What’s on
January | February | March 2019
A selection of events highlighting the latest research across the humanities
sas.ac.uk
Welcome to the School of Advanced Study and to Senate House Library, University of London. The School of Advanced Study is the UK’s national centre for the support and promotion of academic research in the humanities. Its nine institutes offer an extensive programme of seminars, workshops, lectures, and conferences. Each year around 1,800 events are organised on humanities topics, attracting more than 68,000 participants from around the world. Institute of Advanced Legal Studies / ials.sas.ac.uk Institute of Classical Studies / ics.sas.ac.uk Institute of Commonwealth Studies / commonwealth.sas.ac.uk Institute of English Studies / ies.sas.ac.uk Institute of Historical Research / history.ac.uk Institute of Latin American Studies / ilas.sas.ac.uk Institute of Modern Languages Research / modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk Institute of Philosophy / philosophy.sas.ac.uk The Warburg Institute / warburg.sas.ac.uk
Senate House Library is the central library of the University of London. With more than two million books and 1,200 archival collections, it is one of the UK’s largest academic libraries focused on the arts, humanities, and social sciences. The Library organises a number of exhibitions and related events throughout the year.
The events included in this guide are just a few of the many taking place from 1 January through 31 March 2019. For a complete list, please visit sas.ac.uk/events and senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/exhibitions-and-events.
Book your place
Most events at the School of Advanced Study and Senate House Library are free and open to the public but some do require advance booking and/ or purchase of a ticket. Booking links are provided with each description in this guide. You can confirm event details on our websites (sas.ac.uk/events and senatehouselibrary. ac.uk/exhibitions-and-events) or by contacting the events team at sas.events@sas.ac.uk.
Join our mailing lists
You can request to be added to our weekly events email list or add/amend/remove your details from our postal mailing list by writing to sas.events@sas.ac.uk. 2
Listen or watch again
Many of our events are recorded and available to view or download at sas.ac.uk/events, on iTunes U (Research at the School of Advanced Study), and on YouTube (SchAdvStudy).
Be part of the conversation
Facebook: facebook.com/schoolofadvancedstudy and facebook.com/senatehouselibrary Twitter: @SASNews and @SenateHouseLib The School’s flagship blog, Talking Humanities, written by humanities scholars throughout the UK, provides a range of thought-provoking articles on subjects that matter to humanities researchers. Visit talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk. sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
Our venues
Access
Unless otherwise stated, events are held within the University of London precinct in Bloomsbury, central London. Most events take place in or around Senate House (north and south blocks) on Malet Street, WC1.
The University prides itself on making its events accessible to all who wish to participate. To that end, it will endeavour to make all reasonable adjustments to facilities to accommodate accessibility needs. If you have a particular requirement, please discuss it with the event organiser ahead of the event date, or contact our events team at sas.events@sas.ac.uk.
How to get here Euston, King’s Cross, St Pancras
Assistance dogs are most welcome.
R ussell Square, Tottenham Court Road, Goodge Street, Warren Street, Euston Square
A large-print version of this guide can be viewed or downloaded at sas.ac.uk/events.
Bus routes 7, 10, 14, 24, 29, 59, 68, 73, 91, 98, 134, 168, 188, and 390 all have stops within walking distance of Senate House. To plan your journey within London, visit tfl.gov.uk.
Kings Cross
Station Bicycles: Bicycle racks are located throughout the University’s central precinct. Please note that we St Pancras cannot be held responsible for theft or damage toStation bicycles. The British Library Parking: Public car parking is not available at Senate House. The closest car parks are NCP at London Euston Station Brunswick Square and London Shaftesbury.
nR
Senate House University of London Malet Street London WC1E 7HU
oad
e lac
nP
r bu Wo
to Eus
Euston Square Station
Gordon Square
et tre rS we Go
Warren Street Station
Warburg Institute
ce Pla
Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Ma let
Russell Square Station So
Russell Square
t ee Str
e lac nP gto n i rr To
k Tavistock oc ist Square Tav
ut ha
The British Museum
R urt Co oa
Holborn Station
d
reet Oxford St
The Warburg Institute Woburn Square London WC1H 0AB
w Ro
m ha
en
Mo
Senate House
tt To
er rtim
t ee Str
n to mp
Goodge Street Station
Charles Clore House Institute of Advanced Legal Studies 17 Russell Square London WC1B 5DR
Tottenham Court Road Station
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
3
Event highlights 4
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
Event highlights
English in the World 1: From the Outside
© Trustees of the British Museum
18 January 2019, 10:00–16:00 | Court Room (Senate House)
MagiCog: Cognitive Approaches to Ancient Magic 17 January, 9:00 – 18 January, 15:30 | Room G22/26 (Senate House) Free | Book in advance ics.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17600 This workshop will explore cognitive approaches to ancient magical practices, bringing together scholars of ancient cultures with specialists in cognitive approaches to magic. It aims to expose scholarship on ancient magic to new cognitive approaches and allow methodical exploration of the results; test the questions raised by different cognitive approaches to magic; encourage comparison between approaches used to study disparate ancient cultures; and contribute to contemporary debates on the nature and role of magic. Organised by the Institute of Classical Studies and supported by the Leverhulme Trust and the DFG Collaborative Research Centre 1136 (Education and Religion) at the University of Goettingen.
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
£30 standard | £25 concessions | Book in advance ies.sas.ac.uk/events/conferences/englishworld-1-outside There has never been a more exciting time to reach out beyond disciplinary boundaries, to discover new ways of working, and to enrich teaching and learning through partnerships both inside and outside higher education. How, then, is English Studies now perceived by those who work inside and outside the field and inside and outside HE? What more might English Studies learn from alternative perspectives, and what does it still need to think about? The first in a series of colloquia on English in the World, this event examines how English Studies looks at what it does and how it does it from different perspectives outside the field. Organised by the Institute of English Studies.
5
Event highlights
Thinking, Feeling, Knowing in Early Modern France 1 February, 9:30–17:30 | The Warburg Institute Book in advance sas.ac.uk/events/event/17770
Virginia Woolf Birthday Lecture – Virginia Woolf’s Non-literary Reputation
This conference will revisit the relationship between thinking, feeling, and knowing in sixteenth-century France, examining the history of ideas, cultural history, and vernacular literature. Using specific case studies, the conference will seek to answer such questions as: ‘Was the knowledge deriving from feeling considered of a different kind and order from the knowledge derived from thinking?’, ‘What types of cognition are implied by instinct and intuition, and how are these expressed and valued in early modern French works?’, and ‘What modern methodologies best account for Renaissance forms of thinking, feeling and knowing?’ Speakers include Éric Méchoulan (Montréal), Michael Moriarty (Cambridge), Katherine Ibbett (Oxford), Tim Chesters (Cambridge), Kathryn Banks (Durham), and Sara Miglietti (Warburg). Organised by The Warburg Institute.
26 January, 14:00–17:00 | Woburn Suite (Senate House)
Dürer, Erasmus of Rotterdam, 1526. BnF Estampes réserve CA-4. Photo Gallica.fr/BnF
£20 standard | £15 concessions | Book in advance ies.sas.ac.uk/events/lectures-and-readings/ virginia-woolf-birthday-lecture The twentieth annual Virginia Woolf Birthday Lecture will be given by Stuart N. Clarke, founding member of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain and editor of its Virginia Woolf Bulletin. Formed in August 1998, the Society is a non-profit organisation that aims to raise the profile of Virginia Woolf and promote the reading and discussion of her works through its events, talks, and publications. Ticket price includes a wine reception and a printed copy of the lecture. Organised by the Institute of English Studies.
6
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
Event highlights
‘Warrant for Genocide’? Hitler, the Holocaust, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion 5 February, 18:00–19:30, followed by reception | IHR Wolfson Room, NB01 (Senate House) Free | Book in advance history.ac.uk/events/event/17527 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a notorious antisemitic forgery dating from the beginning of the twentieth century, has been called ‘the supreme expression and vehicle of the myth of the Jewish world-conspiracy’ (Norman Cohn). It ‘took possession of Hitler’s mind’ and provided a ‘warrant for genocide’ that ‘inspired and justified pogroms in Russia and the Ukraine and Nazi policies of extermination’ in the Holocaust. In this lecture, Richard J Evans takes a fresh look at the Protocols. He asks whether either the contents of the document or the evidence of Hitler’s speeches and writings justify these claims, and examines the light they throw on the origins and nature of Nazi antisemitism. Richard Evans is one of the country’s foremost historians, well-known for his research on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe. He is the prizewinning author of more than twenty books, including a three-volume history of the Third Reich (Penguin, 2003–08). He has been Provost of Gresham College in London since 2014 and is currently a Visiting Professor of History at Birkbeck, University of London. Organised by the Institute of Historical Research.
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
The Arts of Decadence 12 February, 19:00–21:00 | Chancellor’s Hall (Senate House) Free | Book in advance modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/ event/16226 Join us for an evening of decadent literature, visual art, and music in the grand setting of Chancellor’s Hall, Senate House. Featuring short talks by distinguished speakers, including Helen Abbott (Birmingham) on the Decadent movement and its influence on British writers and artists, the evening will also present superb poetry by Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Stéphane Mallarmé, which will be read by the accomplished translators Martin Sorrell and Peter Manson. French song settings of poems will be performed by professional classical singers from the National Opera Studio. Organised by the Institute of Modern Languages Research and supported by the AHRC-funded ‘Decadence and Translation’ Network, the event is being held in partnership with the Rimbaud and Verlaine Foundation. 7
Event highlights
India and the Media 18 February, 18:00–20:00 | The Court Room (Senate House) Free | Book in advance commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17970
Women’s Legal Landmarks – In Conversation: Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002 13 February, 17:00–18:00 | Institute of Advanced Legal Studies, Charles Clore House Free | Book in Advance ials.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17776
In the past five years, there have been over 200 attacks on journalists and bloggers across India, with the greatest number of cases in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan. Three leading commentators on modern-day India will discuss the sources and impact of multiple pressures from state and non-state actors on India’s once vibrant media. In the view of the Editors Guild of India, members of the Bharatiya Janata Party government and its extremist Hindu allies have ‘declared war’; the panellists will consider the implications of targeting print, broadcast, and online outlets for the country’s forthcoming elections in spring 2019. Speakers include James Manor, former director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and senior research fellow, and Salil Tripathi, journalist and chair of the Writers in Prison Committee, PEN International. Organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies.
In the centenary year of women’s admission to the legal profession in the UK and Ireland, the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies is launching a year-long series of talks, exploring key legal landmarks in women’s legal history, including those relating to matrimonial property, rape, domestic violence, equal pay, and abortion. Speakers are drawn from the contributors to the Women’s Legal Landmarks Project (now published by Hart Publishing, Bloomsbury). Anne Morris and Sue Atkins will speak at the launch event for the series and book, which offer a scholarly intervention in the recovery of women’s lost history and in the development of methodology of feminist legal history, as well as a demonstration of women’s agency and activism in the achievement of law reform and justice. Organised by the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies and the Women’s Legal Landmarks Project. 8
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
Event highlights sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
9
20–21 February, 17:30–19:30 | The Warburg Institute Free | Book in advance sas.ac.uk/events/event/17771 Today’s mad landscape of fake news is not unique; a ‘sensationalizing press’ (Sensationspresse) has sought to stir up public opinion, and even to provoke social and political upheaval, countless times in the past. These events over two days will take as their starting point Aby Warburg’s 1920 essay on the ‘media wars’ of the sixteenth century, in which he claims to see a battle being waged against this trend by Martin Luther and Albrecht Dürer. Their ‘sense for the truth’ made them into early modern heroes of reason for Warburg, as they fought on behalf of the ‘freedom to think’ carefully and critically in the face of irrationalisms of all kinds. Their examples as seekers of truth were especially meaningful in his own post-war period. Is Warburg’s way of resisting fake news a model for us? A close reading of his examples asks us to consider who is to lead whom toward greater ‘truths’, if and when partisanship becomes the norm across the ranks? Presented by Jane O. Newman (UC-Irvine). Organised by The Warburg Institute.
Johann Carion, The Prediction and Explanation of the Great Flooding (Prognosticatio und erklerung der grossen wesserung), Leipzig, 1521.
Event highlights
Warburg on Luther and Dürer: Media Wars and the Freedom to Think
10
A Horizon of (Im)possibilities: Reflecting on the Social Implications of Recent Political Upheaval in Brazil 22 February,10:00–18:00 | Senate House Fee applicable | Book in advance ilas.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17883 With crucial political events occurring at a dramatic pace (from President Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment and her succession by Michel Temer, to the imprisonment of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and the election of former military officer Jair Bolsonaro), the political landscape in Brazil has shifted rapidly, confronted with realities considered unimaginable only a few years earlier. Indeed, depending on the perspective from which one looks at these events, it can be argued that the limits of what is politically possible have expanded (or contracted). Tapping into the notion of possibility, and acknowledging that the recent presidential elections are but the culmination of a series of social and political changes that have been taking place over several years, this interdisciplinary conference invites participants to consider and critically reflect on contemporary political events and their social implications. Organised by the Institute of Latin American Studies.
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
Event highlights
Dorothy Tarrant Lecture – What is Plato’s Republic About? Towards a Theory of Resilience Sara Monoson 13 March, 17:00–19:00 | Room G22/26 (Senate House) Free ics.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17690
25 February, 9:30–19:30 | Gordon Room G34 (Senate House) Standard £30 | Friends of Germanic/Italian Studies £25 | Students/unwaged £15 modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/ event/17658 This one-day event will celebrate the 70th birthday of German author and artist Barbara Honigmann. The daughter of German-Jewish emigrants who returned to East Berlin in 1947 after a period of exile in Great Britain, she studied drama at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Having worked as a dramatist in Brandenburg and Berlin, she became a freelance writer in 1975 and in 1984 left the GDR for Strasbourg, where she currently lives with her family. Her works include Der Schneider aus Ulm (1981), Eine Liebe aus Nichts (1991), Damals, dann und danach (1999), and Chronik meiner Straße (2015). Among the prestigious literary prizes she has been awarded are the Ehrengabe der Deutschen Schillerstiftung (1996), the Kleist Prize (2000), and the Solothurner Literaturpreis (2004). To end the day, Barbara Honigmann will give a reading and discuss translations of her work. Organised by the Institute of Modern Languages Research.
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
The series of vivid, discrete episodes of an intellectual journey that shape the Republic invites readers to look at its distinct elements severed from their place in the big argument in which each element plays a part. Cherry-picked pieces of the long argument of the Republic have long captured scholarly attention as well as popular imaginations – for example, the three parts of the soul, myth of the metals, theory of forms, allegory of the cave, ship of state, and account of the tyrannical soul. But the text also explicitly urges readers to steel their nerves, harness their strengths, and exhibit some stamina so as to persevere through the twists, turns, oddities, frights, heft, and sheer length of the Republic and thus to engage with the construction of the arc of the argument of the text as a whole. In this lecture, Sara Monoson illuminates a layer of meaning that stitches the arc together—its sustained attention to the psychological challenges faced by combat soldiers and a society at war or poised to be. This lecture will propose that among the things this text is about, we must include the human capacity for resilience and an account of its political and philosophical significance. Organised by the Institute of Classical Studies. A. Canova, 1797. Socrates Saving Alcibiades at Potidaea.
‘Damals, dann und danach’: Barbara Honigmann at 70
11
Camp for IDPs, Juba, South Sudan. Adriana Mahdalova / Shutterstock.com
Event highlights
The Institute of Commonwealth Studies and Human Rights 25 March, 10:00–19:00 | Venue: TBC Fee applicable | Book in advance commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/events/event/17971 The Institute of Commonwealth Studies has long been involved in research and debates on multiple aspects of human rights across the modern Commonwealth, including the search for racial justice in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa before 1994; economic and social rights for former Commonwealth migrants in the UK; and contemporary rights for indigenous and minority groups across today’s Commonwealth, as well as gender and LGBTI rights, community justice, the rights and requirement to protect Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees. This day-long workshop looks at these historic and contemporary areas of research and activity. Speakers include Judge Albie Sachs, former anti-apartheid activist and member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. In 2019, the Institute of Commonwealth Studies celebrates the 70th anniversary of its founding in 1949. It is the only postgraduate academic institution in the UK devoted to the study of the Commonwealth and acts as a national and international centre of excellence for policyrelevant research, research facilitation, and teaching. Organised by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and supported by the John Coffin Fund.
12
Memories of the Future 29–30 March, 9:00–20:00 | Woburn Suite G22/26 (Senate House) Both days: £80 standard | £65 Friends of Germanic/Italian Studies | £40 (students/ unwaged). One day only: £65 standard | £60 Friends of Germanic/Italian Studies | £30 (students/unwaged) | Book in advance modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/ event/17680 What does it mean to remember the future? What roles do memory, history, and the past play in our consciousness as citizens of the early twenty-first century? ‘Thinking forward through the past’ has been central to a number of AHRC-funded projects in the UK examining environmental change, postcolonial disaster, gender and colonialism, heritage futures, ruins, and more. Climate change, big data, and the crisis of democracy are challenging our future in ways that may suggest a misalignment of temporal scales. This event aims to articulate the future in relation to cultural memory, and to interrogate the precise and diverse manners in which the past, the present and the future are intertwined and dialogical, complicating our understanding of temporalities in an age saturated with memory and ‘past futures’. Organised by the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory at the Institute of Modern Languages Research and supported by the Cassal Endowment Fund.
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
Event highlights sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
13
Exhibitions
Exhibition – Senate House Library
Staging Magic: The Story Behind The Illusion
SENATE HOUSE Senate LIBRARY House Library’s latest #STAGINGMAGIC exhibition is an OPEN MONDAY – SATURDAY 4TH FLOOR, SENATE HOUSE adventure the history of conjuring www.senatehouselibrary.ac.uk BLOOMSBURY, LONDON WC1 7HU through
21 January – 15 June 2018 | Senate House Library Free | Open Monday–Saturday senatehouselibrary.ac.uk #StagingMagic
14
and magic as entertainment, a tradition that fascinated and entranced audiences for hundreds of years. Focusing on magic in the form of sleight of hand (legerdemain) and stage illusions, more than 60 stories are revealed, from sixteenth-century court jugglers to the great masters of the golden age of magic in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The books, manuscripts, and ephemera are from the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature, given to the University of London in 1936.
sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
Exhibitions
Through five interconnected themes, the exhibition explores how magic has remained a mainstay of popular culture in the western world over 400 years, how its secrets have been kept and revealed, and how magicians have innovated to continue to surprise their audiences. Each theme features some of the most important books in the history of magic alongside lesserknown works celebrating a range of genres in magic publishing. Exhibits will include a rare first edition of Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witchcraft (1584), the first printed book in English to describe a magic trick, and the 1634 edition of Hocus Pocus sas.ac.uk/events | senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/events
Junior: The Anatomie of Legerdemain, which set the formula for conjuring manuals through the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Also featured will be Henry Dean’s much reprinted The Whole Art of Legerdemain; or, Hocus Pocus in Perfection and books that exposed the techniques of the most popular performers of the eighteenth-century, including Comus, Breslaw, and Pinetti. Material from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries will celebrate the ‘Golden Age of Magic’ and the proliferation of manuals for magicians including Hoffmann’s Modern Magic, works by John Henry Anderson, Robert-Houdin, the Maskelynes, Harry Houdini, Will Goldston, and David Devant. 15
School of Advanced Study Senate House Malet Street London WC1E 7HU United Kingdom
Senate House Library Senate House Malet Street London WC1E 7HU United Kingdom
E: sas.events@sas.ac.uk T: +44 (0)20 7862 8833
E: senatehouselibrary@london.ac.uk T: +44 (0)20 7862 8500
facebook.com/ schoolofadvancedstudy
facebook.com/ SenateHouseLibrary
twitter.com/ @SASNews
twitter.com/ @SenateHouseLib
blogs/ talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk
blogs/ senatehouselibrary.ac.uk/blogs
This publication is available in alternative formats upon request. Please contact sas.info@sas.ac.uk.
sas.ac.uk From Albert A. Hopkins and Henry Ridgely, Magic; Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, including Trick Photography (London: Low, 1897)