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In the first Humanities Research Seminar of 2016 Professor Angela Smith's topic is banter. It has long been recognized that jocular argument and teasing are central to social bonding.  In Western society, this is most often seen as being a feature of masculine behaviour.  Various studies (eg Gough 2001, Benwell 2006, Smith 2016); have shown that this is a central concern of male bonding, with Mike Souter (the first editor of FHM magazine) commenting that in a social group, the wittiest guy is the most popular.  However, when this is transferred to the domain of broadcast media, it has the capacity to be misinterpreted and have the opposite effect of binding social groups.  The majority of complaints sent to the BBC relate to the ‘offensive’ remarks on programmes such as Top Gear , whilst on Channel 4 the same is the case on programmes in the ‘comedy quiz panel show’ genre.  Most often this is defended as being a ‘misunderstanding’ of an in-show j...

The new edition of the Journal of Intercultural Inquiry edited by Drs Geoff Nash and Michael Pearce is out now. Its diverse articles (by authors based in India, Romania, Germany and Saudi Arabia) cover Don DeLillo and Martin Amis on 9/11, gender and translation, English in India, and the German poet Holger Benkel. Enjoy it here .

Culture PhD student Philippa Abbott has published a review in the newsletter of the British Association for Victorian Studies ( BAVS ). She looks at Victorian Popular Culture (a website from Adam Matthew's Digital) and describes it as 'an invaluable resource to any researcher or teacher with an interest in popular entertainment in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries'; one which brings together resources which would otherwise be difficult to access.

Dr Neil Johnson Dr Neil Johnson (Team Leader for TESOL) will be giving a talk in the Languages Research Seminar series at 5pm on Tuesday November 22nd 2016 (Forster 301).   In the increasingly globalized and digital context of higher education, with concomitant pressure to internationalize through raised proficiency standards and greater intercultural understanding, the dominant skills-based, discreet approach to language teaching may not be optimally effective. In his presentation, entitled "Understanding language and culture through multimodal text analysis", Neil will describe the Literacy-based approach to language education that seeks to address these concerns. This approach was used to re-imagine a course for second year undergraduates at a small private university in Japan, and operationalizes both reading and writing as essentially similar processes of meaning making and design (New London Group, 1996). The course was re-structured so that learners are involved in ite...

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 ...

Culture PhD student Patrick Low  has been asked by Newcastle's Live Theatre to co-convene a panel for a post-performance talk on pseudoscience for their latest play called, Harriet Martineau Dreams of Dancing . The talk is to be given by Dr Ella Dzelzainis, Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature at Newcastle University and co-author of Harriet Martineau: Authorship, Society and Empire (2010). More details about the event, which takes place on 20th November 2016, can be found here .

The Seagull City project is part of events for the Sunderland City of Culture 2021 bid. It takes people on a journey, literally and metaphorically, exploring the literary and cultural heritage of Sunderland. By focusing on the city centre, river and coastline, this project will encourage people to see Sunderland as a place with a rich history and dynamic future. The title of this project echoes that of the Sunderland 2021 City of Culture bid anthem, ‘Seagulls and the Saints’ . The project has been devised by two School of Culture academics: Professor Angela Smith and Dr David Fallon .  Elephant Tea Rooms, High Street West, Friday 4 November, 6.30 pm . This event is free but must be booked in advance via the University Online Store .