Thursday 27 November 2014

Our thanks to Dr.K. M. Sumathi

Marriage subverting ideals, television as window into or in the prison cell, and the psychosis and murder.

Monday 24 November 2014

Francesco Giomi: masterclass and concert at University of Salford (28/11)

Tempo Reale - Electroacoustic Masterclass and Concert this Friday

 
Francesco Giomi of the Conservatorio di Musica in Bologna will be running workshops with Salford musicians this week, culminating in a masterclass and evening concert at Media City. This will be a wonderful showcase of live electronics and improvisation – Don’t miss it!

 
28th of November 2014

Digital Performance Lab, University of Salford Building, Media City

12.30 – 14.00 Masterclass

19.30 Concert

21.30 Reception

 
Tickets can be obtained from Richard Rock (r.rock@salford.ac.uk) or at the event itself, but will be limited to 150 places, so get in touch to reserve a seat

NWCDTP / University of Salford PhD scholarships: Eng Lit / Creative Writing

The School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford is inviting applications to our PhD programme. The School is a member of the North West Consortium (alongside Liverpool, Manchester University, MMU, Keele, Lancaster and the Royal Northern College of Music) that was recently awarded an AHRC Block Grant Partnership, which provides a series of studentships that are supplemented by other studentships funded by the School. These awards benefit from their location in the vibrant and culturally-rich cites of the North West


Applicants applying to work in Creative Writing, English and Linguistics can apply for studentships on a competitive basis with applicants to other subjects within the school and to other institutions within the consortium. For UK students or students from EU countries who have been resident for at least three years in the UK, these awards cover both fees and maintenance and for EU residents awards are on a fees only basis.


If you are interested in applying for a PhD in Creative Writing, English and Linguistics at Salford, please contact the Director of Research for English, Scott Thurston (s.thurston@salford.ac.uk) who will help guide you through the process. Below is a list of our research interests and staff:


ENGLISH LITERATURE

Any aspects of nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century British, Irish and Global Literature and Culture with additional foci on Gender, Sexuality and Deviance; Post-Colonial Studies; Global Modernisms; Conflict, Violence and Memory. Staff include: Caroline Magennis, Jade Munslow Ong, Janice Allan, Jane Kilby, Glyn White, Carson Bergstrom, Andrew Cooper, Francis Piper.


CREATIVE WRITING

We have a strong record of practice-based research in Creative Writing. PhDs are composed of a substantial creative project with an accompanying contextualising document of at least 25,000 words. Areas include: Visual Text, Experimental Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction, Literary Biography, Young Adult Fiction, Post-Dramatic Performance, Innovative and Experimental Poetry. Staff include: Ursula Hurley, Gill James, Judy Kendall, Scott Thurston, Kate Adams, Szilvi Naray-Davey.


Prospective applicants who are interested in applying and eligible for funding will need to submit a draft PhD proposal by Wednesday the 3 December, 2014. Please send this directly to the Director of Research for English Dr Scott Thurston: s.thurston@salford.ac.uk and to CASS-PGRSupport@salford.ac.uk


Following that it will be necessary to complete a formal application for PhD study at the University of Salford by the 23rd of January 2015, available here:


The deadline for the formal application to the Northwest Consortium is before 5PM on the 13th of February 2015.


For further information, please see these links:



Thursday 20 November 2014

GradProg talk this Weds: Marriage as the Medium of Exploitation in "Wife" by Bharati Mukherjee

 


Wednesday 26 November 2014 4.30pm - 5.45pm
Venue: Room 2.19, MediaCityUK
 
 
 
Wife by Bharati Mukherjee
This talk highlights marriage as the medium of exploitation in Bharati Mukherjee’s Wife. Women are seen as indissoluble from the family and most functions assigned to family are indirectly assigned to women. The family places mammoth obligations on women’s shoulders and contours on their place and rewards in the toil market their roles in local, national and international affairs. Marriages are rooted in the Indian tradition: they are arranged by the family, and the people concerned have no choice. Social anxiety and social convention lead to the failure of marriages but since divorce is not allowed, people still have to live with each other. As a consequence, the characters experience alienation, and the terrible pressure children are subjected to, generally has its roots in failed marriages. Let us take the case of women: they cannot find fulfillment in marriage. The modern woman lives in a society dominated by men and marriage recurrently brings annihilation of the wife’s individual persona. The view embodied female cohort Amit Basu is no company for Dimple, they are mismatched. Mukherjee takes up the quandary of a wife’s adjustments in her husband’s home.
 
 
Dr.K. M. Sumathi, a specialist in Indian Writing in English, has 16 years of teaching experience and 10 years of Research experience (and has supervised 3 PhD scholars). She is the Recipient of the First Time Speaker Award instituted by the British Council, UK, and chaired at the First International Conference of the English Language Teachers Association of India (ELTAI) in association with British Council, Chennai, Tamilnadu on 3 and 4 of Feb 2005. She was also awarded a Major Research Project (2011-2013) funded by University Grants Commission of India for her project entitled Strengthening Communication and Vocational Skills of the Differently Abled for Self-Employability in Dindigul District, Tamilnadu, India. She was competitively selected as an Academic Visitor to visit University of Salford this year.

Friday 14 November 2014

Terry Victor


Our thanks to Terry Victor for his fantastic talk: gesture at the quilting point of language, new (video) lexicons of expression, the obscene as politely unsaid but boldly enacted, cultural contexts as manifest in the trajectories of flailing.

Thursday 13 November 2014

AHRC / NWC Scholarships in Media and Communications areas at Salford



We invite applications for PhD scholarships (full and part-time) from the Arts and Humanities Research Council’s North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership, in the Media and Communications Pathway.





The Scholarship covers all PhD fees, provides an annual stipend for the duration of your study, and funding for field research and further training.

Deadline for Expression of Interest: Wednesday 3rd December 2014

The University of Salford is a member of the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership (NWC DTP), which includes non-HE institutions such as the BBC, Home/Cornerhouse, Tate Liverpool, Opera North, FutureEverything, and FACT (Liverpool). In 2014, the Partnership was awarded £14 million of funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to deliver postgraduate supervision, training and skills development.



The School of Arts and Media at the University of Salford has an international reputation for cutting edge research, both theoretical and practice-based, and is especially strong in the area of Media and Communications, as demonstrated by its performance in the 2008 RAE in the Communication, Cultural and Media studies area of assessment (ranked 13th nationally, according to the power ranking).



Our media research environment is based at the heart of MediaCityUK, allowing for a unique access and engagement with media institutions like the BBC and ITV, reinforced by a rich programme of research events with both an industry and academic focus. NWC PhD students will be invited to work with our non-HE partners, so as to engage in research, placements and internships.



Media research within the School of Arts and Media is diverse, interdisciplinary and collaborative and has seen numerous internationally recognised outputs from academics as well as successful PhD completions and publication outputs.



Areas of expertise of our academic staff include: Film practice; Film history and theory; Media Policy; Journalism studies; Celebrity studies; Media theory; Digital culture; Social media; radical and alternative media; cyber terrorism; Internet regulation and governance; Television studies; Media politics; Transnational media; Urban cultures; Creative industries; noise; Celebrity Studies; popular music and media.



Notable Salford media academics include: Prof Erik Knudsen, Prof Seamus Simpson, Professor Garry Crawford, Dr Michael Goddard, Dr Andy Willis, Dr Benjamin Halligan, Dr Kirsty Fairclough-Isaacs, Dr Lloyd Peters, , Dr Sharon Coen, Dr Cristina Archetti and Dr Steve Ward.

See our CCM staff pages for further details:
http://www.salford.ac.uk/arts-media/research/ccm/people 

as well as our current PhD students page: 

http://www.salford.ac.uk/arts-media/research/ccm/phd-students

How to Apply:

Prospective applicants who are interested in applying ­and eligible for funding ­will need to submit a draft PhD proposal by Wednesday the 3 December, 2014. Please send this directly to the NWC media pathway leader Dr Michael Goddard: m.n.goddard@salford.ac.uk and to CASS-PGRSupport@salford.ac.uk

We would expect you to have a first degree, and a completed or current MA, or equivalent professional experience.



Following that it will be necessary to complete a formal application for PhD study at the University of Salford by the 23rd of January, which is available here: http://www.salford.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/applying/applying-for-research and ultimately an application to the Northwest Consortium before 5PM, on the 13th of February.



For further information, please see our AHRC funding page: http://www.salford.ac.uk/study/postgraduate/fees-and-funding/ahrc-studentships

and further information is available, including eligibility criteria and scholarship stipend rates, at NWC DTP site:



If you have further queries about the research specialisms in media in the School of Arts and Media, and the potentials for working with our non-HE partners, please contact the media pathway leader Dr Michael Goddard:
m.n.goddard@salford.ac.uk



If you have any question regarding the formal application procedure please contact CASS-PGRSupport@salford.ac.uk

Friday 7 November 2014

SAM PGR Talks 12/11: Progression Points & Submissions / Awkward Turtle Flips the Bird

12th of November

Room 2.20, University of Salford campus at MediaCityUK
http://www.salford.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0011/42500/MediaCity-map.pdf

Times:
Internal speakers, 3.30-4.20pm; External speakers, 4.30-5.45pm.

Internal Speaker: Dr Benjamin Halligan (Director of Postgraduate Research, CASS)
Progression Points, Regulations, Submissions and Vivas
This session with review paperwork required by all PGRs across the course of the year, offer tips for successful completion and registration, and offer guidance on the “before and after” of the Viva experience.

External Speaker: Terry Victor (freelance playwright and performer)
Awkward Turtle Flips the Bird
Terry Victor’s practice-led research talk will focus on his Awkward Turtle Flips the Bird, a multi-media exploration of gestural slang as immersive theatre and gallery installation: physical-verbatim theatre, by turns playful, dark, romantic, surprising and dangerous, blending live action with documentary visuals. The Awkward Turtle Flips the Bird project is conceived and directed by Terry Victor with choreography by Rob McNeill. Hundreds of everyday gestures, familiar and fanciful, dance through their fractured narratives. This is thought to be the first time anyone has ever attempted to stage a dictionary, and doing so presents a number of interesting challenges. The notion of staging some form of dictionary has challenged our Artistic Director for a number of years. The two main threads in his professional life are creative performance and slang linguistics - the gestural vocabulary of slang is where they meet and the sparks fly.


Terry Victor is a playwright, storyteller, comedy sketch writer, short story and article writer plus dictionary compiler. He combines writing with a career as an actor and performer. He has scripted numerous "murder mystery" events. Terry’s New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English was published with Routledge in 2005. Further titles are contracted to follow. He is a regular contributor to the BBC as lexicographer, book reviewer and ranconteur. http://www.terryvictor.co.uk/