The Warwick Festival of the Gothic is a week of free screenings, workshops, talks, readings, performances, games, and exhibitions relating to research and teaching in the field of Gothic and Horror from staff and students across the Faculty of Arts. Full programme available here.

On 31 October-1 November 2023, the SMLC will host the event Italian Gothic, organised by Prof. Fabio Camilletti as part of the Italian Seminar Series and within the framework of the ‘Gothic Week’ co-ordinated by Dr Jen Baker (English) across the Faculty of Arts. The event will be composed of three parts:

- 31 October, 19:00-21:00, Transnational Resources Centre, FAB. Film night, organized in conjunction with the Warwick Cinema Seminars and led by Jacopo Francesco Mascoli (PhD candidate, SMLC), addressing the long-lasting, transnational legacy of Italian Gothic Cinema through the discussion of clips from selected films and TV series.

- 1 November, 14:00-16:30, room tbc. A workshop, organized in conjunction with the Warwick Comics Research Network, on Italian Gothic-Horror comics in translation. The workshop will be led by Prof. Camilletti and Silvia Vari (PhD candidate, SMLC), with the participation of Dr Stefano Serafini (University of Padua), and will focus on Dylan Dog, Italy’s most popular horror comic book, whose first issue appeared in 1986 and which has acquired a cult status since then. Created by Italian novelist Tiziano Sclavi, Dylan Dog is an ‘Occult Detective’ narrative taking place in a fictitious, highly Gothicized London, whose cityscape is intentionally constructed by Sclavi, with a remarkable postmodernist attitude, through the lenses of pop culture broadly intended (literature, cinema, comics, rock and pop music). The workshop, which will be interactive and will foresee activities directly aimed to UG students, will specifically focus on the short-lived adaptation of Dylan Dog made by Dark Horse Press, exploring issues of translation, cultural representation, and transnational exchanges from a quintessentially trans-medial perspective.

- 1 November, 17:15-19:00, room tbc. A roundtable, organized in conjunction with the University of Padua, on the theme of Italian Gothic between literature and politics. The roundtable will witness the participation of Dr Simona Di Martino (Warwick SMLC, MHRA fellow), Francesco Dimitri (London-based Italian novelist), Dr. Marco Malvestio (University of Padua/University of North Carolina), Dr. Stefano Serafini (University of Padua), and Dr Mark Storey (Warwick, English). The occasion for the roundtable is the recent publication of Italian Gothic. An Edinburgh Companion, co-edited by Dr Malvestio and Dr Serafini for Edinburgh University Press and including contributions, among others, by Prof. Camilletti and Dr. Di Martino

Prof. Hakim Adi is an award-winning historian. He was the first historian of African heritage to become a professor of history in Britain when he was appointed Professor of the History of Africa and the African Diaspora at the University of Chichester in 2015. In 2018 he launched the world’s first online MRes in the History of Africa and the African Diaspora which trained many students including six currently engaged in PhD research. In August 2023 the University of Chichester suspended all recruitment to the MRes and terminated Hakim’s employment. He is the author of many books on the history of Africa and the African diaspora. His latest publication is Africa and Caribbean People in Britain: A History (Allen Lane, 2023) which was shortlisted for the prestigious Wolfson History Prize in September 2023.

A.S. Francis is a PhD student at the University of Chichester, researching women’s involvements in Britain’s Black radical organisations during the 1960s-1980s, and the development of a Black women’s movement. In addition to this PhD research, Francis has recently published Gerlin Bean: Mother of the Movement (Lawrence Wishart 2023), celebrating the longstanding and far-reaching activism of Gerlin Bean. Francis is also a consultant to the Young Historians Project, member of the History Matters collective and co-founder of the History Matters Journal.

The event is free to attend but we encourage members to make a donation to the campaign, which will help to pay for legal costs to challenge the University of Chichester’s decision to cancel the MRes and make Prof Adi redundant.

Simon Jackson (Peterhouse, Cambridge), "George Herbert and Audiation: Listening to Silent Music."