Thursday 6 May 2010

ERF Study Afternoon: 'The Galaxy Reconfigured: Literature and New Media'

The Royal Holloway English Research Forum is pleased to announce details of their next study afternoon, on Thursday 27th May 2010 (2-4pm) in Room 21a at Senate House (WC1).

Marshall McLuhan famously pronounced that 'The medium is the message', but how is our reception of literature of the past conditioned by the channels through which it is experienced? How have writers and readers responded to technological changes in the means of transmission of the word?

The papers on the afternoon will be:

  • Dr Matthew Rubery (QMUL) - 'Close Listening: A Short History of the Audiobook'

  • Zara Dinnen (Birkbeck College) - 'Something borrowed something new? Remediation in Jonathan Lethem's 'The Ecstasy of Influence'

The presentations will be followed by a discussion, and wine and nibbles will be provided.

If you have any further questions or queries, please contact the organisers:

Jonathan Buckmaster (J.Buckmaster@rhul.ac.uk)
Vicky Lefevre (V.F. Le-Fevre@rhul.ac.uk)
Jen Nicholson (J.C. Nicholson@rhul.ac.uk)

Wednesday 17 March 2010

ERF Study Afternoon: Science and Literature


The next ERF Study Afternoon will take place on Tuesday, 27th April 2010, in the boardroom of Royal Holloway's Gower Street building (WC1), from 2-4 pm.

The papers for the afternoon are as follows:

Chris Daley: 'Technology, Ecology, Apocalypse: John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids and John Christopher's The Death of Grass'

Chris Daley is a doctoral student at the University of Westminster. His research project investigates the impact of the Cold War on British Science Fiction between 1945 and 1969.

Peter Johnston: ' "95% of the villages we wiped off the map were never on it": Complex numbers in JM Coetzee's The Vietnam Project and Robert Musil's The Confusions of Young Törless'

Peter Johnston is a final year doctoral student at Royal Holloway, University of London, working on the practical and philosophical resonances between JM Coetzee's parallel work as a literary artist and mathematician.

This event is being organised for the ERF by Peter Johnston [P.Johnston@rhul.ac.uk]. If you have any queries then please contact Peter or one of the ERF committee.

As usual, wine and nibbles will be provided, and we hope to see you there!

Best Wishes,

The ERF Committee

Sunday 21 February 2010

Cora Kaplan

ERF Study Afternoon
Thursday, 11th March 2010, 2-4pm
Room G21a, Senate House (WC1)

All postgraduate students and staff at University of London English Departments (and beyond) are invited to the following event:

Cora Kaplan presents "The Firm of Charles & Charles: Dickens, Darwin and Neo-Victorian Authorship".

Cora Kaplan is an Honorary Professor in the School of English and Drama at Queen Mary, and is Professor Emerita of English at Southampton University. Her most recent book is “Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism” (2007).


This event will provide a great opportunity to pool ideas with fellow researchers, and will also contribute to your research training. The presentation will be followed by a discussion, and wine and nibbles will be provided!

If you have any queries then please get in touch with the organizers:

Chrissie Lees [C.Lees@rhul.ac.uk]
Vicky LeFevre [V.F.Le-Fevre@rhul.ac.uk]
Jonathan Buckmaster [J.Buckmaster@rhul.ac.uk]


Wednesday 18 November 2009

Gender and Modernism

ERF Study Afternoon
Thursday, 26th November 2009
2-4 pm, Senate House (Room G21a)

We would like to invite all postgraduates to the first ERF study afternoon of the academic year. This event will provide a good opportunity to share ideas with other researchers, and contributes to your research training.

Wine and nibbles will also be provided!

The papers for the afternoon are as follows:

Professor Helen Carr (Goldsmiths): "Imagism and Gender: H.D., Amy Lowell and Modernist Masculomania"

Philip Stogdon (Royal Holloway): "Virginia Woolf and T.E. Hulme: The Correspondence"

If you have any queries about this event, please get in touch (contact details below).

We hope to see you there!

The ERF Committee

Chrissie Lees [C.Lees@rhul.ac.uk]
Vicky LeFevre [V.F.Le-Fevre@rhul.ac.uk]
Jonathan Buckmaster [J.Buckmaster@rhul.ac.uk]

Saturday 31 October 2009

Call for Papers

ERF Study Afternoon
Thursday, 26th November 2009
2-4 pm, Senate House (Room G21a)

Please note that, due to space issues, the venue has been changed from the one previously advertised.

On Thursday, 26th November Professor Helen Carr (Goldsmiths, University of London) will be presenting her paper 'Imagism and Gender: H.D., Amy Lowell and Modernist Masculomania'.

In keeping with the theme of the afternoon, we are also hoping to recruit one or two papers from University of London postgraduates that consider questions relating to gender and twentieth century writing. We would also be interested in proposals that deal with any aspect of modern or contemporary women's writing.

Abstracts of approximately 200 words should be forwarded to the ERF Committee (contact details below) on or before Friday, 13th November.

If you have any queries about this event, or the ERF in general, then please get in touch.

We hope to see you there!


Best Wishes,

The ERF Committee

Chrissie Lees [C.Lees@rhul.ac.uk]
Vicky LeFevre [V.F.Le-Fevre@rhul.ac.uk]
Jonathan Buckmaster [J.Buckmaster@rhul.ac.uk]

Friday 5 June 2009

Innovative Writing

ERF Study Afternoon
Tuesday, 30th June 2009
2 - 4 pm, Room G3, Bedford Square Building, Bloomsbury

**Please note that the date has been changed from the one previously advertised**

This event will offer a great chance to discuss ongoing research ideas and to socialise with other members of the department. It will also contribute to your research-training requirements.

The papers for the afternoon are as follows:


Jennifer Nicholson (RHUL): " 'An experiment is attempted in this novel, which has not (so far as I know) been hitherto tried in fiction': Wilkie Collins's evidentiary technique in The Woman in White and The Moonstone"

Elizabeth English (RHUL): "Models of Inversion and the Absence of Desire in Katharine Burdekin’s Utopian Fiction"

Steve Willey (QMUL): "British Poetry and Performance 1950-1960: Bob Cobbing's Poetics and The Roots of An Experimental Poetry Society"


Wine and nibbles will be provided.

We hope to see you there!

Best Wishes,

The ERF Committee

Indera Grewal [i.k.grewal@rhul.ac.uk]
Elizabeth English [e.c.english@rhul.ac.uk]
Chrissie Lees [c.lees@rhul.ac.uk]
Vicky LeFevre [V.F.Le-Fevre@rhul.ac.uk]
Jonathan Buckmaster [J.Buckmaster@rhul.ac.uk]

Monday 9 March 2009

Word and Image

ERF Study Afternoon
Thursday, 26th March 2009
2 - 4 pm, Large Boardroom, Founders Building (Egham Campus)

This event will provide an opportunity for postgraduate students at Royal Holloway to discuss ongoing research ideas and to socialise with other members of the department, as well as contributing to research training. We will be concentrating on the relationship between Word and Image in literary studies, and invite staff and postgraduate students from all areas of the discipline to attend.

The programme for the afternoon will run as follows:

Dr Vicky Greenaway will be delivering her paper 'The Materiality of the Aesthetic in the poetry of D. G. Rossetti and A. C. Swinburne' which will explore the correlation of Pre-Raphaelite poetic techniques with formal techniques and innovations in contemporary painting.

Katarina Jonsson will speak on 'The Visual Appearance of Guinevere in Morris and Tennyson's Poetry and Illustrations'.

Come along for the discussion, and stay for the wine and nibbles!

We hope to see you there.

Best Wishes

The ERF Committee

Indera Grewal [i.k.grewal@rhul.ac.uk]
Elizabeth English [e.c.english@rhul.ac.uk]
Carol McGrath [carol_mcgrath@hotmail.com]
Chrissie Lees [c.lees@rhul.ac.uk]