Adam Thorpe discusses translating Madame Bovary, 7 Feb 2013, Cardiff University

Respected novelist and poet, Adam Thorpe, will give a lecture entitled ‘My Nights with Emma B’ in the Optometry Building, Cardiff University on 7 February 2013 at 7pm.

Adam Thorpe

Adam Thorpe is a celebrated novelist, poet and playwright, who has recently branched out into the world of translation. His writing in various genres has garnered recognition throughout his career. His first collection of poetry, Mornings in the Baltic (1988), was shortlisted that year for the Whitbread Poetry Award. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an episodic work covering 350 years of English rural history, won great critical acclaim worldwide.

After producing three novels in as many years, Adam Thorpe accepted a Vintage commission to translate Flaubert’s Madame Bovary with the idea that it would be a break from creating. Three exhausting years later, he was prepared to accept that literary translation is one of the hardest – if poorest paid – disciplines of all. Yet its addictive nature led him to accept a further commission to translate Zola’s Thérèse Raquin. Thorpe discusses his experience of the translator’s art and its perils, pains and peculiar satisfactions.

A panel, entitled ‘Why do we need a 20th translation of Madame Bovary?’, will take place from 3 to 5 pm on 7 February in Room 1.29 of Cardiff University’s Law Building. Panellists include Adam Thorpe, Alexis Nuselovici (Cardiff), Kate Griffiths (Cardiff), Amanda Hopkinson (City), Anthony Mandal (Cardiff) and Bradley Stephens (Bristol).

For further information on how to register for this lecture or this panel, please contact Kate Griffiths: GriffithsKS@cardiff.ac.uk

This lecture is part of Cardiff University’s Distinguished Lecture Series, which brings eminent and influential guest speakers to the University in order to showcase their work to a wider audience. It is also supported by the School of European Languages, Translation and Politics’ Research Group on Politics of Translating and the Languages, Cultures and Ideologies Research Unit. The lecture is hosted by the University’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences and is free and open to all, but booking is essential.

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/europ/research/groups/translating/index.html

http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/europ/research/researchunits/lci/index.html

Jekyll 2.0: Embodying the Gothic Text

At the end of November 2012, I was lucky enough to be part of a team that won a commission through the innovative REACT Books&Print Sandbox call for early 2013. I’ll be working as lead academic partner with Bristol-based creative company, SlingShot, to create a pervasive media experience that draws on the narrative and themes of Stevenson’s gothic masterpiece.

Humanity 2.0 is an understanding of the human condition that no longer takes the ‘normal human body’ as given. On the one hand, we’re learning more about our continuity with the rest of nature—in terms of the ecology, genetic make-up, evolutionary history. On this basis, it’s easy to conclude that being ‘human’ is overrated. But on the other hand, we’re also learning more about how to enhance the capacities that have traditionally marked us off from the rest of nature.
—Steve Fuller, Auguste Comte Chair in Social Epistemology, Warwick.

The core of our project draws on the fundamental questions of Jekyll and Hyde: What makes us human? Do our minds control our bodies or are we shaped by our urges, compulsions and appetites? Will technology radically transform us into a new organism, ‘Humanity 2.0’? Such questions are nothing new: during the 19th century, the cultural implications of emerging theories of identity and the dominance of science were explored by numerous works of literature. Drawing on this tradition, our project transforms this reading into play, to create a pervasive gaming experience that links individuals’ bio-data with one such text, Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde (1886), in order to stimulate participants into considering the condition of their own humanity.

Visiting speaker, 12 Dec 2012: Rupert Gatti on Open-Access publishing

Rupert Gatti (Cambridge) will be presenting his paper, ‘Open Access Publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences’, at 4pm on Wednesday, 12 December 2012. The talk will take place in the Cardiff Humanities Building, Room 2.48.

Please note: this paper was originally scheduled to run at 2.30pm but is now running at 4pm.

Abstract
The nature and methods of academic book publishing is transforming radically in the wake of external pressures and the rising costs of scholarly monographs. Open-Access publishing is increasingly being perceived as a solution to the problem facing both institutions, whose library budgets are being cut year-on-year, and scholars, who are attempting to disseminate their work to the widest audience possible. One company that is responding to this situation is Open Book Publishers: an imprint run by academics for academics, which is changing the nature of the traditional academic book. Its books are published in hardback, paperback, PDF and e-book editions, but they also include a free online edition.

We are in the midst of what journalists are calling an ‘academic spring’. Researchers are realising that the high cost of academic books and journals means that only a select readership can access their work. Open Access (that is, making texts free to read online) helps spread educational materials to everyone, globally, not just to those who can afford it. It is increasingly becoming a requirement for publicly funded research to be made available in Open Access format and we are able to achieve this quickly and effectively. Open Book Publishers, a signatory of the Budapest Open Access Initiative, shows that an Open Access model of publishing can be sustainable. In his talk, Rupert Gatti will discuss the transforming landscape of academic publishing and its implications, as well as talking more specifically about Open Book Publishers and its vision.

You can read more of Rupert’s reflections on open-access publishing in his article for the Guardian Online and on the Open Book Publishers YouTube channel.

British Society for Literature and Science Conference 2013: Call for Papers

Hosted by Cardiff University and the University of Glamorgan

The British Society for Literature and Science invites proposals for papers and panels to be delivered at its eighth annual conference to be held in Cardiff, 11–13 April 2013.

The BSLS Conference does not have a theme (as it its usual practice) but especially welcomes proposals on the state of the field of literature and science as well as its relation to other fields. This year we would be particularly interested to receive proposals that reflect upon the interdisciplinary study of literature and science in the context of the present crisis in the humanities. However, the Society remains committed to supporting proposals on all aspects of literature and science across all periods.

Proposals for papers of 15–20 minutes should be sent in the body of the email text (no attachments, please), to bsls2013@yahoo.co.uk with the subject line ‘BSLS 2013 abstract’. Submissions should include the title of the paper, an abstract of no more than 300 words, a maximum of 3 keywords (placed at the end of the abstract), and the name and contact details of the speaker.

Closing date for submissions: 7 December 2012. (Decisions will be made in January 2013)

Contributors interested in organising a panel or other special session, or who have suggestions for alternative forms of conference presentation, are warmly encouraged to contact the conference organisers. The organisers would welcome, for example, workshops on teaching literature and science, or on specific themes in literature and science that cross period boundaries, or on specific published works with considerable influence in the field. Please email the organisers on bsls2013@yahoo.co.uk, using ‘BSLS 2013 Panel’ as the subject line in email correspondence.

Funding: we anticipate that there will be a small bursary awarded to a graduate student on the basis on the paper proposals. The student must be registered for a masters or doctoral degree on 9 January 2013.

Accommodation: please note that those attending will need to make their own arrangements for accommodation. As in previous years, we anticipate that the conference will begin at about 1pm on the first day and conclude at about 2pm on the last.

Membership: in order to attend the conference, you must be a paid-up member of the BSLS for 2013. We anticipate that it will be possible to pay the £10 annual membership fee when paying the conference fee online.

Organisers: Professor Keir Waddington (Cardiff) and Dr Martin Willis (Glamorgan).

Curious Rainbows: the humanities in the digital age

by Michael Goodman

… there can be no divorce between science and technology, on the one hand, and art, on the other, any more than there can be a divorce between art and the forms of social life.
(Susan Sontag, ‘One Culture and the New Sensibility’, 1965)

… too often at the moment we are being hamstrung by a restrictive and unimaginative view of what it is that academic work in the humanities should do. It’s high time we brought to a halt this obsession with utilitarian responses to current challenges and allowed space for the inspiring business of being curious.
(Martin Willis, Times Higher Education, 13 September 2012)

What are the humanities for? This was the implicit question that ran through the inaugural Digital Humanities Congress 2012 in Sheffield and the Forms of Innovation Symposium in Durham like a mischievous, but silent, spectre. And it was in the different ways that the two conferences dealt with this spectre that made them such compelling events.

Marginalia and provenance in the Cardiff Rare Books

Last year the Cardiff Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (CUROP), an initiative which provides summer placements for undergraduates in the university research environment, helped fund a research project on Marginalia and Provenance in the Restoration Drama texts of the Cardiff Rare Books Collection. This year, another CUROP award helped fund two more undergraduates to undertake research for Dr Melanie Bigold’s on-going project on Marginalia and Provenance in the Cardiff Rare Books. The focus last year was on the 900 volumes of the Restoration Drama Collection. This year, Victoria Shirley and Thomas Tyrrell began to tackle the larger collection. Supported by the staff in Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR), Victoria and Thomas were able to inspect over 1100 octavo texts with publication dates between 1660 and 1700. More information about visiting SCOLAR and the Cardiff Rare Books can be found here:

• http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/libraries/scolar/index.html
• http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/insrv/news/rarebooksarrive.html

More information about CUROP can be found here: http://learning.cf.ac.uk/projects-funding/curop/.

Visiting speaker, 23 Oct 2012: Katie Halsey on reading Jane Austen

Katie Halsey (Stirling) will be presenting her paper, ‘Reading Jane Austen’, at 5.30pm on Tuesday, 23 October 2012. The talk will take place in the Cardiff Humanities Building, Room 2.48.

Abstract

I do not write for such dull Elves
As have not a great deal of Ingenuity themselves.
(Jane Austen, Letter to Cassandra Austen, 29 January 1813)

Beginning from the premise that Jane Austen’s novels demand a particular kind of close and careful reading, I will present a brief analysis of Austen’s style, before turning to look at the ways in which readers have responded to Austen’s works over time. My aim is to show not only how the responses of Austen’s readers can help to explicate Austen’s works, but also how their reactions to Austen’s works can illuminate her readers and their social, cultural and literary preoccupations for us. Focusing in particular on Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800-1859), Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), and Mary Russell Mitford (1787–1855), I will discuss the reading strategies generated by their encounters with Austen’s work, and will argue that the sublimated energies of Austen’s style resurface in unexpected ways in the responses of her readers.

CEIR speaker, 9 Oct 2012: Neil Badmington on Roland Barthes

Neil Badmington (Cardiff) will be presenting his  paper, ‘Punctum Saliens: Barthes, Mourning, Film, Photography’, at 5.30pm on Tuesday, 9 October 2012. The talk will take place in the Cardiff Humanities Building, Room 2.48.

Abstract

The question I raise for myself: ‘Should I keep a journal?’ is immediately supplied, in my mind, with a nasty answer: ‘Who cares?’ or, more psychoanalytically: ‘It’s your problem.’
(Roland Barthes, ‘Deliberation’)

The talk examines how the posthumous publication in 2009 of Roland Barthes’s Mourning Diary—a journal kept by Barthes for nearly two years following the death of his mother in October 1977—casts new light on Camera Lucida, Barthes’ influential book on photography, which was written during the period covered by the diary. In particular, the paper will examine how the Mourning Diary reveals for the first time that Barthes’ theory of the photographic punctum has cinematic roots which are erased in Camera Lucida, and I go on to discuss possible reasons for this vanishing. Why should the difficult ‘preparation’ of what Barthes called ‘the Photo-Maman book’ involve a paring away of film? Why does cinema allow Barthes to begin to theorize the punctum, but then recede from view? How, in short, does the Mourning Diary illuminate Camera Lucida anew?

Autumn 2012 speakers’ programme available

The CEIR speakers’ programme for the autumn 2012 session is now available, by visiting http://cardiffbookhistory.wordpress.com/events/speakers/. Fuller details and abstracts to follow shortly.

A true collector of the Kelmscott Press

Reblogged from Special Collections and Archives (SCOLAR) Casgliadau Arbennig ac Archifau:

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As I was happily working away on some of our Kelmscott Press books, I discovered this wonderfully detailed bookplate in a copy of William Morris's The roots of the mountains. Although we have yet to learn the identity of Robert Hall, the plate certainly suggests that he was an enthusiastic collector of Kelmscott publications.

On the library table are copies of several well-known Kelmscott works, including  William Morris's…

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