Open lectures: Summer term 2017

Falling Walls Lab York

Friday 23 June 2017

York's best and brightest compete to captivate audiences with their groundbreaking research.

Imaginative geographies of the black/white Atlantic

Tuesday 20 June 2017

Catherine Hall discusses Edward Long, C18 slave-owner, family man, creole nationalist and historian

Border Zones: Documenting life and work carried out under precarious conditions

Wednesday 14 June 2017

From NGOs, activist and arts-based projects to programs of research, feminists have sought and secured space for re-presenting women in the visual field...

The Unknown Universe

Wednesday 7 June 2017

Where to find a hilarious and helpful guide to the biggest mysteries in the Universe?

World history and God’s Grand Design: The historical imagination in the Middle Ages and Reformation

Thursday 1 June 2017

This lecture will endeavor to sketch out a provisional arc for the evolving theology of history as it developed through the Middle Ages and the Reformation period.

Remembering the future

Wednesday 31 May 2017

In 'Remembering the Future', Darran Anderson will re-assess utopian ideas in an age of pessimism. In contrast to our technological advances, we seem increasingly powerless and disconnected from our urban surroundings. Looking at projects from Bauhaus to Bjarke Ingels, Anderson will examine the challenges we face and what is needed to reclaim the city for the citizen.

Should we really be ourselves?

Tuesday 30 May 2017

In this lecture, Rafe shows how Simone de Beauvoir and Frantz Fanon meet the ethical challenge posed by authenticity.

Austen as Wartime Novelist

Tuesday 30 May 2017

It is time to reclaim Jane Austen as the first English novelist to explore the effect of contemporary war on the home front

What turns pictures on

Friday 26 May 2017

This presentation will consider the conditions in which pictures can be activated by the perceptual parameters afforded by their environment

Understanding York’s environment

Thursday 25 May 2017

This series of three keynote lectures, given by leading experts from environment and health, will explore the importance of place and nature, how the environment affects our health and wellbeing, and finally, how novel projects, such as the York City Environment Observatory, seek to understand and quantify these relationships.

Fighting For Europe

Thursday 25 May 2017

Those of us who are keen to see the UK remain part of the EU need to target our fight carefully: how shall we do that, and when?

On the confluence of virtualities in computer-based environments

Thursday 25 May 2017

Inge Hinterwaldner looks at virtual reality in the context of phobia therapy

Chocolate: From the mountains of Mexico to the streets of York

Thursday 25 May 2017

This lecture will discuss the history of chocolate, how it was valued by the Mayans and Aztecs, brought to Europe by the Spanish conquerors, and how it spread through Europe, eventually coming to England.

Antinomies of data-driven public services: The case of regionalisation of adoption in England

Wednesday 24 May 2017

Dr James Cornford examines the interaction of different cultures of data in the reform of the adoption process in England

The origin of perspective

Tuesday 23 May 2017

York Summer Theory Institute in Art History

Macbeth screening

Saturday 20 May 2017

A pre-release screening of this innovative new feature film, shot entirely on green screen.

Bloody, Bold and Resolute

Saturday 20 May 2017

A lively and varied afternoon, led by experts and practitioners from across disciplines, devoted to Shakespeare’s Macbeth and creative responses to Macbeth

Paapa Essiedu - in conversation with Judith Buchanan

Thursday 18 May 2017

In this 'in conversation' event Paapa Essiedu talks with Judith Buchanan (University of York) about his roles in Hamlet and King Lear

Fraud and veracity in early modern observations of generation

Wednesday 17 May 2017

Through the cases of two 17th century naturalists and physicians, Ole Worm (1588-1654) and Thomas Bartholin (1616-1680), this talk discusses the tensions, negotiations and uncertainties in early modern scientific knowledge production, resulting from the ever-present worries about fraud

“Speak the speech . . . trippingly on the tongue”: Performing Shakespearean verse

Tuesday 16 May 2017

Professor Michael Cordner and Dr Tom Cantrell (University of York) explore, via analysis and practical experiment, how the changing nature of Shakespeare's verse writing across his career gradually transformed the challenges he set for his actors

Hamlet’s Elsinore and Elsinore’s Hamlet

Monday 15 May 2017

In this illustrated talk, Dr Anne Sophie Refskou (University of Surrey) and Lars Romann Engel (Artistic Director of Hamletscenen in Elsinore) discuss the lively history of Hamlet in Denmark, tracing how Shakespeare’s fictional setting for Hamlet has become a real one

Inside the asylum: Material life in lunatic asylums in Victorian and Edwardian England

Wednesday 10 May 2017

This talk will explore the material worlds of ‘lunatic asylums’ (as they were known to contemporaries) in Victorian and Edwardian England

Spices, silks and slaves: Travel by land in the Medieval Islamic world

Tuesday 9 May 2017

This talk will examine caravanserais, and other examples of the architecture of travel like bridges and roads, along with the mechanics of medieval Islamic travel.

Bright earth, fired earth: Travels with porcelain

Monday 8 May 2017

This talk is now SOLD OUT. Apologies for any disappointment.

Representing war trauma in the nineteenth century

Friday 5 May 2017

A team of experts discuss war trauma

Foundations of America’s Empire: How Elite Networks Dominate American Power At Home And Abroad

Thursday 4 May 2017

In this lecture, Parmar argues that corporate foundations – like Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller, among others – have played a significant but neglected or misunderstood role in the rise and development of American power

Curiosity and the city: Mosque open days in Sydney and London

Wednesday 3 May 2017

Professor Richard Phillips will talk about mosque open days and their use for challenging stereotypes and bridging communities

The life and works of Angela Brazil

Tuesday 2 May 2017

This lecture will investigate the life of Angela Brazil and her influence as well as including some readings from her books

Sex and the swinging sixties: A history of British cinema

Thursday 27 April 2017

Professor Duncan Petrie looks at the history of British cinema in the 1960s

The paintings of the Freer Dīvān of Sultan Aḥmad-i Jalāʾir (d. 1410) and the new taste for decorative design in Persian manuscripts

Thursday 27 April 2017

York Islamic Art Circle present Dr Ilse Sturkenboom looking at Persian manuscripts

Lines of sight: Visions of Senegalese public health

Thursday 27 April 2017

This lecture proposes a visual history of postcolonial health communication in Senegal

Colonial genealogies of the deserving poor: From abolition to Brexit

Wednesday 26 April 2017

This talk aims to provide a historical context to contemporary debates over the “white working class” by accounting for the development of this constituency through a postcolonial genealogy of British empire

Medieval psalters as witnesses to liturgical song: The Iberian case

Tuesday 25 April 2017

Dr Emma Hornby talks about medieval Iberian psalmody

The world after GDP: Economics, politics and international relations in the post-growth era

Thursday 20 April 2017

GDP is much more than a simple statistic. It has become the overarching benchmark of success and a powerful ordering principle at the heart of the global economy

The emotional nature of the number of inches between: Body language, sexuality and affectual transfer in Scott Burton's Behavior Tableaux of the 1970s

Tuesday 18 April 2017

This lecture will track the trilogy of Behavior Tableaux Burton created between 1972 and 1980 and discuss the ways in which sexuality became crucial to this critical response to the art theory supporting Minimalist sculpture and to this major contribution to the development of performance art in the 1970s