The seminars will be held virtually, using MS Teams and in order to attend, please register in advance by emailing renaissance@warwick.ac.uk, so that you can be included in the Teams meeting invite. The deadline for registration is Monday afternoon, 24 hours before the seminar. (Alternatively, to register for the entire programme of seminars, please simply specify this in your email.) We look forward to seeing you!

Dr. Alexandre Vanautgaerden (Warwick), 'Rhetoric and Typography: Portrait of Erasmus as a Paper Oracle'

Wed 08 Dec '21

St John the Baptist church, Berkswell near Coventry - Celebratory 'church ale' featuring quality beers and conviviality co-organized by Warwick's Food GRP, the My-Parish Network and the Spirit of Berkswell project as part of the Resonate Festival's 'Feast' theme for Coventry City of Culture: ALL WELCOME - for details and tickets see https://tinyurl.com/2ptx348k

St John the Baptist church, Berkswell near Coventry - Public 'Feast Food Fair' with celebratory dishes / beverages from different cultures and a series of food / drink presentations and related attractions. Co-organized by Warwick's Food GRP, the My-Parish Network and the Spirit of Berkswell project as part of the Resonate Festival's 'Feast' theme for Coventry City of Culture: ALL WELCOME - for further details please visit https://tinyurl.com/2ptx348k

Prof. Paul Gwynne (The American University of Rome), 'Towards a Baroque Latinity: Lorenzo Gambara's Caprarola (1581)'

Antonia Hofstätter (Warwick): Utopian Writing: Adorno, Benjamin, and the Promise of Soundfigures

Clare Siviter (Bristol)

Revolutionary Cancel Culture? Rethinking Censorship during the French Revolution

In democracies with a legal right to free speech, we often see commentators are calling out what they term 'new censorship', citing examples like cancel culture and sensitivity readers. This is often presented as worryingly novel, but as this paper shows through the case of the French Revolution, it is anything but. We will examine how, despite the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen's protection of the freedom of speech, and multiple promises to this effect after 1789, censorship by state and non-state actors continued. In so doing, this paper explores the complex, and at times paradoxical, relationship between democracy, freedom of speech, and censorship, and it proposes a new methodology to understand better how non-state actors can act as censors - both in the 1790s and today.

Clare Siviter is a theatre historian of eighteenth and nineteenth-century France and senior lecturer in French Theatre and Performance at the University of Bristol. Her monograph, Tragedy and Nation in the Age of Napoleon, appeared with Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment in 2020. She has co-edited a special issue of the Journal of War & Culture Studies (2021), and the collective volumes Celebrity Across the Channel, 1750-1850 (University of Delaware Press, 2021) and L’Engagement en vers et contre tous. Servir les révolutions, rejouer leurs mémoires (1789-1848) (Presses universitaires Blaise Pascal, forthcoming). She is currently undertaking a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for the project ‘Surveilling the Stage: Censorship and Subjectivity in the Age of the Revolution’.

Clare's paper will be followed by a Response from Kate Astbury, Professor of French Studies. Her research focuses on extending our understanding of French culture 1750-1815 by examining the traditions, themes, aesthetics and politics of novels, prints, theatrical texts, scores and performances of the time. Between 2013 and 2017, she was PI on an AHRC-funded project on French Theatre of the Napoleonic Era which subsequently generated two follow-on funding awards for collaborative work with English Heritage and the National Youth Theatre.

To join the seminar on Teams click here.

Launch of The Reception of Aristotle's Poetics in the Italian Renaissance and Beyond: New Directions in Criticism. London: Bloomsbury, 2020. The editor, Dr Bryan Brazeau (Warwick), will present the volume in conversation with Professor Simon Gilson (Oxford).

Monday 31 January 17:00- 18:30 (GMT)

Death and The Birth of a Nation: Cemeteries in Nineteenth-Century Italy

Hannah Malone (University of Groningen)

Italians have a special relationship with their dead and that relationship constitutes a basis for Italy’s national identity. Whereas across Europe until the late eighteenth century the dead had been buried in urban churches and graveyards, from the early 1800s, the prohibition of burial within cities led to the creation of new cemeteries that were suburban, public, secular, and socially inclusive, and whose importance reflected the celebration of death in an era of Romanticism and individualism. Although Romantic culture was widespread throughout Europe, Italy’s cemeteries of the nineteenth century were distinctive in that they were monumental rather than landscaped, and unparalleled in their scale, grandeur, and cost. They emerged in direct response to the evolution of Italian society and politics at the time of unification. As Italy underwent a period of turbulent change marked the rise of the bourgeoisie, the struggle for independence, and the creation of the nation-state, the new cemeteries expressed the tensions and conflicts that shaped the emergent nation.

Drawing on my monograph, Architecture, Death and Nationhood (Routledge, 2017), the seminar will explore Italy’s monumental cemeteries of the nineteenth century as a distinctly Italian phenomenon, and as a window onto Italian attitudes towards death and commemoration. In particular, in the context of the Risorgimento, public cemeteries were imbued with political meanings that were coloured by nationalism and a rising civic consciousness. Following Italy’s unification, they conveyed the power of the bourgeoning nation, and accommodated efforts to construct an Italian identity through a shared memory of national heroes. In that sense, the seminar will show how, in the monumental cemeteries, death reflected the narratives, mentalities, and memories that defined Italy as a nation.

The seminar will take place on MS Teams.

To join, sign up via

https://forms.gle/ZdQKKiM5fhJMxpXV7 

or email

federica.coluzzi@warwick.ac.uk 

luca.peretti@warwick.ac.uk

Meryem Choukri (Warwick/Gießen): presentation of aspects of PhD project

Dr David Orrego-Carmona (Aston University, UK / University of the Free State, South Africa): 'Translation users: societal implications of (in)visible translations' on Wednesday 2nd February 2022, 5-6pm (UK time)

The event takes place on MS Teams. We would kindly ask you to register in advance by completing the short registration form by Tuesday 1st February midnight (UK time). You will be provided with the relevant link Teams invite on the day of the talk.

Full details are also available in this poster for publicity available here.

 Dr. Claudia Daniotti (Warwick), 'Vengeful Queens and Other Unconventional Women from the Past: The Reception of Ancient Heroines in Renaissance Italy'

5th Doctoral Symposium of the European PhDnet ‘Literary and Cultural Studies’, hosted by the University of Warwick

This is to warmly invite you to the launching event of Warwick’s School of Creative Arts Performances and Visual Cultures seminar series.

Caring the future: arts as social poiesis in an age of crisis 

This seminar is concerned with the reconfiguration of artistic practices as they emerge at the crossroad between the political, social and economic realms. Discussing the work of Maddalena Fragnito, Emanuele Braga and Andy Abbott, we explore art as radical thought and action that intervene in the social fabric of the city. We will consider specific artistic practices currently challenging existing notion of care, exploring forms of financial, social and environmental sustainability. In conversation with Alberto Cossu, Heidi Ashton and Jonathan Cane, we investigate the potentialities and implications of artistic forms of care, how they can challenge existing technologies and institutions while creating new ones.

Wednesday 9^th February 2022 – 17:00 18:30 Online. Register here

Maddalena Fragnito is a feminist artist and activist. Currently, Doctoral Student at Coventry University’s Centre for Postdigital Cultures. Co-autor of Rebelling with Care (2019) and Ecologie della cura. Prospettive transfemministe (2022).

Andy Abbott is an artist, musician, writer, and arts organiser who lives in Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK. He has exhibited and performed internationally as an individual artist and in various collaborations including the art collective Black Dogs. He is Visiting Research Curator of the UNIDEE Residency Programmes for Cittadellarte Fondazione-Pistoletto in Biella, Italy 2020 – 2022 where he is delivering hybrid programmes of remote and situated learning for international artists exploring facets of ‘embedded arts practice’. In 2020 he co-founded UBI Lab Arts: a group for artists and artworkers who are interested in using creative methods to deepen and broaden the conversation about Universal Basic Income. http://www.cittadellarte.it/unidee/people.html 

Emanuele Braga is an artist, researcher and activist, operating in various contexts on the relationship between art, economy, labour and new technologies. He's co-founder of Balletto Civile dance company, MACAO, new centre for art and culture in Milan, Landscape Choreography and IRI — Institute of Radical Imagination. He's a lecturer in Big Data and Digital Methods at the Milan State University.

Alberto Cossu is a sociologist and media scholar. His research investigates artistic and creative work, collaborative work and the digital economy. His monograph Autonomous Art Institutions is being published by Rowman and Littlefield International. He has published on Social Media + Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Sociologia del Lavoro and Studi Culturali. He currently works at the University of Leicester, where he directs the MA in Digital Media & Society.

Heidi Ashton is a researcher and lecturer at the Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies and a choreographer / movement director in film, television and theatre. Her research centres around work in the cultural and creative sector and in particular freelance working. This includes an interest in the social and economic policies and structures that shape and impact upon creative work and labour markets.

Jonathan Cane is based in History of Art at the University of Warwick. He holds a PhD in Art History from the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and is the author Civilising Grass: The Art of the Lawn on the South African Highveld (2019), a queer and postcolonial study of gardening.

Curated and chaired by Carolina Bandinelli, Associate Professor in Media and Creative Industries at the University of Warwick.

Thomas Clément Mercier (ANID FONDECYT, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez)

Deconstruction and Dialectical Materialism: Divisions of Labour (Jacques Derrida's Seminars on Marx and Marxist Thought in the 1960s and 1970s)

It is usually considered that Derrida’s first real incursion into Marx’s thought was Specters of Marx, published in French in 1993. However, archival research has revealed that Derrida had already offered very lengthy and detailed readings of Marx and Marxist texts much earlier in his career as a philosopher. During the 1960s and 1970s – a very important and prolific period for French and international Marxist thought – Derrida wrote and taught extensively about Marx and Marxist authors (including Engels, Lenin, Gramsci, Benjamin, Althusser, Balibar, Buci-Glucksmann, and so on), but none of this work was ever published in Derrida’s lifetime. The discovery of these unpublished materials (approximately 1000 pages altogether) sheds new light on Derrida’s engagement with Marxism and materialism, but also on the ethical and political implications of deconstruction – much earlier than Derrida’s so-called ‘ethical-political turn’ (usually dated, with much bad faith, in the late 1980s or early 1990s). In this talk, we will discuss the political and philosophical aspects of the question – notably the relationship between deconstruction and dialectical materialism, in theoretical and political terms, with special focus on the notions of ‘labour’ and the ‘division of labour’ – but also its historical dimension, that is, the intellectual and political context of the French Marxist scene during the Cold War, before and after May 68: What was Derrida’s relationship with the fields of theoretical and political Marxism? Why did he decline to publish his deconstructive analyses of Marx and Marxist thought at the time? What was Derrida’s position with respect to his Marxist colleagues and contemporaries – in particular his close friend Althusser? How can we interpret the change of scenery justifying the publication of Specters of Marx in 1993, after the end of the Cold War and Althusser’s death?

Thomas's paper will be followed by a Response from Naomi Waltham-Smith, Reader in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Warwick.

To join the seminar on Teams click here.

Dr Anna Lanfranchi (University of Manchester), '"Requests continued to flow in": the translation rights market in Italy during and in the aftermath of the Second World War'.

A one-day interdisciplinary conference at the University of Warwick

Keynote Speaker - Professor Helen Cowie (York)

Prof. Sarah Knight (Leicester), 'Student Baroque'

Franziska Müller (Warwick/Gießen): presentation of aspects of PhD project

Daniel Nabil Maroun (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Subjectivity and Seropositivity: Retranslating Guillaume Dustan

Queer subjectivity is often thought of as fluid, nonlinear. Such a viewpoint suggests a plurality of subjectivity for protagonists that, I argue, aligns with recent scholarship on retranslation theory which views this process as a complex intersection of possible meanings for a text. I suggest however that retranslation reinforces queer subjectivity because both avoid teleological outcomes of their processes. Retranslation thus becomes a possible locus of the enunciation of subjectivity in the original text. Drawing on a retranslation of Guillaume Dustan’s Dans ma chambre, I argue that this process affords reader the opportunity to reexamine how Dustan intended to illustrate his existence in relation to his disease. Far from 'foreignizing' the text more as Berman (1990) purports, this exercise amplifies the author’s discursive traits which highlight queer HIV praxis of the mid-90s. The book is canonical to French HIV/AIDS literature and additionally to autofictional subjectivity, that is to say how the author defines his existence in relationship to his disease. This essay compares the 1998 Serpent’s Trail edition of In My Room to the 2021 Semiotext(e) edition by unpacking how retranslation affords a new opportunity to augment the author’s simultaneous relationship to his disease and his existence apart from it. In lieu of viewing retranslation as an exercise that highlights the inadequacies of first translations, I will highlight how queer subjectivity finds renewal and strength in the retranslation process.

To join the seminar on Teams click here.

Dr Elio Baldi (University of Amsterdam), 'One, No One and One Hundred Thousand Calvini: The Image of the Author in Criticism'.

Speaker: Professor Susanne Choi Yuk Ping (Department of Sociology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Date and time: Wednesday 16 March 2022, 4-6 pm (GMT). The reception for this lecture will start at 4 pm and the talk will start at 4:30 pm.

Location: Hybrid event - Room R1.15, Ramphal Building; and online on MS Teams (the link to join the event will be sent to those registered closer to the time)

Lecture title: Global Multiple Migration: Class-Based Mobility Capital of Elite Chinese Gay Men

Abstract: The present study examines how global multiple migration—a pattern of migration characterised by multiple changes of destination internationally in one’s lifetime—becomes a strategy and a form of capital employed by highly educated, Chinese self-identified gay men to navigate social stigmatisation, negotiate family pressure, circumvent state oppression, and achieve desired life goals. By examining the intersection between sexuality, migration, and class, the present study contributes to two bodies of literature. For the migration literature, it explores how relationships between sexuality and migration are mediated by classed-based capital. It adds to the discussion that migration has increasingly become a multi-directional and open-ended process. For the class and social inequality literature, it seeks to understand how global multiple migration has become an element of social stratification and generates mobility capital. It also highlights how sexuality influences the value of mobility capital for the pursuit of an authentic self.

For more information and to register: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/schoolforcross-facultystudies/events/scfs_public_lecture_series_susanne/Link opens in a new window

A Roundtable on Literary Translation organised by the School of Modern Languages and Cultures brings together very exciting panel with practising literary translators as well as representatives of the publishing and literary world:

• Alexandra Büchler (Director of Literature Across Frontiers, LAF)
• Will Forrester (Translation and International Manager at English Pen)
• Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp (practising literary translator working from German, Arabic and Russian into English)
• Ayça Türkoglu (practising literary translator working from German and Turkish into English
• Sawad Hussain (practising literary translator working with the Arabic language)

The event will take place in a hybrid format on Tuesday 26 April 2-4pm in OC1.06 and on MS Teams.

Please note that you will need to register your interest through this formLink opens in a new window by Monday 25 April (midnight UK time).

You will receive further details about accessing the seminar via Teams on the day of the talk. Any problems with the form, please email melissa.pawelski@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window

For any further information and a link to join the online seminar, please contact the organisers:

Lucrezia Sperindio: Lucrezia.Sperindio@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window

Jacqui Butler: J.Butler.4@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window

Dr Eleni Papaefthymiou, University of Warwick (Chair: Dr Clare Rowan)

“The Presence of the Republican Denarii in the Balkans and Greece”

Launch of Gender and Authority across Disciplines, Space and Time, ed. by Adele Bardazzi and Alberica Bazzoni (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

Speakers: Dr Adele Bardazzi (University of Oxford) and Dr Alberica Bazzoni (ICI Berlin), Dr Ioulia Kolovou (University of Glasgow), Dr Rachel Morley (UCL) and Serian Carlyle (UCL), Dr Vanessa Lee (Linnaeus University, Sweden), Professor Tobe Levin von Gleichen (Harvard).

Respondent: Professor Maria do Mar Pereira (University of Warwick)

Dr. Jonathan Bradbury (Exeter), 'The Ethics of Women's Bathing in Seventeenth-Century Madrid'

Dr Consuelo Martino, University of Warwick (Chair: Dr Elena Giusti)

“’Let us go where the portents of the Gods call us’: Suetonius, Lucan and the Crossing of the Rubicon”

 For any further information and a link to join the online seminar, please contact the organisers:

Lucrezia Sperindio: Lucrezia.Sperindio@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window

Jacqui Butler: J.Butler.4@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window

Jens Andermann, New York University, "Alliances of survival: Ala Plástica, thislandyourland, and the arts of entanglement''

Alliances of survival: Ala Plástica, thislandyourland, and the arts of entanglement

Can art help us survive the end of the world? Absurd as the question sounds, it has nonetheless loomed large in recent scholarship asking for the work the aesthetic can do as we confront the end of planetary life as a historical prospect. In this talk, I want to shift this conversation by championing the “unspecific arts” as an at once aesthetic and (cosmo-)political answer to this existential challenge. Rather than to focus on recent visual, filmic, literary or even mixed-media works that address the unfolding ecological catastrophe as their subject matter, by “unspecific arts” I refer to practice-based modes of action that, while taking advantage of the arts’ imaginative, world-making capacity, also involve diverse existents, human and more-than-human alike. In the work of Brazilian artist duo thislandyourland and Argentine artist/activist collective Ala Plástica’s, plants, liquids and earth participate as gathering agents that prompt emerging collectives to imagine what I call “alliances of survival”: modes of togetherness that thrive only in the measure that they are capable of including humans and nonhumans alike. How, I ask following T. J. Demos’s lead, “might the world-generating activity of aesthetics become a multinatural, multispecies affair, and not simply the reserve of human exceptionalism?”

To join the event on Teams, click hereLink opens in a new window (we would be grateful if you could join 5 or 10 minutes before the talk begins so that we can allow you in from the virtual lobby)

Details and the Teams link can also be found on this page: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/modernlanguages/research/researchlect2022/Link opens in a new window