mortiz070

Patrick Low History PhD student Patrick Low will be giving a talk at a one-day conference to be held at Durham University on Saturday 12th March 2016 . The conference focuses on Victorian culture's creation, maintenance and promulgation of disciplines, covering the period of the long nineteenth century. Patrick's talk is entitled 'Dying in Private and the Death of Public Discipline: Execution in the North East, 1868-1878'. The full programme is here .

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...

Dr Kevin Yuill Dr Kevin Yuill will present the annual Telders Lecture in the Hague on March 15th, 2016. The Telders Foundation is a Dutch think tank for liberalism, affiliated to the VVD party. It annually organizes a lecture in which a prominent academic, journalist or politician presents his or her view on recent events or current debates. The title of the lecture is 'The Implications for a Liberal Society of Legalized Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia'.

The third seminar in the language research series will be taking place on Monday 29 th February in Forster 302 at 5.00pm . The talk will be given by a new member of TESOL staff Dr Michael Hepworth. The topic of his talk is 'Argumentation and citizenship in the adult TESOL classroom'. All welcome!

Thom Yorke (source: Wikipedia) Blake scholar Dr David Fallon has appeared on the BBC World Service's Newshour to discuss the lyrics of Radiohead's 'Airbag'. Oxfam will be auctioning a donated copy of William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience which contains the first draft of Thom Yorke's lyric. The singer's annotations of various poems can also be seen in the volume. In his radio interview, David explores the links between 'A Cradle Song' and 'Airbag', as well as discussing Blake's influence on rock music more generally. You can hear David here (the interview starts at 18' 10"). 

Dr Geoff Nash 's article 'Postmodernism' is an entry in Gale's newly published Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World (ed. Richard C. Martin, Gale 2016) .  It outlines how Islam was viewed by a postmodern philosopher such as Foucault, what Muslim intellectuals like Ziauddin Sardar, Salman Sayyid and Anouar Majid have written about postmodernism, and how Muslim writers and film-makers have responded creatively to the postmodern period. 

William Gifford Palgrave, 1868 © National Portrait Gallery, London The next talk in this semester's series of English research seminars will be given by Dr Geoff Nash . Drawing on the National Portrait Gallery’s current display , Geoff will consider the extraordinary life of the leading British explorer and scholar of the Middle East, William Gifford Palgrave (1826-1888), assessing his adoption of disguise, and his reputation as a 'brilliant failure'. After serving for a time in the Indian army, Palgrave converted to Roman Catholicism and worked as a missionary in southern India until 1853. He began his long engagement with the Arab world in 1855 as a missionary in Syria, where he witnessed the persecution of Syrian Christians. Palgrave’s most notable achievement lay in exploring Arabia, which had for years been closed to Europeans. In 1862 and 1863 he became the first Westerner to cross Arabia by a diagonal route, from north-west to south-east, travelling in disguise and a...