age of Crisis”. We are witnessing the catastrophic unfolding of environmental crisis, financial crisis, pandemic and conflict. But are we to understand these crises as new phenomena? Is their seemingly simultaneous existence purely coincidental? Or rather do they instead form part of a singular, historically produced, unfolding crisis, which only today has reached a generalised consciousness? And perhaps most urgently, how far can we separate the crises of human experience from those exacted upon the land?

The chapters collected in Crisis and Body Politics in Twenty-First Century Cultural Production: Territorial Bodies deploy the framework of “Territorial Bodies” to address urgent social, ecological and political challenges. Examining themes such as (inter)national bodily governance, racialised bodies, eco-feminist movements, spatial justice and bodily displacement, this collection provides a deeper analysis of the interconnected forms of violence perpetrated against marginalised human and non-human bodies, taking this combined violence as the defining feature of contemporary crisis.

We would like to invite you all to attend, and take part in, The Abstract! The Abstract is an opportunity for SCAPVC and Faculty of Arts postgraduate students to share and discuss their research, writing, and output (all formats welcome!). It allows postgraduate research and taught students to present their work to an audience of other postgraduate students and friends. Each session, 2-3 researchers will present their work (which can be a finished product or the first rough draft of a new idea), followed by a lively discussion. The Abstract aims to generate interdisciplinary connections between students and their work and invites contributions from a range of different fields, incorporating diverse methodologies and theoretical contexts.

Our first session of The Abstract will be Wednesday 5th February 2025 at 6pm, FAB 0.20 (refreshments provided)!

Following session dates (6pm, FAB 0.20):

Week 5, Term 2 - 5th February

Week 9, Term 2 - 5th March

Week 2, Term 3 - 30th April

Week 7, Term 3 - 4th June

We are therefore looking for people to share their work! This academic year The Abstract is inviting presentations on the theme of: Fragments/Remains/Glimpses

Areas of focus might include (but are not limited to):

• Fragmentation as a theme, form, or physical process
• Material preservation and destruction
• Conservation and waste
• Ways of looking at and seeing texts and artworks
• Archives, collections, archaeology
• Obfuscation, difficulty, confusion
• Perspective, perception and vanishing points
• Incomplete literary texts and art objects
• Organs, remaindered lives, body parts

If you would like to present your work at a session of The Abstract please email theabstractwarwick@gmail.com with the following information by Monday 3rd February:

• Your name, department, and year of study
• A title and short abstract which should include the form and focus of the work you would like to present and how it connects to the theme
• All dates where you are available to present

If you have any other questions, feel free to contact us for more info!

Email: theabstractwarwick@gmail.com or Emily.Nicholson@warwick.ac.uk

Instagram: @the.abstract.warwick