• Dalia Gebrial, 'Rhodes Must Fall: Oxford and Movements for Change', in: Gurminder K. Bhambra, Kerem Nişancıoğlu, and Dalia Gebrial (eds.), Decolonising the University (London: 2018), pp. 19-36.
• Helen Carr and Suzannah Libscomb, What is History, Now? How the Past and Present Speak to Each Other (London: 2021), prologue.
• David Abulafia, 'Save our history from the unthinking ideologues who want to distort the past', Telegraph, 29 August 2021. See also: https://historyreclaimed.co.uk/

At this first meeting of our reading group on decolonisation we'd like to start a discussion focused on three questions: 1) what do we see as the key issues for us as historians to address in debates about decolonisation? 2) what different positions exist and what do we see as their problems and merits? 3) where would we like to focus our energy as a reading group and discussion forum? For the latter, please see this document with suggested readings from which to make a selection, and to which we invite you to add further recommendations of your own.

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Dr Hannah Cornwell, University of Birmingham (Chair: Dr Consuelo Martino)

“Internal conflicts and collective identities in the late Roman Republic”

Centre for Cultural and Media Policy Studies - Research Seminars

Teams (Term 1) Wednesdays 4pm-5pm

17^th November 2021 Dr Ali FitzGibbon, Queen's University Belfast [link to meeting] 

The devaluation of the artist in theatre and theatre policy, evolving or recurring?

Much has been written about the precarity of the artist and their dependency on institutions. Precarity is a de-economisation of individual artists on which the economy and public policy of theatre relies. This working paper tries to bring together pre-COVID and Rapid Response research. It suggests that the separation of the artist from the language, public policies and policymaking, financial mechanisms, business practices and decision-making of professional subsidised theatre represents a structurally complicit and unethical faultline within the form. The creative and aesthetic processes on which professional theatre depends for its value must be re-embedded within its value systems. COVID19 interrupted and transformed production and delivery and also sent this research in a new direction. How does one avoid a return to an unethical system? What lessons can be taken forward?

Dr Ali FitzGibbon is a Senior Lecturer and Subject Lead for Arts Management and Cultural Policy at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research focuses on decision-making and the ethics and ecologies of contemporary cultural production. particularly performing arts and freelancers/artists. Her doctoral research on the artist as stakeholder was shortlisted for the 2020 ENCATC Research Award and she has published in a range of international journals. She has over 25 years’ experience as a multi-arts producer, programmer and consultant, including conceiving the world’s first Baby Rave in 2005. In 2020, she worked as a creative consultant to the Department for Communities (NI) on proposals for a Arts & Cultural Recovery Strategy, leading to the establishment of the Arts, Culture & Heritage Taskforce. She is Co-Investigator on ‘Freelancers in the Dark’ (ESRC) and ‘Future Screens NI’, part of the UK Creative Industries

24^th November 2021 Dr Mafalda Dâmaso, Kings College London [link to meeting]

Based in the Department of Culture, Media and Creative Industries, Dr Mafalda Dâmaso's recent publications are: (2021) with Andrew Murray. The EU’s Dualistic Regime of Cultural Diversity Management: The Concept of Culture in the Creative Europe Program (2014-2019; 2021-2027) and in the Strategy for International Cultural Relations (2016–), Journal of Cultural Management and Cultural Policy. (2021) with Culture Action Europe. The situation of artists and cultural workers and the post-COVID-19 Cultural Recovery in the European Union: Background Analysis and Policy Recommendations, Research for the CULT Committee of the European Parliament. Follow @MafaldaDms.

An opportunity for prospective students to speak to our tutors and current students about studying Global Sustainable Development (GSD) and life at Warwick. If you joined us for one of our recent Undergraduate Open Days, you may still have some questions for us as you make your decision about the right course for you. We encourage you to join this live chat if you would like more information about our courses, making an application, and life as a GSD student at Warwick.

Department of History Research Seminar (Online)

Sudhir Hazareesingh (Oxford): ‘Republican fraternity in action: Toussaint Louverture and the Saint-Domingue revolution’

Discussant: Dexnell Peters

Please see this link to register via Teams. You will need to scroll down to week 8 on the list.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/research/research_seminar_2021-22/

Wednesday 24 November 2021, 4:30-6pm

Department of History Research Seminar (Online)

Sudhir Hazareesingh (Oxford): ‘Republican fraternity in action: Toussaint Louverture and the Saint-Domingue revolution’

Discussant: Dexnell Peters

Please see this link to register via Teams. You will need to scroll down to week 8 on the list.

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/research/research_seminar_2021-22/

This session will focus on self-representation and the ways in which female Yiddish writers challenged the patriarchal canon of US-Yiddish literature, including the unconventional life of Yente Serdatsky. Serdatsky left her husband and children for a while to pursue her writing career in Warsaw, then emigrated to the US. She had a highly successful tenure at a writer for the Yiddish paper Forverts in New York until she had a very public falling out with its editor, Abraham Cahan, who effectively prevented Serdatsky being published by any US Yiddish publisher for decades.

The first reading is a short story first published in Yiddish in 1920 called “An Old Woman with Young Dreams”, which is in translation here: An Old Woman with Young Dreams | Yiddish Book Center

The second is a short selection of Yenta Serdatsky’s letters to the editor of The New York Weekly (Nyu yorker wochenblatt) between 1949 and 1962, which were written after Serdatsky had argued with Cahan, who had effectively ended her literary career. These letters are translated here: "Letters to the Editor" | Yiddish Book Center and were a means of Serdatsky securing a column in the Wochenblatt after many years without being published.

For those who are interested, there are further biographical details on Serdatsky here: Yente Serdatsky | Jewish Women's Archive (jwa.org)

Please also take a moment to look at the attached save the dates poster and pop them in your diary. We are hoping to bring these sessions in person in Term 2, hopefully in the new building, with snacks and drinks, so watch this space!

We have also updated the website (https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/english/research/pgstafffeministreadinggroup/) with proposed dates and session themes.

As ever, we very much welcome session proposals from all PGs and staff, so do get in touch if you have a session idea in mind.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Roxanne & Esthie

A seminar with Sudhir Hazareesingh (Oxford)

Applying to Warwick to read languages? Which languages, which combinations? Ab initio or post high school entry? What are our campus, courses, and community like? Chat online to staff and students and have all your questions answered.

Earlier this year the Higher Education Minister Frédérique Vidal alleged that French academia is "gangrened with Isalmo-gauchisme” and members of Macron’s government have vied to outdo the Rassemblement National on anti-immigrant sentiment, rejecting concepts of 'state racism' and 'whiteness' as American imports incompatible with French universalism. As French scholars thus contend with intensified assaults on academic freedom not entirely dissimilar to the ones we face in the UK at the hands of a state likewise wedded to ongoing colonialism, what resources does recent French philosophy have for analysing and mounting resistance to this critical juncture? With particular focus on the differences and disagreements between Lyotard’s différend and Rancière’s mésentente, and alongside Derrida’s thinking about responsibility and silence, Foucault’s late work on parrhēsia and listening, and some recent trajectories in analytic voice epistemology, I will argue that we cannot reckon with the limits of free speech or academic freedom without considering the role of listening and its capacity to silence or let speak. The unequal distribution of voice disavowed by the marketplace-of-ideas models, is as much a function of the inequality of audibility as it is of uneven capacities to speak up.

Naomi Waltham-Smith is Reader in the Centre of Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick. Sitting at the intersection of recent European philosophy with music and sound studies, her work appears in journals including boundary 2, CR: The New Centennial Review, Diacritics, parallax, parrhesia, Philosophy Today, and Music Theory Spectrum. She is the author of Music and Belonging Between Revolution and Restoration (Oxford University Press, 2017), Shattering Biopolitics: Militant Listening and the Sound of Life (Fordham University Press, 2021), and Mapping (Post)colonial Paris by Ear (forthcoming with Cambridge University Press). She has—no doubt unwisely—accepted the challenge to write a book intervening in contemporary debates on freedom of expression.

Naomi's paper will be followed by a Response from Oliver Davis, Professor of French Studies, Warwick.

Naomi Waltham-Smith (Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, Warwick)

Silent Feeling: What French Thought can Tell Us About the Limits of Free Speech