Lost in keigo? The language of diplomacy in Japanese-Iberian encounters around 1600
Thursday
19
May
2022
Politeness in its various forms is considered an important part of Japanese language and society and as stumbling blocks for intercultural learners. What role did politeness and the correct use of it in formalized communication and everyday life affect foreign visitors in late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century Japan?
Mental Health and the Memoir Research Seminar: The problem of biography: 4.48 Psychosis and the ‘suicidal mind’
Wednesday
18
May
2022
What is the relationship between the experience of an author and the work they create? This question is essential to considering any writing about mental suffering, and especially in the work of Sarah Kane. Kane’s representations of mental suffering clearly transcend the boundaries and diagnostic categories suggested by the mental health system. In these works, theatre itself becomes a tool for sharing experiences of mental suffering without their being reduced to specific pathologies or biographical narratives.
Political Forms reading group meeting: Arendt's "The Human Condition"
Thursday
12
May
2022
If you are interested in critical theory and political philosophy, the political dimensions of art and literature, or interdisciplinary reflections on politics, please do join us. The group aims to connect researchers working across different disciplines once a month to discuss readings in an informal and friendly atmosphere.
Removal, Re-interpretation or Re-contextualisation? A Conversation on Contested Statues, Resistance and the Reimagination of Public Spaces
Wednesday
4
May
2022
An interdisciplinary event organised by postgraduate students from the Departments of Archaeology, Politics and History of Art, and in collaboration with the Anti-Racism Working Group (ARWG). at the University of York.
The event will consist of four expert speakers discussing the issues around statues, physical heritage structures and remembrance, and aims to consider the work that has, and can be done further, to create more inclusive public environments. The event further aims to consider how heritage structures portray the past and the narratives that they create, how some of these portrayals of the past have been resisted over time, and whether contested heritage structures should be removed, reinterpreted or recontextualised, or whether our public spaces can be reimagined.
Countervoices Summer Research Seminar
Wednesday
27
April
2022
Join our PG forum’s third research seminar of 2022, part of a series of events that offer postgraduate students in the Centre for Modern Studies and beyond the opportunity to present a short piece of work to an interdisciplinary audience. The event consists of a presentation by Rebecca Bevington followed by a Q&A. If you have any questions or queries, please email: cmods-pgforum@york.ac.uk
Countervoices 2nd Spring Research Seminar
Thursday
10
March
2022
Join our PG forum’s second research seminar of the spring term, part of a series of events that offer postgraduate students in the Centre for Modern Studies and beyond the opportunity to present a short piece of work to an interdisciplinary audience.
The event consists of two presentations from Miya Treadwell and Joseph Gascoigne followed by a Q&A. Treadwell will present "Narratives that Bind: Netflix, Black Film and World Cinema" and Gascoigne will present "Manipulating accountability: The political use of inquiries".
Political Forms Reading Group: Grievability and the Politics of Mourning
Thursday
3
February
2022
During this meeting, we will discuss the notions of grievability, nonviolence, and the politics of mourning. We will read three texts by Judith Butler: 'Violence, Mourning, Politics’ from Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (2004), 'Nonviolence, Grievability and the Critique of Individualism’, from The Force of Nonviolence: An Ethics-Political Bind (2020), and an interview 'Mourning Is a Political Act Amid the Pandemic and Its Disparities’ (2020) published in Truthout. We will consider the dynamic relationship between violence and nonviolence, Butler’s take on modern practices of mourning and its links with the Covid-19 pandemic, and we will discuss what it means for a life to be (un)grievable in the contemporary world.
Political Forms Reading Group: The Politics of Pity
Wednesday
26
January
2022
During this meeting, we will discuss the political frameworks of pity, spectatorship and compassion that govern contemporary representations of suffering. We will read three chapters from Luc Boltanski’s book Distant Suffering, considering Boltanski’s articulation of pity as a relationship which implements distance rather than solidarity.
Political Forms Reading Group: Melancholia
Wednesday
24
November
2021
Discussing Sara Ahmed's The Promise of Happiness (2010), and Paul Gilroy's After Empire: Melancholia or Convivial Culture? (2004), we will consider the sociopolitical significance of melancholia: a feeling that may affect individuals as well as the whole nations. We will discuss how melancholia is experienced as an individual and collective affect, how Britain’s colonial past impacts the affective arrangements within society, and who, in contemporary Britain, is a subject to melancholic feelings.
Mental Health and the Memoir Reading Group: Narrative Medicine
Thursday
4
November
2021
We are delighted to invite you to the next reading group meeting for the new CModS Research Strand in Mental Health & the Memoir, at 17:00-18:00 on the 4th of November. In this session, we will read an extract from The Principles and Practice of Narrative Medicine (ed. Rita Charon et al) to explore medical applications of life-writing and the entanglements between narrative and clinical encounters.
Mental Health and the Memoir Reading Group: Memoir
Thursday
14
October
2021
Our inaugural session will focus on Ann Cvetkovich’s Depression: A Public Feeling (2012) to consider the value of memoir as both a topic of study and as a research method in its own right.
