Stoke Literary Festival

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Here are Catherine Burgass and Ray Johnson presenting their talk on ‘Arthur Berry – People’s Poet’ at the second Hot Air Literary Festival (13th June):
Ray and Catherine discussed Berry’s painting, poetry and plays, all of which articulate strongly a sense of regional idenitity, via images, film clips and dramatic readings.  They also launched a new edition of Berry’s poetry collection Dandelions: http://www.filmarchive.org.uk/products/dandelions
Catherine was particularly excited to meet Margaret Drabble – taught on this year’s feminism module From Rage to Page.  Interviewed by Sathnam Sanghera about her most recent novel The Pure Gold Baby, Drabble clearly believed that conditions for women had improved significantly since the 1960s.  Catherine was able to get her mother’s original 1960s paperbacks signed and let Dame Margaret know that the political issues dramatised in these second-wave feminist fictions still speak to women of today, if student response is anything to go by!

Postgrad trip to the galleries (and pubs) of Liverpool

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Postgraduate students from Staffordshire University were treated to a day away, to sample the cultural delights and watering holes of Liverpool. It proved to be an ideal opportunity to get everyone together, and the focus of the day was Leonora Carrington’s extraordinary exhibition at the Liverpool Tate (just before the show closed at the end of May). Carrington was an all-out surrealist and magical realist – and a highly accomplished writer of short stories and novels – as well as a stunning visual artist, whose work encompasses paintings large and small, prints, sculpture, tapestries, theatre design and – impossible hats.

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Lear at the New Vic

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Staff and students enjoyed Northern Broadside’s production of King Lear at the New Vic theatre last night. Barry Rutter, the company’s actor-manager and driving creative force, took the title role. The production was directed by Jonathan Miller.

The Guardian gave it 5 stars, which I thought a little generous (http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/mar/08/king-lear-northern-broadsides-review-jonathan-miller). In comparison with the energy and dynamism of other Broadside’s productions, this one felt static; but perhaps this reflected the sense of transition from the old order, by way of tragic hubris, to the new. Rutter brought touching moments to Lear’s downfall, but lacked the authority of a flawed tyrant at the beginning to give the necessary scale to his descent.

The fantastic story, of familial and political loyalty and conflict, carried the production to its famous conclusion (yes, if you don’t know it, you’ll have to read it or see it).

Stoke Literary Festival

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Catherine Burgass is presenting an event with Professor Ray Johnson on local poet Arthur Berry at the second Stoke Literary Festival (13th June).  For details go to:
 ARTHUR - PORTRAIT PHOTO 0
The Festival event sold out early on, but tickets to other events may still be available and Ray and Catherine will also be talking about Berry at a forthcoming major exhibition: ‘Lowry and Berry – Observers of Urban Life’ at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery (details to follow).
      Catherine and Ray have been working on a reprint of Berry’s book of poems, Dandelions, which should be published in time for the Festival.  Catherine was introduced to the work of Arthur Berry by one of our final-year students, Sarah Probyn – thank you Sarah!
      On Saturday 6th Catherine is also delivering a paper at the annual Arnold Bennett Conference – Bennett Abroad.  Taking liberties with the conference theme, the paper considers Bennett’s representation of the Potteries as a ‘foreign’ country, with reference to Freud’s theory of the uncanny.  For details go to:  http://www.arnoldbennettsociety.org.uk/?page_id=5
 
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English and Creative Writing nominations in the SU Student Experience Awards

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English and Creative Writing lecturers Dr.s Lisa Mansell, Martin Jesinghausen and Martyn Hampton have all received nominations from their students for their teaching. The citations read:

“[Martyn] is really motivating, and when he gives feedback it is in depth and always helps me. I look forward to his lectures as I know they will be interesting and passionate!”

“Dr Lisa Mansell is one of those lecturers who really wants you to succeed, a small achievement for you is a huge smile on her face. She engages you, makes sure you know she has time for you, and her office door is always open.”

“I have never met a member of staff [Martin J] more supportive of mental health issues. Always friendly, caring and incredibly helpful in supporting my studies.”

Watch this space to see who ‘the winner is ….’

Dracula at the Vic

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Review from 1st Year student, Danny Collard

Theresa Heskins’ production of Bram Stoker’s Dracula was, undoubtedly, one of the more inventive adaptations of this well told tale. Performed at the New Vic Theatre in Stoke ‘in the round’, each audience member left with plenty to discuss on the journey home, regardless of their enjoyment of the show.
The performance stayed remarkably true to the original plot, and it may be said that many of the issues taken (for those that took them) came from its adherence to Stoker’s work, which, especially with age, Continue reading →

PhD success

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Our congratulations go to Emma Cleary who successfully defended her PhD thesis, ‘Jazz-Shaped Bodies: Mapping City Space, Time, and Sound in Black Transnational Literature’,  last Thursday. The examiners, Dr.s Mark Brown form Staffs and Brian Jarvis from Loughborough), praised the work for its conceptual sophistication, its wide-ranging approach to Black transnational literature (the US, Canada and the Caribbean; the novel, short story and spoken word poetry and rap), and its precision of expression and presentation. The project was supervised by Dr Lisa Mansell.

Congratulations Dr Cleary!

Emma (center) with the examiners (right) and her supervision team.

Emma (center) with the examiners (right) and her supervision team.

 

Public lecture: Food in Arnold Bennett’s Fiction

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Catherine Burgass gave a talk for the Arnold Bennett Society to a capacity crowd at the Quaker Meeting House in Newcastle.  Unlike a Quaker meeting, which is based on shared silence, Catherine spoke for the best part of an hour.  She argued that, while one might expect descriptions of food as background detail in Bennett’s realist fiction, food is in fact integral to the construction of character and even plot.  Bacon, eggs, beef stew and chocolate (the latter explicitly associated with the Quaker tradition in comic novel, The Card) operate as symbolic sites of dramatic antagonism, crisis and resolution.  The audience was highly appreciative and ready with further examples from the life and works, including Bennett’s practice of getting Staffordshire oatcakes sent up to him in London by train from the Potteries.

2014 REF results

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This morning the results of the ‘Research Excellence Framework’ for 2014 were released. The REF is a survey and evaluation of research production across all universities in the UK. The work done by us in English and Creative writing was entered as part of a broad, interdisciplinary package in ‘Unit of Assessment’ 36 (which included also philosophy and the social sciences). The results are a very welcome Christmas present!

To be sure, slightly disappointing was the ‘impact’ score, a measure of to what extent our work has changed public opinion or behaviours. This was a new measure this time around, and clearly we have more to learn about how to present our theoretical/ historical work in the best light.

Apart from that, though, there was great news. Not only was the vast majority of our work judged to be of international standing, but we were praised too for the environment we have crafted here to encourage further work, and bring on young researchers, including doctoral students. Well done, everyone!

PhD Success: Emma Cleary

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Please join us in congratulating Emma Cleary for the submission of her PhD thesis entitled Jazz–‐Shaped Bodies: Mapping City Space, Time, and Sound in Black Transnational Literature.

Cleary’s thesis concerns “representations of the city in black transnational literature, with a focus on sonic schemas and mapping, cultural geography, posthumanist thought, and the discourse of diaspora. The research investigates the extent to which the urban landscape is figured as a panoptic structure in twentieth and twenty–‐ first century diasporic texts, and how the mimetic function of artistic performance challenges this structure”.

The work offers a comparative analysis of American, Canadian, and Caribbean landscapes and textscapes, the study of which “negotiates and transcends shifting national, cultural, and geographical borderlines and boundaries that seek to encode and enclose black subjectivity”.

This research offers important new readings of the works of James Baldwin, Earl Lovelace, Toni Morrison, and Wayde Compton.