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Sunday 16 December 2012

NUS/Amnesty International Student Journalist Competition

The National Union of Students and Amnesty International are running a competition to find the best student human rights reporter of the year. 

Now in its 3rd year, this year the competition offers its best prize yet – as well as an invitation to the Amnesty International Media Awards attended by over 400 leading members of British media for all the shortlisted entrants, the winner will receive the following:

·         Up to $2,000 Pulitzer Student Travel Reporting Fellowship
·         Two weeks' work experience at the Observer
·         The winning article published in full or in part by the Observer

The Pulitzer prize is a Pulitzer Centre Student Fellowship which includes a travel grant of up to $2000 to cover an unreported topic of the winner’s choice. The winner will also get mentorship from Pulitzer staff and professional journalists and assistance in pitching their story to leading media outlets.

Entry should be in the form of an article of up to 2000 words or radio or television report of up to 10 minutes in length submitted before 18 February 2013.
Full details of the competition are available at www.amnesty.org.uk/studentreporter

 

Tuesday 11 December 2012

Jeremy Tambling | Hölderlin and Parataxis | Weds 4pm

This week is the final EAC Research Seminar of the semester. Professor Jeremy Tambling will give a paper entitled 'Hölderlin and Parataxis'. Due to Wednesday also being a day of end-of-term parties, the start time this week is 4pm, and the room is A113.

 

I'll take this opportunity to apologise for those who suffered from a late room change last week. We moved from A113 to avoid a potential clash, and the sign on the door wasn't clear enough. This week, nothing will unfix us from A113.

 

Look forward to seeing many of you there and to seeing in the end of this long term.

Thursday 6 December 2012

Doctoral funding

Information about the AHRC, ESRC and PDS funding competitions are now up on the ALC Graduate School website here: http://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/graduateschool/funding/

You can find out about the Graduate School and our doctoral programmes and resources by going to chttp://www.alc.manchester.ac.uk/graduateschool/funding/ or twitter.com/alcgradschool

Wednesday 5 December 2012

Tonight's research seminar

A further note to remind you of tonight's research seminar, with our speaker Tom Day from UCLAN. 'Insider Dealings in Geoffrey Hill' is the title: Hill is the current Oxford Professor of Poetry, that significant and perenially controversial post, and is in Manchester tomorrow to give a reading as part of the UoM Literature Live series. 5pm, Samuel Alexander A113: it will be good to see you there!

Christmas Carolathon


From 9.30-2 next Wednesday 12 December we will be reading A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens out loud in aid of the homeless charity Shelter.

It will take place in the Graduate School Common Room, Mansfield Cooper 2.05.
There will be mince pies!

If you want to participate, please email Jerome.degroot@manchester.ac.uk
You can donate to Shelter here: http://www.justgiving.com/EASXmasCarolOutLoud

All welcome!

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Insider Dealings in Geoffrey Hill

The EAC Research Seminar is back this Wednesday with a paper from Tom Day (UCLAN) entitled 'Insider Dealings in Geoffrey Hill'. The poet Hill is in Manchester on Thursday to give a reading at the John Rylands, and we have taken the opportunity to complement it with a paper. We will continue for drinks. All are welcome: check @EASSeminar or contact iain.bailey@manchester.ac.uk for further details.

Friday 30 November 2012

Max Weber seminar

Thinking the present with Max Weber: The University, the Scholar and the Student
Organised by the Max Weber Study Group of the BSA. Supported by the University of Salford & UCU Salford

   7 December 2012, Clifford Whitworth Conference Room, University of Salford (Manchester)

A one-day seminar on the situation of the university, part of a seminar series devoted to thinking our current predicament. With the participation of very prominent scholars from home and abroad, this seminar will reflect on the current state of the university and its attendant practices:  what is the meaning of scholarly work and teaching when the scholar is faced by a series of sometimes contradictory conditions and imperatives: output targets in research, ‘the student experience’ in teaching coupled with compulsory debt-financing (huge fees) for students, the tension between instrumentalism and knowledge for its own sake, between a public and a market-driven university ethos, between a collegial institution and a hierarchical organisation.  What is the meaning of the new regime under which universities are put to work, with its ‘quality’ indicators and debt-incurring devices, in terms of the pedagogy practised, the kinds of reason relied on, as well as the type of human being presupposed by such regime and resulting from its implementation? More generally, what kind of scholar, what kind of student, what type of human being, is being produced by these practices?

Contact: Carlos Frade, University of Salford, c.frade@salford.ac.uk
Seminar programme available at http://www.britsoc.co.uk/media/45780/Thinking_the_present_with_Max_Weber_wkshp_1.pdf

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Social Enterprise Lite Competition

Are you currently working or studying at the University of Manchester or a recent graduate?
Do you have an idea likely to benefit the public or community, or be an entrpreneurial solution to a social or environmental problem?
If so, then the UMI3 Social Enterprise ‘Lite’ Competition is for you!

Following the successful Social Enterprise Competition held earlier this year in association with the Faculty of Humanities, the University of Manchester has been chosen as one of 56 partners in the HEFCE/UnLtd Higher Education Support Programme.  As a result we are delighted to announce the expansion of this initiative into a University-wide competition.  The new Social Enterprise Competition will be officially launched in January 2013 with a funding pot of £50,000.  However, as a taster of things to come, the Social Enterprise ‘Lite’ Competition is to encourage people to apply for small awards of up to £500 to kick-start their ideas.
Your idea does not have to be overtly technology based or a commercial idea.  The competition seeks as broad a range of entries as possible.

The competition is now open!
Eligibility:
The competition is open to all University of Manchester staff, students, and recent graduates (graduated within the last 12 months).
Deadline for submissions:
Friday 7 December, 5.00pm
All successful applicants will be notified by Tuesday 18 December with a view to starting their projects in early January 2013.
Awards:
Funding of up to £500, for individuals to try out their ideas.  This might mean finding out if their idea is viable, learning more about what is needed and trying the project on a small scale initially.

For more information, go to: http://manchestersteps.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/umi3-social-enterprise-lite-competition-2012-2013/

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Call for Papers: Tobacco in the Early Modern imagination

Call for Papers: Tobacco in the Early Modern imagination

A one-day conference at Chetham’s Library, Manchester, 15 March 2013

Plenary speaker: Dr Lucy Munro (Keele University)

We are looking for several 20 minute papers on any aspect of the way that tobacco was represented, formulated, desired, commodified, traded and investigated in the early modern world.

Papers might consider: tobacco and internationalism; maritime disputes and piracy; destruction and violence; the medicalization of smoking; smoking and gaming; tobacco and gender; physiology, psychology and addiction; pipes and prosthesis; performance; early modern drugs more generally; colonial dominion and the early modern subject; mapping; portraiture; death; tobacco and encounter; sexuality; medical tobacco; youth culture; taxation and legal issues; the development of druggist shops; the abject; smoke as revenant; purgation and disgust. We might also consider that the word ‘tobacco’ does not appear in the works of Shakespeare.

Papers will also be considered that are more methodological in focus (such as those that consider interdisciplinary approaches or arise from the medical humanities, new directions in theory, collaborative research and presentation, impact or knowledge exchange)

The day will also involve some workshop sessions with the magnificent collections held by the library: http://www.chethams.org.uk/

Please send abstracts of 250 words to:

Jerome.degroot@manchester.ac.uk

Deadline: 30 January 2013

Monday 26 November 2012

North-West Periodicals Research Workshop

North-West Periodicals Research Workshop

The next meeting of the Workshop will held on Friday November 30th. 2012 at 2-30 p.m. in Seminar Room 1 on the lower ground floor of the Aldham Robarts Learning Resource Centre at Liverpool John Moores University. The workshop will be led by Professor Colin Fallows, Professor of Sound and Visual Arts at LJMU, and will focus on periodicals from the collection of punk and music material held by the University. There will be an opportunity to see more of the collections if you wish.

The workshop will be followed by refreshments and a glass of wine.

This will be the first outing for the group beyond Salford, but we are sure that you will find the collections interesting. We are keen to welcome as many of you as possible to Liverpool. I hope you will feel able to come.

Please address any enquiries to:

Brian Maidment (on behalf of the NW Periodicals Research Workshop)

Professor of the History of Print Culture
Liverpool John Moores University
B.E.Maidment@ljmu.ac.uk

CIDRAL Theory Intensive, Weds 28th

Wednesday 28 November

Theory Intensive 

10am-12 in Ellen Wilkinson, Wing B, B2.4

Dr Michael Mack (University of Durham)
On Hannah Arendt
The recommended readings are:
  1. Michael Mack, “The Holocaust and Hannah Arendt’s Philosophical Critique of Philosophy: Eichmann in Jerusalem” in New German Critique 106, Vol. 36, No. 1, Winter 2009.
  2. Hannah Arendt, “Understanding and Politics “ in Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954: Formation, Exile and Totalitarianism, edited by Jerome Kohn, (New York: Schocken, 1994) pp. 307-327
Additional readings:
“On the Nature of Totalitarianism” and “Reply to Eric Voegelin” in Essays in Understanding: 1930-1954: Formation, Exile and Totalitarianism, edited by Jerome Kohn, (New York: Schocken, 1994) pp. 328-360; pp. 401-408



All welcome!

CIDRAL lecture, Tuesday 27th

ALL WELCOME AT THE CIDRAL LECTURE THIS TUESDAY!

Tuesday 27th November
5-7pm in John Casken Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre


Dr Michael Mack (University of Durham)

Revisiting the Two Cultures Debate: Affect, Economics and Science


Where postmodern art and culture remain aloof or cool, contemporary society seems to have fallen prey to various anxieties and panics which grow out of an growing sense of crisis, of instability and uncertainty. The recent financial crises and their implications for increasing levels of anxiety in everyday life have lead to a change in the structure of feeling.

As part of this change in the structure of feeling, we are becoming increasingly aware of the precarious foundations of life. Judith Butler has turned her attention to what it means to live precariously. Part of this recent preoccupation with the precarious is a re-discovery of care rather than postmodern indifference and aloofness. Lauren Berlant—a leading thinker of contemporary affect theory—has thus argued for a new aesthetics that does justice to what she calls the crisis ordinariness which characterizes life in the early twentieth century. Against this background, this talk establishes the economic and cultural break of contemporary society with the optimistic belief in economic and scientific improvements which has characterized not only modern but also postmodern theory.

Dr. Michael Mack is reader in the Department of English Studies in the University of Durham. His research focuses on the mind-body divide, questions of stereotyping and exclusion (and integrative diversity) in literature, philosophy and medicine. Dr. Mack has taught at the University of Chicago, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Calgary, Syracuse University, the University of Sydney and the University of Nottingham. He has published three books: "Anthropology as Memory. Elias Canetti and Franz Baermann Steiner's Responses to the Shoah" (2001); "German Idealism and the Jew. The Inner Anti-Semitism of Philosophy and German Jewish Responses" (2003), which was shortlisted for the prestigious Koret Jewish Book Award 2004 and has been produced as an audio book (2009); and "Spinoza and the Specters of Modernity: the hidden Enlightenment of Diversity from Spinoza to Freud" (2010).

Critical MASS seminar on Weds 28th

The next Critical MASS seminar will take place on Wednesday 28th November, at 5pm, in room A113 (Samuel Alexander Building).

Dr. Lee Grieveson, Reader in Film Studies at University College London, will be speaking on "The State of Extension: Liberal Media in the Long American Century".

All welcome!

Wednesday 21 November 2012

William Carlos Williams and the Modernist Manifesto | Poetry night | TODAY

Just a reminder that the English, American Studies and Creative Writing Research Seminar is being given today by JT Welsch, who completed his PhD at the University of Manchester and is now Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at York St. John University. The paper is: 'William Carlos Williams and the Modernist Manifesto'. It starts at 5pm in Samuel Alexander A113.

As is usual for the seminar, we continue the discussion afterwards in more informal surroundings. This week is a little different, though: from 7pm at The Deaf Institute, there will be a poetry evening featuring JT and Michael Farrell, a visiting Australian poet who has this year published his third book and won the Peter Porter Poetry Prize.

Free entry, all welcome. Come from 5 or turn up for the poetry: it should be a good evening.

Friday 16 November 2012

The London Library Student Prize

The Student Prize, open to all final year undergraduates, offers an opportunity for students to expose their critical writing talent to thousands of readers – the winning piece will be published in the comment pages of The Times and in The London Library Magazine. The winner and three runners-up will also receive substantial cash prizes, membership of The London Library and a mini-internship at The Times.  For further information please visit www.londonlibrarystudentprize.com<http://www.londonlibrarystudentprize.com



Friday 9 November 2012

EAC Research Seminar | Weds 14 November

Next week's visiting speaker is Richard Hornsey, Senior Lecturer at UWE. His first book was The Spiv and the Architect: Unruly Life in Post-war London (U. Minnesota Press, 2010), reviewed by David Alderson (UoM) in Textual Practice here. His main research focus is on urban cultural history, & his latest work it about rhythm, movement and social control in 1930s London. It is organised around a reading of the Tube Map, the A to Z street atlas and the London Monopoly board.

The paper starts a few minutes after 5pm in Samuel Alexander A113. David Alderson will be chairing.

The EAC Research Seminar welcomes staff and postgraduates with an interest in the topic from across the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures. The paper is followed by a discussion, and then most often by further talk at the pub.

Contact iain.bailey@manchester.ac.uk with any enquiries & follow @EASSeminar for informal updates; besides which, see you next week!

Wednesday 7 November 2012

HOME

HOME
Everyone is invited to come and listen to stories about home...

Thursday 15th November 2012, 5pm (to last about an hour)
A4, Samuel Alexander Building, Oxford Road, The University of Manchester

Sometimes synonymous with contentment, feeling ‘at home’ is probably a universal human need but what does it depend on – a particular landscape, warm personal relationships, economic stability, the right wardrobe from IKEA? What role does community, place or space play – have industrialisation and modernity erased all chance we have of really being at home? There are other aspects to the idea of home as well, we can think about the way politicians have manipulated the image of home in the past and tied it to the preservation of the nation or homeland security, particularly during wartime. For some, home is a memory: there are poignant examples of migrants or refugees who have left their home for a variety of reasons and seek to recreate it abroad. Alternatively, escape from home might equate to freedom – to come out as gay, for example – or to embrace previously forbidden or inaccessible lifestyles…

To find out more come along to our very informal seminar, five short talks and audience discussion about the many faces of ‘home’. It will last about an hour and afterwards we shall retire to the pub for a drink.

Featuring:

Paula Chorlton – When ‘home’ does not fit with home (social housing and the
home in 20th century Britain)

Jenna Carine Ashton – A Fairytale called ‘House’ (Artists’ images and
conceptions of the house and home

Joe Richardson – A home away from home (Gay communities in 18th century
England)

James Greenhalgh – Young girls’ Blitz stories (Childhood, the home and WW2 in
Britain)

Rosy Rickett – Wherever you are, that’s home (Interviews with Spanish refugees
post-civil war)

[Supported by artsmethods@manchester]

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Law Fair

LAW FAIR (20 November)
For:
- 2nd year/penultimate
- Final years
- Postgrads

Interested in a Career in Law?
Visit the Law Fair: Tuesday 20 November 12.30pm - 4pm, Manchester Central (G-MEX Centre) Manchester. Discuss training opportunities, vacation schemes and vocational courses with over 90 exhibitors at this exciting Fair, one of the biggest Law Fairs in the UK! Meet leading City, national and local law firms, course providers and professional bodies including representatives from The Bar, all under one roof. Free fair guide and free entry. Students from any Law or non-law course are all welcome.
For further information and to register to attend, please see: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/lawfair

Postgraduate Study Fair

POSTGRADUATE STUDY FAIR (21 November)
For:
- 2nd year/penultimate
- Final years
-Postgrads (masters)

Considering doing a Masters or PhD?
Come to the Postgraduate Study Fair on Wednesday 21 November 10.30am - 4pm at Manchester Central (G-MEX Centre) Manchester. 90 different exhibitors including UK universities and some overseas ones - all promoting their postgraduate courses.
Find out about funding, check out the universities and subjects you'd like to study, get help from the team of careers consultants, pop into the seminars which include topics such as funding your course, studying overseas, and teacher training. Free entry, free fair guide, free advice. Students from any course welcome.
For further information and to register to attend, please see: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/postgradstudyfair

Tuesday 30 October 2012

INSIDE FILM TO VISIT MANCHESTER

INSIDE FILM TO VISIT MANCHESTER

On Thursday 8th November, Inside Film will be coming to the Department to talk about and show clips from their new film based on Engels' classic text The Condition of the Working Class in England.  Writers and performers from the film will be talking to students on the 'Writing Workers/Workers Writing' course.  However, there are a few additional places available - please contact Dr Michael Sanders (michael.sanders@manchester.ac.uk) to reserve a place.

Details: 
THURSDAY 8th NOVEMBER: ROSCOE 3.3, 2 - 4pm.

For details of the film itself follow the link below:

http://www.conditionoftheworkingclass.info/about-2#!prettyPhoto

Monday 29 October 2012

Careers events for SALC students

Are you considering a career in the arts, media, law or teaching? Then these forthcoming careers events might be of interest. See below for further information, and please spread the word!

Wednesday 7 November, 1.15-2.45pm, Room G19, Mansfield Cooper
Introduction to careers in the creative arts, culture and charity sectors for students within the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures

This is an event for all SALC students and you will hear from a History graduate working as a freelance theatre producer, an EAS masters graduate making their way in the media and graduates from Venture Arts, Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Manchester Museum.  They’ll be passing on tips, insights and letting you know how they got started on their career path.  Tell your friends about it!
 
(If you have difficulty registering, please email louise.sethi@manchester.ac.uk)
 
 
 
Wednesday 7 November, 5.15-6.30pm, Room 5.4, Crawford House (above the Careers Service)
Media Club event – Introduction to roles in television and tips for finding work experience and jobs in the industry

The speaker for this event is Helen Tonge, Managing Director and Executive Producer of Title Role Productions.
 
(If you have difficulty registering, please email mediaclub@manchester.ac.uk)
 


 
Wednesday 14 November, 1.30-3.30pm, Room G19, Mansfield Cooper
Introduction to careers in law for students within the School of Arts, Language and Cultures
 
This is an event for all SALC students and will feature a panel of lawyers who will be sharing their experience of the law profession and providing helpful tips and insights.  The session will begin with a talk explaining routes into law, the professional legal courses you need to apply for and deadlines for doing this.
 
(if you have difficulty registering, please email louise.sethi@manchester.ac.uk)
 
 
 
Tuesday 13 November, 1.00-4.30pm, Room 5.004, Fifth Floor, Crawford House (above the Careers Service)
Insight into Teaching
 
This session aims to help you identify the skills needed in teaching and will give you an insight into the work of a classroom teacher.  If will also suggests ways of developing your experience plus you can pick up tips on how to make a successful application to a PGCE course.  You will have the chance to hear from teachers and other contributors including tutors on the University of Manchester PGCE, Teach First and The Tutor Trust.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

Manchester Gold Mentoring scheme

Manchester Gold Mentoring has been running for over 10 years and aims to help students with career planning and decision making about their future options. The scheme is open to all existing UG and PG students, regardless of residential status or the year of study. Students are matched on a one to one basis with a mentor and will be in contact with them over a nine month period.

Need to know what you can do with your degree?  
Apply for a career mentor now...
We have a wide range of mentors available this year who have studied similar degrees to you. They can help you understand what your options might be when you graduate. You don’t have to be a final year student, the programme is open to all year groups. It’s one of the most effective ways to improve your employability and make the right decisions about your future. To see our list of mentors and apply please visit: http://www.careers.manchester.ac.uk/students/employable/mentoring/manchestergold/ 

Monday 22 October 2012

New Creative Writing Society at the University of Manchester

The purpose of the society is to bring together anyone and everyone from the university who likes doing any kind of writing, be it prose, poetry, plays or anything else. We get together, discuss ideas and compare work as well as organizing socials and collective writing sessions.

As the society becomes larger, our aim is to use university funding to attract guest speakers, writers and publishers to do workshops and talks. Also, we are looking to organize putting out some form of showcase publications, for anyone who is particularly serious, by building links with The Mancunion and Black & Blue along with various other organizations.

Please follow the link below to THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER CREATIVE WRITING SOCIETY facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/118585861624830/

Joe Moran talk/masterclass

Postgraduate students in particular might be interested in the following event taking place this week - please spread the word!

Researching recent history: 
Talk/ masterclass with Joe Moran (Liverpool John Moores)
Armchair Nation: An Intimate History of Britain in Front of the Television 
Joe will be reading from his new book and talking about writing for general readerships
Location: Mansfield Cooper 2.04
Time: 3.30-4.30pm
Date: Thursday 25 October

ALL WELCOME!

KNOW YOUR REPS!

Student reps are volunteers who give up their time to act as a point of contact between students and staff. Please make sure that you know who the reps are for your year and that you pass on comments and questions to them for discussion at the regular Staff-Student Liaison Committee meeting.

BUT... remember that they are students like you, with essay deadlines to meet and exams to revise for, so DO be considerate and DO remember to pass on positive comments as well as complaints or problems.

Here are the details of the reps for 2012-13:

BA 1st year:
Lindsey Walker - lindsey.walker@student.manchester.ac.uk
James Broadway - james.broadway@student.manchester.ac.uk
Charlotte Evans - charlotte.evans-8@student.manchester.ac.uk
Isobel Cecil - isobel.cecil@student.manchester.ac.uk

BA 2nd year:
Harriet Hill-Payne - harriet.hill-payne-2@student.manchester.ac.uk
Imogen Burgess - imogen.burgess@student.manchester.ac.uk
Helen McCarthy - helen.mccarthy@student.manchester.ac.uk

BA 3rd year:
Amelia Thornton - amelia.thornton@student.manchester.ac.uk
Lily Mund - lily.mund@student.manchester.ac.uk
Ellie Hughes - eleanor.hughes-2@student.manchester.ac.uk
Nathan Jeeawock - nathan.jeeawock@student.manchester.ac.uk

MA/taught postgraduate:
Marijn Ceelen - marijn.ceelen@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Eleanor Savell - eleanor.savell@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Victoria Fitton - victoria.fitton@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

PhD:
Rena Jackson - rena.jackson@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
David Firth - D.H.Firth@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

And if you have more general queries about student representation, the SSLC meeting, Academic Advising or Peer Mentoring, you are welcome to get in touch with me, at kaye.mitchell@manchester.ac.uk

Kaye Mitchell
Staff-Student Liaison Officer and Senior Adviser
English Literature, American Studies and Creative Writing 


Tuesday 16 October 2012

EAC Research Seminar | Wittgenstein/Ethics

The next EAC Research Seminar will feature a paper by Dr Ben Ware, a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in the SALC at Manchester, who will present work in progress from his current book project, prospectively entitled Modernism and the Ethical Turn.

 

"Seeing the Everyday Otherwise: Vision, Ethics and Utopia in Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations"

Weds 17 October | Samuel Alexander A113 | 5pm

 

The paper will focus on Part II, section xi of Philosophical Investigations in which Wittgenstein discusses Jastrow's 'duck-rabbit' figure. The two main questions it will explore are the following: First, to what extent can Wittgenstein's interest in seeing - and, more specifically, what he terms 'seeing-as' or 'the "dawning" of an aspect' - be understood as having an ethical point? And second, how might the ethicality of the Investigations be connected with the work's modernist sensibility, especially with its repeated efforts to bring us to see the everyday otherwise?

 

Dr Daniela Caselli will chair the seminar. Staff and postgraduates from across the School are very welcome indeed; any enquiries can be directed to iain.bailey@manchester.ac.uk.