‘Cultivating Research’
Seminar series, Autumn 2014
All talks held in the Martin Harris Centre.
1.
Dr. Hayley Bradley & Dr. Felicia Chan (University of Manchester):
“Rethinking Auteur and Artisan in Film and Theatre Historiography”
Tuesday 14th October, 5.15pm SLO1
Coming
from different disciplines, Hayley Bradley (theatre history) and
Felicia Chan (film and cultural studies) will explore questions arising
from their current research
into “forgotten” figures in theatre and film history — Henry Hamilton
(1854 to 1918) and contemporary Chinese women filmmakers (Ann Hui et
al). Although unlikely to appear together in any anthology or scholarly
context (other than this one!), there are resonances
across how these figures seem to have been written out of the history
and frameworks of our disciplines. Through this inter-disciplinary
conversation, we seek to rethink the politics of representation beyond
grand narratives of ‘discovery’ and ‘innovation’,
and to reconsider how the auteur and artisan have been conceptualised
in/across our disciplines.
2.
Dr. Liz Tomlin (University of Birmingham): ‘The agency of
the spectator in the individualized society’
Tuesday 4th November, 5.15pm, SLO1
Leading
sociologists, such as Zygmunt Bauman and Ulrich Beck, have been
defining global capitalism as the age of ‘institutionalised
individualization’ since the early 1990s,
yet such theories retain their currency and urgency today. This
research presentation will highlight key aspects of their analysis in
order to ask difficult questions about the efficacy – or inefficacy – of
theatre as a vehicle for political change in the
twenty-first century. Beginning
with the familiar premise that political theatre should seek, in the
broadest terms, to shift each spectator’s perception of the reality in
which they live, I will suggest
that this emphasis on the individual spectator, and his or her own
responsibility for change, runs up against problems in the light of
recent theories of individualization.
3.
Professor Dan Rebellato (Royal Holloway, University of London):
“Naturalism and the Problem of Homosexuality”
Tuesday 2nd December, 5.15pm, SLO1
Naturalist
theatre was a movement that placed the highest priority on representing
the contemporary world, exposing social problems, and drawing on the
latest scientific thinking
to do so. So why didn’t it address homosexuality, which would seem to
meet all of these requirements? Or, since it’s too crude to say simply
that it didn’t, in what ways did it not address homosexuality and why?
What does it mean to say historically that ‘something
didn’t happen’? In this paper, part of a larger book project on
Naturalism on stage, I want to look at the multiple absences of
homosexuality in Naturalist Theatre, drawing on a range of different
instances and case studies. The talk will touch on theatre
and literature, urban studies, psychology and sexology, military and
art history, international relations, legal theory, criminology,
cultural studies, and late-nineteenth-century French history.
