Joanna Walsh reading from Hotel at the Bloomsbury C21 Conference 2016: Writing and Insecurity followed by an author Q&A, led by C21’s Liam Connell.
For more information about the conference visit our conference page. Details of Hotel can be found at the Bloomsbury website and you can find information about Joanna and her work on her own webpage.
This video is stored at the University of Brighton’s media library https://mediastream.brighton.ac.uk/Play/4381.
“A Theory of Everything”: Contemporary Fiction and the Financial Mapping of the World, Paul Crosthwaite (University of Edinburgh)
11th Nov 2015
Running time 42:22
This paper explores the Godlike omniscience widely attributed to financial markets in contemporary culture. In the work of leftist novelists and rightwing economists alike, the market stands alone as the great, comprehensive record of our individual and collective histories. Such a view reaches its apotheosis in the present-day “efficient market hypothesis,” with its claim that financial prices “always ‘fully reflect’ all available information.” Deploying Fredric Jameson’s notion of a “political unconscious,” it will be argued that efficient market thinking is subtended by a fantasy of communal existence that is veritably utopian in its scope. Further drawing on Jameson’s work, Crosthwaite suggests that this fantasy amounts to the desire for a total “cognitive mapping” of the world, a mapping that new technologies of data processing appear to have brought tantalizingly within reach. In his post-credit crunch novel Gods Without Men (2011), Hari Kunzru depicts a data-scanning financial computer program that appears nothing short of divine in its capacity to absorb the world’s information in all its plenitude. In the process, Kunzru adopts a style of narration that strives for what Crosthwaite (echoing Roland Barthes’s notion of the “reality effect”) terms a “totality effect.” As Kunzru ultimately insists, however, the fantasy of a fully automated financial market infallibly mapping the contours of the real is unsustainable, for markets can and do move dangerously out of sync with underlying economic realities.
Paul Crosthwaite is a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh. His publications include Trauma, Postmodernism, and the Aftermath of World War II (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); articles in Angelaki, Cultural Critique, Cultural Politics, The Journal of Cultural Economy, New Formations, Public Culture, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, and Textual Practice; and, as editor, Criticism, Crisis, and Contemporary Narrative: Textual Horizons in an Age of Global Risk (Routledge, 2011). He is a curator of the exhibition “Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present” and an editor of the accompanying book from Manchester University Press (2014). He is currently completing a monograph entitled Speculative Investments: Finance, Feeling, and Representation in Contemporary Literature and Culture.
‘Black British Women Writers: Our Past, Our Present, Our Future’
Q and A with the author via Skype on ‘We Are What We Think’.
Selected readings
Selected readings
Selected readings
Graphic Brighton was a public event organised to celebrate the community of those writing, drawing, creating and publishing comics in Brighton. Held on Saturday 24th May 2014, the programme included panel talks, one to one surgeries, Q and A’s, interactive presentations and hands-on workshops all delivered by artists, writers and publishers from and around Brighton.
Alex Fitch, co-organisor of the event, offers us his impression of the day:
From the point of view of a member of staff, the University of Brighton does a fair amount to promote and educate about comic book culture. There is a module on graphic novels taught within the literature department at Falmer, a sequential design / illustration MA at Grand Parade and other art and illustration graduates have used comics as their medium of choice. However in terms of presenting this interest to the wider public, the University’s public events have been small or esoteric in their engagement with the medium; a conference at the Brighton and Sussex Medical School in July 2013 explored the burgeoning sub-genre of Graphic Medicine (i.e. comic books with a medical narrative) and recent University of Brighton writer in residence Isabel Ashdown presented a ‘graphic novel salon’ with a pair of writer / artists and their editor in November last year.
While these have been brilliant and worthwhile occasions, Spring 2014’s Graphic Brighton event was designed as a broader one day introduction to the medium with a focus on local creators. To this end, a mixture of panel discussions, workshops and single creator focussed talks gave a both a survey of work written and drawn by Brightonians and a flavour of the current graphic novel and comic book scene, albeit with this geographical constraint.
My involvement might be surprising to some University of Brighton colleagues as I’m employed as a member of the support staff in Information Services, and won’t be starting my Masters degree at the University until this autumn; however, outside of the campus, I have presented the UK’s only weekly radio show on comic books on the Arts Council Radio Station in London – Resonance 104.4 FM – since 2007 and have spoken about the medium at the University of London, the Science Museum and at Guardian Weekender events. Becoming a co-curator of Graphic Brighton was due to happenstance, an encounter with lecturers Paul Slater and Barbara Chamberlin at the aforementioned salon, but this proved to be a rewarding and invigorating experience, helping to organise the University’s first foray into public comic book events with the beneficial input of the C21 department. Paul and Barbara performed the lion’s share of organising the event, with help from my address book in finding guests and speakers, but gave me the pleasurable role of hosting the day itself and liaising with the brilliant artist – Daniel Locke – who designed the poster and flyers.
This inaugural salvo in promoting comics in Brighton was pitched somewhere between the more formal academic conferences the University is used to holding and the cosplay / signing / jumble-sale attributes of ‘traditional’ comic book conventions.
On the day itself at Graphic Brighton, I had the joy of chairing the panel discussions that bookended the day and a Q&A with cartoonist and illustrator Chris Riddell after the break for lunch. These panels were illuminating and entertaining as various creators spoke about how Brighton itself has been an inspirational location for them to work in and with the help of local publishers such as Myriad Editions, a venue where the graphic novel medium itself can be furthered in its ambitions. The closing panel – “What makes a good graphic novel?” – lead to a vibrant discussion of the medium itself, looking at topics that included ‘What differentiates this relatively recent term from comics as a whole?’ and the creation of a neologism as a marketing tool, led by insights from veteran creator David Lloyd.
Innovative examples of recent graphic novels discussed, included the diary style narratives of an artist Nicola Streeten, who only just moved to the area, and the first book length work by former American comic creator Nye Wright (now also a Brighton resident) which incorporates medical diagrams and Classical mythology into its pages. These show that ‘graphic novels’ are a form (beyond their first incarnations as comics with a longer page count and a spine) that perhaps have much greater possibilities for redefinition and storytelling potential than monthly comic book periodicals.
Outside of the panel discussions, my interview with Chris Riddell traversed his parallel careers as a political cartoonist and children’s illustrator, and displayed his great passion for sequential and narrative art. I also had the pleasure of sitting in on a workshop that looked at the story-telling potential of ‘silent comics’, i.e. strips with no word balloons or captions, chaired by another member of UoB support staff Paul O’Connell (a great comic book creator in his own right), and I look forward to sharing recordings of this and other sessions from the day as podcasts over the next few months.
Looking forward to 2015, Paul, Barbara and myself are in the early days of planning another Graphic Brighton day (or weekend) – with the date, location and format still under discussion – but with the positive and appreciative attendance by staff, students and the general public of all ages at the first iteration, we look forward to building on this foundation with further compelling events to come.
Alex Fitch produces the Panel Borders blog and radio show on Resonance 104.4 FM
Podcasts from this event can be found here
blockquote>Graphic Brighton was a public event organised to celebrate the community of those writing, drawing, creating and publishing comics in Brighton. Held on Saturday 24th May 2014, the programme included panel talks, one to one surgeries, Q and A’s, interactive presentations and hands-on workshops all delivered by artists, writers and publishers from and around Brighton.
Podcasts from this event are available courtesy of Alex Fitch at Panel Borders:
David Lloyd, Corinne Pearlman, Hannah Berry, Nicola Streeten, Hannah Eaton and Ian Williams try to answer the question: ‘What makes a good graphic novel?’ in a panel discussion chaired by Alex Fitch.
http://panelborders.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/graphic-brighton-podcast-what-is-a-good-graphic-novel/
Graphic Brighton | 24 May 2014 | University of Brighton
Read Alex Fitch’s guest post on this event here
More information on this event can be found on the Centre21 website
This inaugural conference marking the mutual affliation between Centre21 and Bloomsbury Publishing was held on 10-11 April 2014 at the University of Brighton. As the twenty-first century enters its problematic teenage years, this conference examined how we define and understand C21 writings in English and the forms they take. This two day brought together academics, publishers and creative writers to consider twenty-first century literary developments and how they have changed what we write and read today and the future of Literature in the twenty-first century.
Graphic Story Telling: New Ways of Seeing
Comics, sequential art, graphic novels – this is a medium that can embrace all kinds of literature. Are we seeing graphic novels with new eyes? Have we reached a new age of visual literacy? Why do they seem so ‘happening’? Though many still get hung up on the terminology, new readers – and new creators – are discovering that they don’t have to be experts to realise the amazing potential of this ninth art. This session reports on the rise and rise of the graphic novel and remarks on its interdisciplinary nature, asking each of the panellists how they came to choose this form, and where they’d like to see it going in the future. Featuring: Hannah Eaton (Naming Monsters); Alex Fitch (host of Panel Borders, the UK’s only regular comics broadcast); Ai Takita-Lucas (AKA Inko); Nye Wright (Things to do in a Retirement Home Trailer Park); Chair: Corinne Pearlman, Creative Director and Graphics Editor, Myriad Editions.
Part 1 – Introduction; Alex Fitch | Part 2 – Inko (Ai Takita-Lucas) | Part 3 – Hannah Eaton | Part 4 – Nye Wright |
Part 5 – Q&A
Bloomsbury C21 Writings Conference 2014
10-11 April 2014
University of Brighton