Conference Programme

Fragile Realities: Intersecting Interpretations of the Real – Friday 6 July

Inaugural SELCS Postgraduate Conference, University College London

09.30-17.45
Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N

 The organisers wish to thank FIGS, SELCS, and the European Institute for their generous support for this event.

 [Schedule subject to revision]

Time	Chandler House Atrium	Chandler House G10	Chandler House 118
9:00	Registration & coffee
9:30		Welcome address by Dr Stephanie Bird, UCL German Dept.
9:45		Keynote Address 1: Chair: Dr Stephanie Bird Dr. Matthew Beaumont (UCL/English) ‘Aleatory Realism: The Parable of the Pier-Glass’
10.30		Panel 1a: Temporeality Chair: Nichola Smalley Alia Soliman (UCL/SELCS), ‘The Self in Time in Latin American Literature’ Gabriella Addivinola (Warwick) ‘The Realities of Dante’s Vision’ Alexandra Hills (UCL/SELCS), ‘Marlen Haushofer’s Die Wand [The Wall]: The Last Woman on Earth Living the Unthinkable.’	PANEL 1b: Real and Imagined Spaces chair: Pei-Sze Chow Lisa L. Socrates (UCL/SELCS), ‘“Parallel Spaces and Undesirable Bodies” in Adonis Florides’s Kalabush (2002) Kelvin Knight, ‘Simultaneously Mythic and Real Spaces: Heterotopia in W.G. Sebald’s Austerlitz’ Megan Bradshaw (UCL/SELCS), ‘Literary Geography and Cities in Literature‘
11:30	Coffee/tea + snack
11:45		Panel 2a: Constructing Realities Chair: Alicia Spencer-Hall David Hermann (UCL/SELCS), ‘The Spectre of Universal Constructionism and the Academic Study of Literature’ Pauline Souleau (Oxford), ‘Writing History or Writing a Story? The Medieval Reality of truth and Fiction in the Work of Jean Froissart’ Agnes Broome (UCL/SELCS), ‘Constructing the Fields of Translated Fiction: Is Foreign Literature Special? Nicky Smalley (UCL/ SELCS), ‘Rap, Literature and Authenticity’	Panel 4b: Visual Interpretation & the Real Chair: Asmaa Soliman Jonathan Stafford (Kingston), ‘The Intersection of European and Colonial Realities: Identity and Representation in Victorian Maritime Design’ Ken Cheng (UCL/SELCS), ‘Against “zoological nationalism:” how Jakobson wrote the politics of Dada’ André Hammelmann (King’s College London), ‘Surfaces of Reality: Multi-layered Perspectives in Thomas Arslan’s A Fine Day‘ Pei-Sze Chow (UCL/SELCS), ‘The Landmark on Film: Representations of Place and Identity.’
13:05	Lunch	Fragile Unrealities – lunchtime films and image slideshow
14:00		Keynote address 2: Chair: Dr Claire Thomson, UCL Scandinavian Studies Dept Assoc. Prof. Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen (Aarhus University/Dept of Aesthetics and Communication) ‘New kinds of reality, created within the development of the real-time ‘now’, feedback and interfaces.’
14:45		Panel 3a: Technology/Reality Chair: Nicky Smalley Essi Viitanen (UCL/SELCS), ‘Reality Through The Len: Reimagining a Cinematic Tapiola’ Sophie Hoyle (Central St Martins), ‘More Real than Reality: Film and Video Technology in Representing the “Real”’ Joe Sheehan (Arts University College Bournemouth), ‘Animating Stillness the Stop-Frame, Temportality and the Process of Observation’	Panel 3b: Socio-political Realities Chair: Megan Bradshaw Asmaa Soliman (UCL/SELCS), ‘Young Muslims in Europe and their public expressions of a European Muslim Identity’ Emily Hogg (QMUL), ‘Reading the “Girl-Child”.’ Rully Damayanti (Sheffield), ‘Dialectic Reality of Youth in “Urban Kampung” Surabaya, Indonesia’
15:45	Coffee/tea
16:00		Panel 4a: Augmented Realism Chair: Pei-sze Chow Camilla Sutherland (UCL/SELCS), ‘Shifting Realities: Migration and Surreality in the Work of Remedios Varo’ Octavia Bright (UCL/SELCS), ‘Spanish Realism? Looking Awry with Luis Bunuel, Pedro Almodovar and Julio Medem’ Alicia Spencer-Hall (UCL/SELCS), ‘Post-mortem Projections: Blurring the Boundaries between Life and Death’	Panel 4b: Realities of Conflict Chair: Asmaa Soliman Colin Leventhal (UCL/SELCS), ‘The Realities of War: Death of An Iraqi Soldier’ Georgina Williams (Winchester School of Art), ‘Constructing the Real: Art and Philosophy in Propagandist Aesthetics’ Stephen Krewson (Yale), ‘”Shall we ever get histories of the real things?”: Towards a Whitmanian Historiography of the US Civil War.’ Kinga Bloch (UCL/SELCS), ‘Realistic Television Series: A threat to the Self-Image of Wester German Audiences in the 1980s’
17:20		Closing Address by Prof. Tim Mathews, UCL French Dept General discussion
17:45		Conference close

 

 

From 18:00 – Drinks

From 19:30 – Dinner venue TBC