The Anatomy Shelf Issue #11 (March 2022)
Thank you for subscribing to The Anatomy shelf, a monthly newsletter exploring the body in literature and history, dedicated in bringing you the latest news! The text (blurbs, bios, events etc) have all been copied from the original source.
CONTENTS:
FEATURED:
Review, Monstrous Textualities: Writing the Other in Gothic Narratives of Resistance by Anya Heise-von der Lippe
CURRENT NEWS:
NEW BOOKS:
PARADAIS by Fernanda Melchor, Translated by Sophie Hughes
The Human Body is a Hive by Erica Gillingham
When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos
Scarlet in Blue by Jennifer Murphy
UPCOMING BOOKS:
Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination: Morbid Anatomies - Gothic Literary Studies by Laura R. Kremmel
Emergency by Daisy Hildyard
Girls Can Kiss Now by Jill Gutowitz
The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani
Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
FREE ONLINE EVENTS:
Doctrine of Signatures in Early Modern Medicine
Tutankhamun, the End of a Dynasty. A Virtual Experience
Pompeii in Color: Cycles of Discovery, Innovation, and Wonderment
Gothica: Cannibalism and the Gothic
CALLS FOR PAPERS:
Gaslighting in Victorian and neo-Victorian Literature and Film
Special Issue Call for Papers: "Writing Aslant: Voicing across Genders in Nineteenth-Century Literature"
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FEATURED
Monstrous Textualities: Writing the Other in Gothic Narratives of Resistance by Anya Heise-von der Lippe (University of Wales Press: 2021) ISBN: 978-1-78683-758-5, Hardback, £70.00
Review by Lauren (@gothicbookworm), The Anatomy Shelf, Issue #11, March 2022 (theanatomyshelf.substack.com)
“[M]onsters creep from the cracks and appear at the edges of such discourses” (p.2)
Monstrous Textualities by Anya Heise-von der Lippe is a progressive and in-depth study of what it means to be a monster, and in turn, what it means to be human in the realm of the Gothic text. As Heise-von der Lippe explains in the introduction:
“My main argumentative focus lies in the monstrous figures that emerge from and draw attention to the margins of cultural conceptualisations of the human and their destabilisation of an exclusive humanist subject position” (p.2)
This perspective considers the monster narrative, but also explores the ‘character’ of the monster itself. Although this subject can appear daunting on the surface (due to the sheer amount of literature, authority, and criticisms), this topic is introduced by condensing the literature into a key chronology of developing monstrous bodies and uses key texts to argue key points and discourse. Prior to the main body of the text, a chapter on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) demonstrates the modus operandi of the text, ‘monstrous textuality:’
“Frankenstein adapts Gothic aesthetics in a number of interesting ways, introducing the nineteenth-century Gothic’s focus on monster narratives as well as a proto-posthuman Gothic focus on the intersections of corporeality and technology” (p.10)
This is beneficial to the reader, and aides the scholarship by demonstrating how the application of theory can structure arguments in a thorough and direct format. Heise-von der Lippe recognises and applies leading authorities and key critiques which are then developed and analysed throughout the chapters, resulting in a coherent and original contribution to this field.
The structure of this text takes the reader on a journey of the evolution of the ‘monstrous body.’ The relationship between narrative and character is examined in three parts; ‘What Moves at the Margin;’ ‘A Female Monster Larger Than Life;’ and ‘Hideous Progeny.’ Each Part has a specific focus, concentrating on literary critique, and analysing key texts and narratives.
Part I, ‘What Moves at the Margin’ takes the perspective of the haunted narrative, focusing on how the ‘human’ aspects of the text are subjected to historical and cultural contexts. Using Toni Morrison’s critically acclaimed books, and Derrida’s ‘hauntology,’ Heise-von der Lippe expands on the current literature, whilst creating another framework for literary discourses. By using the ‘liminal figure’ to analyse the format of these texts, the subject becomes more focused within literary critique. As Heise-von der Lippe concludes:
“Narratives of resistance – in Morrison’s work and elsewhere – highlight the necessity of supplementing dominant theoretical discourses as well as a common cultural framings of ‘normality’ and Otherness.” (p.106)
Part II, ‘A Female Monster Larger Than Life” focuses on feminist texts from the 1970s and 1980s to examine the framework of feminist theory and the ‘body’ as a subject. The text concentrates on Margaret Atwood’s Lady Oracle (1976), and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus (1984), engaging with the current feminist scholarship, representation, and the boundaries that are crossed with the character’s existence, and how they are perceived (p.6).
After establishing the current scholarship and key critiques of the framework, Heise-von der Lippe extends the field by analysing these texts with a queer and feminist lens. This develops this area of study by recognising the limitations of specific critiques, whilst drawing on the broader feminist agenda to explore the monstrous body. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 in this section all complement each other, but also extends the narrative with each consecutive chapter. This gives this section a clear focus and conclusion;
“the rising tendency of self-policing of postmodern ‘docile bodies’ under advanced technological surveillance seems to have led to even stricter body regimes surrounding the female body than the novels envisioned, and to a further internalisation of such expectations” (p.179)
This section discusses how the evolution of feminist theory, along with feminist texts, creates a cross-section focused around the ‘freakish’ monstrous body. This then creates an opening for further dialogue, which is explored in Part III, ‘Hideous Progeny.’
Part III aims to draw parallels between separate texts and examine non-linear textuality whilst introducing the posthuman narrative. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 focus on a critical shift towards the body in a different perspective, including posthuman narratives, the biomediated body, and textuality in the metanarrative:
“Human entanglements with technology and posthuman developments form the basis of somewhat polarised critical and cultural discussions about what it means to be human and what we might be becoming.” (p.186)
The direction towards the modern and futuristic body questions the identity, form, and nature of these body whilst understanding the central narrative of posthuman theory. Heise-von der Lippe begins with an analysis on historical texts, again, using the core archetype of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), which extends the critique from Parts I and II. However, the focus on the narrative shifts to the ‘troubling’ concept of categorising humans using Donna Haraway’s ‘A Cyborg Manifesto’ (1985) to support the argument that the human ‘subject’ is limited by definition and must be redefined when dealing with the Gothic narrative. Additionally, this chapter considers the concept of the metanarrative and self-reflection which are explored Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003-13), which focuses on the consequences of experimenting with bodies and the ‘formation’ of the monster.
The conclusion acts both as a concise summary of the chapters and a gateway for further research. Heise-von der Lippe has constructed a comprehensive study of the Gothic monstrous body and how textuality can become the central focus when analysing new frameworks in this field. This ambitious book has succeeded in its aim - to present a broad and inclusive study of the monstrous body, expanding current discourse, and opening the conversation from a theoretical approach. This book would benefit academics working in this area, in addition to aiding other fields of study bridging the gap between the Gothic and different genres, such as science-fiction, horror, literary fiction, and several humanities and art-based fields.
Thank you to the publicity team at University of Wales Press for my gifted copy.
More information on the text: https://www.waterstones.com/book/monstrous-textualities/anya-heise-von-der-lippe/9781786837585
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CURRENT NEWS
NEW BOOKS
PARADAIS By Fernanda Melchor, Translated by Sophie Hughes, (Fitzcarraldo Editions), ISBN: 9781913097875, French paperback with flaps, 128 pages, £10.99
Translated– Coming of Age – Literary Bodies – Fiction
Written with a visceral power and unflinching recognition of the self-destructiveness of youth when faced with deprivation and despair, Paradais traces the increasingly macabre schemes of two outcast Mexican teenagers in enthralling prose.
Longlisted for the International Booker Prize 2022
Inside a luxury housing complex, two misfit teenagers sneak around and get drunk. Franco Andrade, lonely, overweight, and addicted to porn, obsessively fantasizes about seducing his neighbor - an attractive married woman and mother - while Polo dreams about quitting his gruelling job as a gardener within the gated community and fleeing his overbearing mother and their narco-controlled village.
Each facing the impossibility of getting what he thinks he deserves, Franco and Polo hatch a mindless and macabre scheme. Written in a chilling torrent of prose by one of our most thrilling new writers, Paradais explores the explosive fragility of Mexican society - fractured by issues of race, class and violence - and how the myths, desires, and hardships of teenagers can tear life apart at the seams.
More information: https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/paradais
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The Human Body is a Hive by Erica Gillingham, (Verve Poetry Press), ISBN: 9781913917074, 32 pages, paperback, £7.50
Poetry – Physical bodies – Queer – Living Bodies
Composed in two halves, Erica Gillingham’s The Human Body is a Hive is a playful and observant reconception of queer love and queer family-making. Opening with a shameless celebration of sex and desire, the collection expands the boundaries of love to include friendship, romance, and lifelong partnership. The latter catalogues the cyclical heartbreaks and wonders of fertility treatment through the microscopic lenses of nature, medicine, and art. Both quietly moving and profoundly celebratory, this exciting debut evokes tenderness and resilience.
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When We Were Birds by Ayanna Lloyd Banwo, (Penguin Books Ltd), ISBN: 9780241502792, 288 pages, Hardback, £14.99
Fiction – Magic Realism – Fantastical Bodies – Liminal Bodies
Evocatively exploring contemporary life through the labyrinth of myth and the otherworldly, this masterfully crafted Trinidad-set debut about a handsome young gravedigger and a girl with the gift of speaking to the dead announces a spell-binding new voice in fiction.
Mesmerising, mythic and timeless - the most unmissable debut novel of 2022 - for fans of Arundhati Roy, Toni Morrison and Monique Roffey
Discover a love story and a ghost story set in the lush landscape and thriving backstreets of modern-day Trinidad...
Darwin is a down-on-his-luck gravedigger, newly arrived in the city of Port Angeles to seek his fortune, young and beautiful and lost. Estranged from his mother and the Rastafari faith she taught him, he is convinced that the father he never met may be waiting for him somewhere amid these bustling streets.
Meanwhile in an old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide's mother is dying. And she is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: the power to talk to the dead. The women of Yejide's family are human but also not - descended from corbeau, the black birds that fly east at sunset, taking with them the souls of the dead.
Darwin and Yejide both have something that the other needs. Their destinies are intertwined, and they will find one another in the sprawling, ancient cemetery at the heart of Port Angeles, where trouble is brewing...
Rich with magic and wisdom, When We Were Birds is an exuberant, incantatory masterpiece that conjures and mesmerises on every line. Ayanna Lloyd Banwo weaves an unforgettable story of loss and renewal, darkness and light; a triumphant reckoning with a grief that runs back generations and a defiant, joyful affirmation of hope.
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/when-we-were-birds/ayanna-lloyd-banwo/9780241502792
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Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos, (Manchester University Press) ISBN: 9781526165848, 192 pages, Paperback, £12.99
Trauma – Non-fiction – Memoir - Memory
In this bold and exhilarating mix of memoir and writing guide, Melissa Febos tackles the emotional, psychological, and physical work of writing intimately while offering an utterly fresh examination of the storyteller's life and the challenges it presents.
How do we write about the relationships that have formed us? How do we describe our bodies, their desires and traumas? What does it mean to have your writing, or living, dismissed as "navel-gazing"-or else hailed as "so brave, so raw"? And to whom, in the end, do our most intimate stories belong?
Drawing on her journey from aspiring writer to acclaimed author and writing professor-via addiction and recovery, sex work and academia-Melissa Febos has created a captivating guide to the writing life, and a brilliantly unusual exploration of subjectivity, privacy, and the power of divulgence. Candid and inspiring, Body Work will empower readers and writers alike, offering ideas-and occasional notes of caution-to anyone who has ever hoped to see their true self reflecting back from the open page.
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/body-work/melissa-febos/9781526165848
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Scarlet In Blue: A Novel by Jennifer Murphy, (Penguin Putnam Inc), ISBN: 9780593183465, 384 pages, Hardback, £22.99
Literary – Contemporary – Fiction - Art
A beautiful and gripping psychological novel about a mother and daughter who, after a lifetime on the run from a dark and dangerous past, land in a small Michigan town that may hold the key to ending their fugitive lifestyle.
For Blue Lake’s entire life, she and her mother, Scarlet, have been on the run from HIM—the man who Scarlet, a talented and enigmatic painter, insists is chasing them. But now, at fifteen years old, Blue has begun to resent the nomadic life that once seemed like an adventure, increasingly unsure what to make of the phantom pursuer she’s never seen. She only yearns to settle down in one place, to live a normal life.
When Scarlet and Blue arrive in the beachfront town of South Haven, Michigan, it seems that Blue’s wishes might finally come true. She makes a good friend, is falling in love for the first time, and has found a piano teacher who recognizes her budding talent. But even as Blue thrives, she cannot shake her worry about her mother, whose eccentricities and art are only becoming increasingly difficult to understand. Scarlet, meanwhile, has very different intentions for their stay in South Haven. It was no accident that she brought them there and, with the help of the psychoanalyst she’s sought out, Henry, she is determined to find a way to finally escape the shadow of her traumatic past, no matter the cost.
Told through the alternating voices of Blue, Scarlet, and Henry, Scarlet in Blue is a page-turning story about the ramifications of past trauma, the way art can hold our lives together, and, most of all, the enduring bond between mother and child.
More information: https://www.amazon.com/Scarlet-Blue-Novel-Jennifer-Murphy/dp/0593183460
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UPCOMING BOOKS
Romantic Medicine and the Gothic Imagination: Morbid Anatomies - Gothic Literary Studies by Laura R. Kremmel, (University of Wales Press) ISBN: 9781786838483, 272 pages, Hardback, £70.00
Academic – Gothic Bodies – Medicine – Anatomy
Release: 30/04/2022
This book debates a crossover between the Gothic and the medical imagination in the Romantic period. It explores the gore and uncertainty typical of medical experimentation, and expands the possibilities of medical theories in a speculative space by a focus on Gothic novels, short stories, poetry, drama and chapbooks. By comparing the Gothic's collection of unsavoury tropes to morbid anatomy's collection of diseased organs, the author argues that the Gothic's prioritisation of fear and gore gives it access to nonnormative bodies, reallocating medical and narrative agency to bodies considered otherwise powerless. Each chapter pairs a trope with a critical medical debate, granting silenced bodies power over their own narratives: the reanimated corpse confronts fears about vitalism; the skeleton exposes fears about pain; the unreliable corpse feeds on fears of dissection; the devil redirects fears about disability; the dangerous narrative manipulates fears of contagion and vaccination.
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/romantic-medicine-and-the-gothic-imagination/laura-r-kremmel/9781786838483
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EMERGENCY by Daisy Hildyard, (Fitzcarraldo Editions) ISBN: 9781913097813, 224 pages, Paperback, £12.99
Rural – Modern Bodies – Historical Events – Bodies in Landscape
Release: 20/04/2022
Reimagining the pastoral novel for the age of climate crisis, Hildyard's sensual, vividly depicted rural world is evoked through a woman's lockdown memories as the harmony of nature is slowly eroded by pollution and corporate negligence.
Emergency is a novel about the dissolving boundaries between all life on earth. Stuck at home alone under lockdown, a woman recounts her 1990s childhood in rural Yorkshire. She watches a kestrel hunting, helps a farmer with a renegade bull, and plays out with her best friend, Clare. Around her in the village her neighbours are arguing, keeping secrets, caring for one another, trying to hold down jobs. In the woods and quarry there are foxcubs fighting, plants competing for space, ageing machines, and a three-legged deer who likes cake.
These local phenomena interconnect and spread out from China to Nicaragua as pesticides circulate, money flows around the planet, and bodies feel the force of distant power. A story of remote violence and a work of praise for a persistently lively world, brilliantly written, surprising, evocative and unsettling, Daisy Hildyard's Emergency reinvents the pastoral novel for the climate change era.
More information: https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/books/emergency
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Girls Can Kiss Now: Essays by Jill Gutowitz (Simon & Schuster) ISBN: 9781982158507, 240 pages, Paperback, £12.99
Essays – Contemporary – Non-fiction - Culture
Release: 28/04/2022
Jill Gutowitz's life-for better and worse-has always been on a collision course with pop culture. There's the time the FBI showed up at her door because of something she tweeted about Game of Thrones. The pop songs that have been the soundtrack to the worst moments of her life. And of course, the pivotal day when Orange Is the New Black hit the airwaves and broke down the door to Jill's own sexuality. In these honest examinations of identity, desire, and self-worth, Jill explores perhaps the most monumental cultural shift of our lifetimes: the mainstreaming of lesbian culture. Dusting off her own personal traumas and artifacts of her not-so-distant youth she examines how pop culture acts as a fun house mirror reflecting and refracting our values-always teaching, distracting, disappointing, and revealing us.
Girls Can Kiss Now is a fresh and intoxicating blend of personal stories, sharp observations, and laugh-out-loud humor. This timely collection of essays helps us make sense of our collective pop-culture past even as it points the way toward a joyous, uproarious, near-and very queer-future.
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/9781982158507
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The Good Left Undone by Adriana Trigiani (Penguin Books Ltd) ISBN: 9780241565841 448 pages, Hardback, £14.99
Literary – Reflective – Fiction – Landscape
Release: 05/05/2022
Domenica Cabrelli had two great loves of her life.
The first, her childhood sweetheart: a boy from the same small, sun-drenched Italian town of Viareggio. A romance born out of yearning and shared history; over before it really had a chance to begin.
Then, on an idyllic French coastline in the shadow of war, Domenica's second great love affair, which would go on to define her - a mysterious captain, with a future on the front line.
Many decades later, only her daughter, Matelda, knows the true story of these two men's lives, and the secret that connects them. And, as the end of her life nears, Matelda realizes that some truths are too great to be lost. But as she works against the clock with her own daughter to unpack their family's legacy, more questions arise than answers.
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-good-left-undone/adriana-trigiani/9780241565841
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Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, (Pan Macmillan),ISBN: 9781529083491, 272 pages, Hardback, £14.99
Historical - Narrative - Landscape - Reflective
Release: 28/04/2022
Another tour de force of imagination and dazzling construction from the author of Station Eleven and The Glass Hotel, Mandel's audacious time travel novel intertwines the stories of an Edwardian exile in British Columbia and an Earth-hopping writer two centuries later.
The award-winning author of Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel returns with a novel of time travel that precisely captures the reality of our current moment. Sea of Tranquility is a virtuoso performance and an enormously exciting offering from one of our most remarkable writers.
In 1912, eighteen-year-old Edwin St. Andrew crosses the Atlantic, exiled from English polite society. In British Columbia, he enters the forest, spellbound by the beauty of the Canadian wilderness, and for a split second all is darkness, the notes of a violin echoing unnaturally through the air. The experience shocks him to his core.
Two centuries later Olive Llewelyn, a famous writer, is traveling all over Earth, far away from her home in the second moon colony. Within the text of Olive's bestselling novel lies a strange passage: a man plays his violin for change in the echoing corridor of an airship terminal as the trees of a forest rise around him.
When Gaspery-Jacques Roberts, a detective in the black-skied Night City, is hired to investigate an anomaly in time, he uncovers a series of lives upended: the exiled son of an aristocrat driven to madness, a writer trapped far from home as a pandemic ravages Earth, and a childhood friend from the Night City who, like Gaspery himself, has glimpsed the chance to do something extraordinary that will disrupt the timeline of the universe.
Sea of Tranquility is a novel that investigates the idea of parallel worlds and possibilities, that plays with the very line along which time should run. Perceptive and poignant about art, and love, and what we must do to survive, it is incredibly compelling.
More information: https://www.waterstones.com/book/sea-of-tranquility/emily-st-john-mandel/9781529083491
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FREE ONLINE EVENTS
The Doctrine of Signatures in Early Modern Medicine by British Society for the History of Pharmacy
Date and time: Mon, 25 April 2022, 18:30 – 20:00 BST
BSHP online talk with Xinyi Wen
About this event
A Walnut looks like a brain, and therefore could cure brain diseases — today, a traditional medicinal idea called ‘the doctrine of signatures’ is widely cited in contemporary pharmacy and herbalism. It holds that many minerals, plants and animals have ‘signatures’, i.e. visible resemblance to human organs, bodily fluids or disease symptoms, and that these signatures indicate the curative effects of natural things. Throughout the centuries, the doctrine of signatures has been veiled by layers of constructions: some argue that it originated from sixteenth-century Swiss physician Paracelsus, some trace it back to antiquity, and some see it as a worldwide universal practice of primitive analogical thinking. Unsurprisingly, the theory of signatures is often taken as an emblem of the superstitious, magical premodern era, in opposition to any scientific worldviews.
This lecture will offer a historical overview of the theories and practices of signatures in early modern European medicine, from its earliest theorisation in sixteenth-century German-speaking countries to its transformation and popularisation in seventeenth-century England. By contextualising signatures in medical recipes and chymical operations, this lecture argues that the signature was actually a highly empirical idea developed through tested remedies and widely-used cures. Despite its mystical theorisation, the doctrine of signatures did not work as an a priori principle in early modern medicine, but as a selection mechanism for useful, memorisable recipes across various schools and traditions of medicine. Rather than simply making visual associations, many proponents of the signature theory explained the appearance, smell and taste of natural things with their chymical components, and promoted physiological investigations of medicinal plants. This lecture may challenge our conventional image of the doctrine of signatures: ideas that we usually consider as remote and superstitious were actually recent and rationalised.
Xinyi Wen is a PhD candidate at Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge. She is currently working on research project ‘The Doctrine of Signatures in Early Modern Medical Practice (Wellcome Trust 221115/Z/20/Z)’. Her project approaches questions concerning Renaissance analogical worldview and early modern magic-science transition from the perspective of medical practice, and pays particular attention to the temporalities behind our conventional image of ‘the doctrine of signatures’ today. Her research interest covers multiple disciplines of early modern knowledge, including medicine, chymistry, natural history and philosophy. In addition to the early modern era, she also studies twentieth-century intellectual history, particularly in the circle of art historian Aby Warburg (1866-1929), and has a broad interest in anthropology, media theories and contemporary philosophy. She holds a BPhil in philosophy and classical studies from Peking University, and an MPhil in history of science and medicine from University of Cambridge.
Please RSVP to be sent joining details on the day of the event via email. This event will take place on Zoom (limited capacity) and YouTube.
This event is free to attend but prior registration is required. To register/mor information, please follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-doctrine-of-signatures-in-early-modern-medicine-tickets-273871526107?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch
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Tutankhamun, the End of a Dynasty. A Virtual Experience
Part of the Ancient Egypt Virtual Tours Classics collection
Date and time: Fri, April 1, 2022, 7:30 PM – 8:30 PM BST
Discover the most famous family of the ancient world. Why it was erased from history until the 20th century?
Why did Akhenaton try to "kill" the Egyptian gods and replace them with a single god, Aton? Was it a political revolutionary project or great spirituality? Why was the new capital Amarna abandoned after few years? What's the role of Nefertiti's and her daughters in the story? Who pharaoh Smenkhara really was? And why did Tutankhamon destroy what his father created?
Our guide (a PhD Egyptologist) will answer these and many more questions during a 60 minutes virtual session.
With the help of 3D historical reconstructions, satellite pictures and slides, the guide will lead you back in time to Akhenaton's reign. We'll meet the great pharaoh, his beautiful and mysterious wife Nefertiti, his children, his "new" god Aton.
We'll explore the new capital he established: Akhetaten, mostly known as Amarna.
We'll try to understand the political and religious reasons behind the most famous "failed revolution" of the ancient world.
And finally we'll try to understand the importance of the newfound Lost Golden City in Luxor.
This event is free to attend but prior registration is required. To register/mor information, please follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/tutankhamun-the-end-of-a-dynasty-a-virtual-experience-tickets-298588826217?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch&keep_tld=1
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Pompeii in Color: Cycles of Discovery, Innovation, and Wonderment by Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at NYU
Date and time: Wed, April 13, 2022, 10:00 PM – 11:00 PM BST
About this event
Exhibition Lecture: Pompeii in Color: Cycles of Discovery, Innovation, and Wonderment
Eric Poehler, Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Registration is required. You will receive the necessary Zoom information under the "Additional Information" section in the confirmation email from Eventbrite upon registration. You will receive the Zoom link again in an additional email an hour before the lecture begins.
Having emerged, quite literally, from the ashes of Mount Vesuvius, Pompeii has proven to be a kind of archeological Phoenix. More than a symbol of destruction and rebirth, Pompeii has offered each generation a cycle of discovery in which excavation reveals new materials that spurs a sense of fascination among both scholars and the public. This, in turn, leads to research that generates both new understandings and new questions that drive the desire for new discoveries. Such cycles, however, are not all of equal kind or quality, and some spark a revolution in Pompeian studies, and beyond. It is the revolutions that are the focus of this paper. From the early antiquarian interests of the 18th century to the intensive digital investigations of the early 21st, the methods that archeologists employ at Pompeii shape how we understand the ancient city. At the same time, the evolving condition of the city and scale of its excavation change what can be studied, demanding the development of new methods and the abandonment of others. Throughout, what remains unchanged is the sense of wonderment that each new discovery at Pompeii produces, presenting the ancient world in vibrant, living colors.
Eric Poehler is Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has published widely on Roman urbanism, infrastructure, and architectural history, authoring or co-authoring more than 25 articles and book chapters, as well as the books Pompeii: Art, Industry, and Infrastructure (2011) and The Traffic Systems of Pompeii (2017). Poehler is also active in the digital humanities, formerly serving as the Director of the Five Colleges Blended Learning and Digital Humanities programs and as Co-Director of the Digital Humanities Initiative at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His major digital project, The Pompeii Bibliography and Mapping Project, was awarded the Archaeological Institute of America’s 2018 Award for Outstanding Work in Digital Archaeology. This project served as the basis of his latest project, the Pompeii Artistic Landscape Project, co-directed with Sebastian Heath and generously funded through the Getty Foundation.
This event is free to attend but prior registration is required. To register/mor information, please follow this link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pompeii-in-color-cycles-of-discovery-innovation-and-wonderment-registration-250949876837?aff=ebdssbonlinesearch&keep_tld=1
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Gothica: Cannibalism and the Gothic
Date and time: Thurs 31st March 5-7pm (GMT)
Our next gruesome session will be on 'Cannibalism & the Gothic.’ Guest speakers Dr Rebecca Frost & Dr Jimmy Packham will be joining us, discussing Han Kang's The Vegetarian, the culturally accepted cannibalism & bloodlust.
Email uobgothica@gmail.com for the link or find them on twitter @Gothica_UoB and message them for the link.
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CALLS FOR PAPERS
Gaslighting in Victorian and neo-Victorian Literature and Film
Open Calls For Papers And Roundtables
Deadline: 15th April 2022
Proposed panel for NAVSA 2022: Just Victorians
"Gaslighting in Victorian and neo-Victorian Literature and Film"
Organized by Nora Gilbert, University of North Texas and Tara MacDonald, University of Idaho
Taking up the call to reconsider nineteenth-century commitments to justice, this proposed panel explores gaslighting in Victorian and neo-Victorian literature and film. The term has reentered popular culture and media in recent years, appearing in countless headlines related to sex, race, politics, medicine, and emotional abuse. The origin of the term, however, is Victorian: it derives from Patrick Hamilton’s 1938 play—and, more famously, the 1944 Hollywood adaptation of the play—"Gaslight," set in late-Victorian London.
Philosopher Kate Abramson defines gaslighting as “a form of emotional manipulation in which the gaslighter tries (consciously or not) to induce in someone the sense that her reactions, perceptions, memories and/or beliefs are not just mistaken, but utterly without grounds.” How did Victorians depict and define gaslighting in literature of the period? And how does neo-Victorian fiction and film (re)imagine such scenarios? We are also interested in creative approaches to this concept, such as gaslighting narrators or texts, or ways in which contemporary understandings of gaslighting might be informed by historical approaches (or vice versa). Papers addressing pedagogical approaches are welcome, too.
Please send 300-word abstracts plus short bios by April 15 2022 to Nora Gilbert and Tara MacDonald at Nora.Gilbert@unt.edu and tmacdonald@uidaho.edu.
More information: https://wordpress.lehigh.edu/navsa2022/open-calls-for-papers-and-roundtables/
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Special Issue Call for Papers: "Writing Aslant: Voicing across Genders in Nineteenth-Century Literature"
Deadline for submissions: January 15, 2023
Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies
contact email: mspeer@uci.edu
https://www.ncgsjournal.com/cfp.htmlThe term aslant slips between categories: as an adverb it indicates a direction or orientation, but as a preposition it moves across. Neither is it straight nor does it ever quite arrive, remaining in transition. A vowel away from Emily Dickinson’s imperative for poets to “tell it slant,” it strays even further. Under the oblique auspices of this word, this special issue of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies pays homage to those whom history has called “bent,” to queer orientations and perspectives, authorial clinamen from prior understandings of gender, errant genres—in short, to writerly voices that have strayed beyond gender categories of male and female. How did literature in nineteenth-century Britain produce gender aslant? How did nineteenth-century understandings of gender produce literature?We welcome essays that engage literary texts ranging across the British nineteenth century where gender runs adrift of the male/female binary, slants across it, or refuses it altogether. This special issue seeks to recognize the ways writers across the British empire turned to cross-gender identification, nonbinary gender expression, and intersex experience in producing, representing, and reconceiving of gender discourses—and therefore of literary production itself. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
transgender, genderqueer, and nonbinary subjects in and of literature
writing as a technology of gender transition, cross-gender ventriloquism
pseudonyms, pen names, authorial signatures
sex, gender, and narrative voice
gender and literary style
third gender categories across the British empire
transgender narratives and the construction of racial categories
class and gender roles
androgyny and/or inversion
translations of and across gender
literary writing against sexology
The deadline for submissions is January 15, 2023. Essays should range from 5,000–8,000 words, following MLA style guidelines. Please include a brief biographical statement.Queries and completed essays should be sent to the co-editors of this special issue: Mary Mussman (mary.mussman@berkeley.edu) and Margaret Speer (mspeer@uci.edu).
More information: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/16/special-issue-call-for-papers-writing-aslant-voicing-across-genders-in-nineteenth
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