Join our next Work in Progress Seminar – organised by the Centre for Memory, Narrative and Histories.
Topic: De-Specialising Research Writing, or Writing for People you Care about
Presenter: Patricia Mcmanus
Time: Wednesday 8 March 17:30
Place: Grand Parade room G4
No need to book, just turn up – all welcome.
This work-in-progress session will take the history of dystopian fiction as a case-study in scholarly redundancy and the options for building a proper reading public.
Why do so few people read academic research? Arguments about the relevance of the humanities rarely consider reading as a material practice. If we produce scholarly work, we do so in the hope that it is read. Increasingly however, academics do not have time to read nor do our students. Who is reading academic work? Is there a way of breaking out of the nonsensical but fiercely compelling publish-or-perish cycle?
Come and join the discussion.
Also, contact us with your ideas about future sessions.
The CMNH work in progress series aim to open up an informal space where projects are discussed early on as they develop, researchers of all levels of experience sharing their ideas, plans, and questions around method, structure and theory exactly as their work progresses. Our hope is that through these sessions we encourage the development of radical work and a collectivist ethos among researchers working on the centre’s main areas and more widely on interdisciplinary humanities. Here is an indicative list of the sessions that we can run:
– Testing Ideas, where people discuss and test early ideas, exploring ways of shaping them
– Early stage planning, where we discuss more practical, methodological questions on how to build our projects.
– Draft written work, where we can discuss questions of form, content, voice, method, audience etc. For these sessions small pieces of max 2000 words can be pre-circulated
– Beginners’ Guide to …, where we discuss academic theories, concepts, and methods that nobody dares to ask because we assume we should already know the answers.
– One-off reading groups, discussing new or old publications and theories, their importance and uses.
