On Thursday, 12 November 2020 the University celebrated completing the final storey of the new Faculty of Arts Building with a “topping out” ceremony.

Explore with Professor Silvija Jestrovic (Theatre and Performance Studies) some ideas from her recent work about the presence and absence of the author, in ‘The Author Dies Hard’. Siilvija challenges us to think about the questions ‘Who is the author?’ and ‘Where is the author?’. Her wider work looks at how the author is constructed through cultural and political imaginaries and erasures, intertextual and intertheatrical references, re-performances and self-referentiality, and what the politics and ethics of these constructions are.

Hear from Dr Eris Williams Reed (Classics and Ancient History) about her work on the history of the Roman Near East and ancient communities’ interaction with the environment. Eris looks for expressions of environmental loss and ecological grief in the Safaitic inscriptions of Northern Arabia and uncovers the precarious, volatile and fragile relationship that some people in the ancient world had with their environment.

Hear from Dr Pietari Kaapa (Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies) about his work on the relationship between media and climate change. Pietari asks us to think here about the environmental impact of the production of our media and reports on the work of the Global Green Media Production Network.

Hear from Dr Jonathan Skinner (English and Comparative Literary Studies) about his critical and creative work in the field of ecopoetics. Jonathan illuminates for us the importance of the writing and study of poetry in environmental contexts, and highlights the important work that poetry can do in times of environmental crisis. He reads here his poem ‘Paragraphs on Forest Bathing’, written for the HS2 protest encampment at Cubbington Woods, Warwickshire.

In the first of our Faculty of Arts at Home films focusing on environmental issues, hear from Dr Olga Smith (Institute for Advanced Studies, History of Art) about her research on ‘Visualising Climate Change’. Olga explores the effect of images on our perception of global climate change and how this might impact upon public awareness of these issues, as well as on the formation of environmental policy. Her broader research looks at the relationship between humans and nature in contemporary landscape art.

In the final of our ‘Health, Wellbeing and the Arts’ Faculty of Arts at Home films, hear about the research journey of Dr Somak Biswas (Institute for Advanced Studies, Global History and Cultures) and Dr Sara Bamdad (Sociology, now at the University of Kent) on their fascinating project, ‘Queer Immigrants of Colour, Coventry 1970 to Now’. As well as discussing some of their findings, they talk about the challenges of doing this research in lockdown.

In the third of our ‘Health, Wellbeing and the Arts’ Faculty of Arts at Home films, explore with Dr Anna Harpin (Theatre and Performance Studies) the nature and politics of loneliness in her film ‘Only the Lonely’. This brilliant, poignant meditation on the ‘age of loneliness’ makes some radical proposals about altering our thinking about loneliness as a problem of the individual to something we can collectively change as a society.

In the second of our ‘Health, Wellbeing and the Arts’ Faculty of Arts at Home films, explore with Dr Elizabeth Barry (English and Comparative Literary Studies) ‘Beckett and the Age of Covid’. This film presents her fascinating research on the representation of aging in work of Samuel Beckett. Liz is interested in how Beckett’s work can be understood in relation to the experience of aging in lockdown and beyond, and how the current pandemic amplifies generational tensions.

In this film, Professor Nadine Holdsworth (Theatre and Performance Studies) talks about her work on the ‘Homeless Monopoly’ project, a game which has been developed by Nadine, Jackie Calderwood and partners to facilitate better understanding of homelessness (and its causes) in young people. This film gives us insight into what can be achieved through partnership working (both with the charities that support the homeless, and with the homeless citizens of Coventry themselves).