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Replica Viking ships in Catoira, Galicia (Source: Wikipedia) Dr Miguel Gomes has recently spoken at the International Medieval Congress  at the University of Leeds (Europe's largest gathering in the humanities).  In his paper, entitled 'Vikings in Galicia: Popular memory, festivities and traces of the resistance' , Miguel examined Nordic incursions in the northwest of the Iberian peninsular, considering the way in which over two hundred years of Viking activity in Galicia had an impact on the local landscape as recently analysed by H. Pires (2017), and how those changes might have inspired the formation of many local legends, tales, and celebrations which have kept the Viking element alive in the landscape of people’s minds.  

Dr Miguel Gomes (Languages) has published a chapter entitled 'Landscapes of Evil and the Narrative Pattern in Beowulf: The Anglo-Saxon Hero’s Journey through the Labyrinth'. Miguel uses the idea of labyrinth as a symbolic landscape to explain the structure of  Beowulf . He argues that the poem presents an intricate design in which elements such as alliterative patterns, repetitions, variations, recurrent themes and other additions form a maze resembling the journey that the hero himself will have to undertake. To a certain extent, this structure resembles the curvilinear and rectilinear patterns of contemporary decorative art, as seen in the Lindisfarne Gospels or the Book of Kells. Miguel claims that the labyrinth, conceived as a metaphor, a physical and a mental representation, could well be a more comprehensive alternative to previous proposals for the analysis of the poem. He supports this assertion by analysing different passages that connect with the idea of labyrinth, c...

Dr Steve Cannon In this Languages and TESOL research seminar, Dr. Steve Cannon (Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries, University of Sunderland) will be addressing the topic of awards ceremonies. These events have received little attention from Film Studies academics, most often represented simply by listings of winners in general histories. Quite apart from their marketing role for the industry as a whole, and promoting (and sometimes reviving) particular films, awards ceremonies are also themselves a space for performance and popular entertainment, reflected in their lengthy primetime broadcast slots.   In his paper, entitled 'The Politics of the Awards Ceremony: The ‘Goya’ Awards of the Spanish Film Academy, 2003 and 2004',  Steve will analyse the ways in which ceremonies also offer a space for political statements and mobilisations, echoing and expressing wider social and political struggles but also intervening in them in specific and sometimes organised ways. ...

Please come along to the next Languages Research Seminar for a talk by Dr. María Alonso Alonso, award winning fiction author, and postdoctoral fellow at the University of St Andrews. Her topic is 'Narco-culture and violence in Latin American literature'. Tuesday 7th March at 5pm in DG313.

Dr. Miguel Gomes (Languages) will be giving a talk about the proliferation of film (sub)versions of the Old English poem Beowulf , particularly in the last twenty years. His talk, entitled 'And this shall be a place of merriment, joy, and fornication': Representing the monstrous other in Beowulf and its cinematic adaptations, explores  how the process of adapting early medieval heroic narratives and the alterity of monstrosities to the medium of film has led to new representations of Evil in popular medievalism. Miguel argues that a process of transformation, caused by modern sensibilities and fantasies about ‘anything medieval’, has produced a number of cinematic adaptations of the Anglo-Saxon poem in which Evil has been sexualized and the hero has been portrayed as undoubtedly guilty. In order to account for these changes, the nature of film as a medium and its multiple social and commercial implications will be considered in detail. Time: Wednesday 16th November ...

Several members of the School of Culture will be taking part in the Sunderland Literature and Creative Writing Festival this autumn. Click on the links below to find out who will be doing what and where. The festival starts on September 30th (the full schedule is here ). Spectral Visions book launch Against the Grayne: Learning about your Reiver ancestry Witchcraft and wizardry in Wearside Northern Gothic: Jane Harvey's The Castle at Tynemouth (1806) Eternity in an hour: William Blake and popular music Gothic Wearside World books to read before you die Apples and Snakes performance poetry Flash Fiction in a flash: how to write it and how to get it published Reading philosophy to lose weight The terrorist novel from Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent to Hamid Mohsen's The Reluctant Fundamentalist Of Peter and Jemima: An introduction to the extraordinary life of Beatrix Potter 'Not quite a Geordie': The ethnonyms of North East England Wizards, goblins and forbidden l...

Every summer, the Department of Culture publishes a selection of some of the best dissertations in English, History & Politics and Languages in its online scholarly journal Codex . This year topics range from the representation of witches in Early Modern English drama to classroom discourse. Read the articles here .

Dr Sheila Walsh (French) is pleased to announce the inaugural event in a new research seminar series. Dr Miguel Gomes (Spanish) will present 'The Challenge of Translating Literature: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Words.' The talk will take place on Monday 30th November at 5pm in Forster 302 . All welcome.

It's been three years since the first post on the Department of Culture Research Blog. Thirty thousand hits later we're still going strong, showcasing the range of high-quality research and scholarship in the department. Many thanks to all those who have contributed - keep it coming!

Ian Bassam (EAP team, University of Sunderland) will be presenting the final paper in the autumn semester series of English Research Seminars. It is entitled 'Include me out' and considers whether there is a barrier preventing European students from integrating into UK universities.  When? Wednesday 10th December at 5pm.  Where? Priestman 313.