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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. ...

School of Culture PhD student Malik Alkhawaldeh will be speaking at the next Cross-discipline research seminar in the series. His topic is ecocriticism in Assia Djebar's Children of the New World , Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North and Fadia Faqir's Pillars of Salt . It takes place on Thursday 22nd February at 2pm (there will also be two other talks from research students from Business and Pharmacy).

School of Culture PhD student Wjoud Almadani will be speaking at the first seminar in a series designed to showcase the work of PhD students across the university (details above). Everyone is welcome!

Dr Dale Townshend The next English research seminar features Dr Dale Townshend (University of Stirling) on Wednesday 16th March at 5pm in Priestman 216 . He will be giving a talk on Walpole's  The Castle of Otranto  (1765). Ever since Walpole disclosed the authorship of his ‘Gothic Story’ in the second edition, it has been assumed that the ‘real’ and ‘particular’ castle to which he, in his guise as the ‘translator’ William Marshal, referred in the Preface to the first edition of the novel was Strawberry Hill, the ‘little Gothic castle’ in Twickenham that he had set about ‘Gothicizing’ since the late 1740s. However, according to Dr Townshend this is really only half of the story, for while the castle at Otranto certainly, as Walpole would later phrase it, ‘puts one in mind’ of Strawberry Hill, it also looks to the architectural formations of ‘ancient’ or ‘Gothic’ romance for its structure, its effects, and even its eventual disappearance. More specifically, Manfred’s cast...

Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder c.1563 The second talk in the new series of Languages Research Seminars will be given by Dr Susan Mandala on the topic of 'ESL and EFL voices in English literature’. It takes place on Monday 8 th February at 6.00pm in FR 302 (Forster building , City Campus). All welcome!

The North East Forum in Eighteenth-Century and Romantic Studies is holding an event on Friday 27th November (Priestman 215, 3-5pm) . There will be two papers: Catherine Ellis (Durham), ‘Sensual Suppers: Eating and Drinking in the Parisian Brothel’; and David Fallon (Sunderland), ‘Gillrayand Faulderversus the Lascivious Earl: A Bookseller in the Tides of Culture’. All are welcome and the talks will be followed by free drinks! The forum was founded in 2004. It is a collaboration between Durham University, Newcastle University, Northumbria University and Sunderland. The forum hosts a number of seminars each year in the North East, and aims to foster discussion and research into all aspects of British culture of the long-eighteenth century and Romantic period.

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.