Peter Robinson writes:

I’m sure you’ll join me in congratulating Nicola Wilson, who has been successful with her BA Postdoctoral Fellowship application, the title of which is ‘The Book Society: the influence of Britain’s first mail-order book club on authors, publishers and readers, 1929-60’.

Monday 13th May, 5pm
Humss 106, Whiteknights Campus 
Refreshments provided. All welcome!

Between the 1950s and the 1980s the BBC Audience Research Unit recorded reactions to BBC programmes by interviewing selected viewers and documenting their responses in Audience Research Reports. Hundreds of these documents were collated each year, providing a unique record of how viewers responded to BBC Television at the time, rather than in retrospect. This presentation explains how through reading multiple reports we can trace patterns of audience reaction develop over time, and build a detailed understanding of the framework of expectations through which viewers watched television.

Billy Smart works as a postdoctoral researcher at Reading on the AHRC-funded ‘Spaces of Television: Production, Site and Style’ project. His work for this project has included studies of the role of the director, the changing visual conventions of soap opera and how the theatrical conventions of plays by Brecht, Chekhov and J.B Priestley were altered by studio practice when adapted for television. He is co-writing a book with his postdoctoral colleague on the project, Dr. Leah Panos, ‘Space and Place in 1970s Studio Television Drama’, to be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2015.

Wednesday 8th May, 5pm, in Humss 188, Whiteknights Campus

As literary scholars, what kind of archival documents do we consider “valuable” and worthy of scholarly inquiry? Traditionally, many scholars of modernism have favored the literary manuscripts and the letters of writers preserved in well-catalogued collections, while publisher’s archives have been neglected. In particular, the archives of commercial publishers have received little attention. Yet, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot and James Joyce were no longer coterie writers published only by small presses and little magazines. They were courted by large-scale, commercial publishers and started appearing in cheap series of reprints. Drawing on research in the archives of the Oxford University Press and Chatto & Windus, I will argue for the need to engage in extensive work in often-messy publisher’s archives to further our understanding of modernism and the market.

Lise Jaillant has recently defended her PhD on the Modern Library series at the University of British Columbia. This talk is based on her new project on European publisher’s series, supported by a Mellon fellowship at the Institute of Historical Research (University of London). Jaillant has articles published or forthcoming in James Joyce Quarterly, Book History, Studies in the Novel and Clio: A Journal of Literature, History and the Philosophy of History.

Sleeping with Books: My stay at Gladstone’s Library

In residence from 3 – 10 April 2013

 I was delighted to win a scholarship for a residential stay at Gladstone’s Library in Hawarden, Flintshire, in early April. The luxuries of the beautiful Grade 1 listed building and the serenity of its remarkable library made the week an oasis away from the bustle of university life and my other day-to-day activities. The opportunity to look at my research afresh was a real gift: I was able to focus solely on my PhD thesis for the first time in a busy few months. I’m satisfied to say that I submitted it the same week I returned from my Welsh hideaway. Hooray!

The library itself is generously kept open until 10pm – often I could be found squirreled away under a reading lamp until well after nightfall – but my visit wasn’t all work. Meals shared with staff and other residents at Gladstone’s were times I treasured. These conversations, marking the convergence of individuals’ journeys through this unique environment, were warm, welcoming, surprising and stimulating.

 Sincere thanks to all (housekeeping staff, kitchen staff, reception staff, interns, chaplain, warden…) for making my stay productive, peaceful, and so thoroughly enjoyable!

http://www.whatuni.com/degrees/showReviewDetail.html?rid=22119&z=5688

Thanks to this student from all the staff – you have made us smile!

External Examiner: Dr Jenny Bavidge from the University of Cambridge and Internal Examiner Dr Sue Walsh, supervisor Professor Karin Lesnik-Oberstein.

Kia’s thesis considers parallel theoretical problems in reading the child and in reading detective fiction (and popular fiction more broadly), through working out the implications of the arguments of French philosopher and critic Jacques Derrida and the further discussions around Derrida and French analyst and critic Jacques Lacan’s work in the edited collection The Purloined Poe. Kia’s research focuses her explorations of the problems of the child and detective fiction both being seen as ‘obvious’ and unnecessary to interpret through her close analyses of the criticism of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes story ‘The Yellow Face’.

As Head of Department, it is always a pleasure to hear of any of our staff being nominated for a Gold Star Award for teaching. This is an annual award which is given in response to student votes, the final decision being made by a panel of student and faculty representatives.

This year I am especially pleased to be able to announce that one of my colleagues, Dr Cindy Becker, was nominated and then shortlisted for the award. Dr Becker was one of three lecturers in our faculty who was shortlisted; the winner in the faculty was Professor Peter Kruschwitz of the Department of Classics.