The British Comparative Literature Association's National Graduate Reception 'Reading Across Boundaries' will take place next Tuesday, 28 October, 6.00-8.00 pm, in the School of Advanced Study, Room 274/275, 2nd floor, Stewart House, 32 Russell Square, London WC1.
There will be three short papers by Soo Ng (Goldsmiths) on race, gender and technoscience in contemporary fiction; Phoebe von Held (IGRS) on alienation in Brecht and Diderot; and Jennifer Higgins (Oxford) on French-English poetry translation in the 'Decadent' 1890s. A précis and profile of each speaker is appended below.
A discussion will follow, and the evening will conclude with drinks.
All are welcome!
Ben Etherington and Mi Zhou, BCLA Graduate Representatives, and
Elinor Shaffer, IGRS Senior Research Fellow
Further details can be found at <http://www.bcla.org/gradrecep.htm> and
<www.clarehall.cam.ac.uk/rbae/RRSS-2008-2009>.
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Soo Ng: 'Reading Contemporary Fiction: Race, Gender and Technoscience'
'In my reading of contemporary fiction published in the last ten years, I wish to rethink the issue of identity as that which, despite the postmodern emphasis on its fragmentation, appears to push towards a renewed reflection on the persistence of totalising narratives of gender, colonialism/post-colonialism, and technoscience.'
Soo Ng is a Singaporean scholar in the third year of her PhD in English at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She holds an MA in Literature from Ottawa and presented papers at the BCLA's 'Confrontations' Conference in 2007 as well as at the 'Reading after Empire: Local, Global and Diaspora Audiences' Conference held at the University of Stirling last month.
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Phoebe von Held: 'In/Comparabilities between Brecht and Diderot: Re-envisaging the Concept of Alienation'
'Alienation is an aesthetic concept that is inextricably associated with the name of Bertolt Brecht, with Marxist politics, Hegelian philosophy and twentieth-century Modernism. However, in the 18th-century writings of Denis Diderot we can discover a concern with alienation as a sociological phenomenon and as an aesthetic device. Comparison between both writers opens up the horizon for the re-evaluation of the dramaturgical concept of alienation that has lost much of its political poignancy since the 1980s. My paper will address both the potential for innovative reconceptualisation and the limits of comparative methodology, as observed in the work of rewriting my PhD thesis as a book.'
Phoebe von Held completed a practice/theory PhD at the Slade School of Fine Art in 2001. She adapted, directed and designed Diderot's *Rameau's Nephew* (1998) and *The Nun* (2003) for the Citizens Theatre in Glasgow. She is currently developing a cinematographic part-animated adaptation of D'Alembert's Dream, funded by the Wellcome Trust. Part of this project is an animation short, *Chrysalis*, showing at the Crossing-Over Exhibition at the Royal Institution. Since 2005 she has been a Visiting Fellow at the IGRS. Her PhD dissertation will be published by Legenda in 2009 as *Alienation and Theatricality: Diderot after Brecht*.
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Jennifer Higgins: '*Silverpoints*, a Collection of Intersections'
'The Bodley Head Press (1887-1894) published some of the most iconic and controversial books of the 'Decadent' 1890s, including *Silverpoints* by John Gray (1893). The work combines original work with translations from the French, which are some of the earliest renderings of Rimbaud and Verlaine to appear in English. Like many Bodley Head editions, it was published as an 'exquisite' illustrated edition with a small print run. Its juxtaposition of translations and original poetry blurs Gray's authorial identity with that of the French poets he translates, and its mixture of eroticism and prudery gives the collection an ambivalent literary stance.
My paper explores how the poetry of *Silverpoints*, a collection perched at the intersection not only of the interests of its author and publishers but of French and English poetry, gives an idiosyncratic and ultimately elusive account of the literary climate of the time.'
Jennifer Higgins recently completed her PhD on English responses to French poetry between 1880 and 1930. The focus of her thesis was on translations of French poetry into English at that time, and used close readings of these, coupled with reviews and critical responses, to examine evolving reactions to French poetry. Jennifer is currently a Junior Research Fellow at St Anne's College, Oxford.
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