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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