Research Projects

Within the broad area of life writing, encompassing, for instance, autobiography, confession, diary, meditation, etc., the genre of autofiction has gained special prominence in recent decades and years. It is generally considered to have found its first voices (Serge Doubrovsky, Nina Bouraoui, Catherine Millet, et al.) and theoretical treatments (Arnaud Genon, Philippe Lejeune, Jacques Lecarme, et al.) in the Francophone world, but has more recently emerged both in Anglophone contexts (Cusk, Lerner, Moshfegh) and in other European and world languages (Knausgård), both in practice and in theory.

Contemporary continental philosophy is concerned with a plethora of topics, issues and problems, but above all it is a philosophy of the contemporary world, despite also being historical and untimely. In other disciplines – and above all in those concerned with the study of literature – autofiction has increasingly been written about in recent years (e.g., Dix 2018; Wagner-Egelhaaf 2019), but continental philosophy has largely been silent about the phenomenon of autofiction. And yet autofiction raises a large number of fascinating questions and challenges for contemporary continental philosophy, some of which this workshop seeks to address.

This workshop aims to explore the interdisciplinary space between philosophy and literature, between writing and thinking, between theories of the subject and constructions of the self. In order to maintain its focus, it will specifically be concerned with recent and contemporary autofiction and not with other kinds of life writing or historical occurrences of autofiction, although questions of theoretical genre demarcation and of historical precedents may inevitably arise.

Programme:

10:00 Arrival and Introduction

10:30 Claire Boyle, “Queer Becomings: Autofiction and the Fashioning of the Self in the Writings of Nina Bouraoui and Fatima Daas”

11:00 Antonia Wimbush, “Writing the Exiled, Gendered, Homosexual Self in Nina Bouraoui’s Tous les hommes désirent naturellement savoir”

11:30 Christopher Kul-Want, “Formations of Phantasy in Autofiction and The Sexual Life of Catherine M.”

12:00 Pauline Henry-Tierney, “Sex, Subjectivity and Situation: Nelly Arcan’s Phenomenological Autofiction”

13:00 Lunch

14:00 Teresa Ludden, “Writing the Not-Self in Texts by Friederike Mayröcker: Auto-affection, Difference and Autofiction”

14:30 Miriam Baldwin, “Autofiction and Self-Learning: Between Fact and Fiction”

15:00 Andrea Rehberg, “The Birth and Death of Subjectivity in Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother”

15:30 Jill Marsden, “The Elimination of Self as an Aesthetic Project in Rachel Cusk’s Outline and Olivia Laing’s Crudo”

16:00 Final Thoughts

Community Storytime is a joint project across schools teaching linguistics, language and literature. Staff and students will come together with specialists from the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics to train in delivering interactive story and song sessions. We will then jointly deliver weekly sessions free of charge for under 5s on campus, providing central Newcastle's preschoolers and their families with welcoming, friendly and regular access to a new world of language and ideas. The project will also provide opportunities for students who are interested in early years, primary teaching, speech and language therapy and child development to gain practical experience working with young children.

Economic Humanities brings together researchers who are interested in the reciprocal relationship between the arts and social sciences. In particular, we interrogate the cultural metamorphosis through which economics was divested of the humanitarian concerns that were crucial to its Enlightenment origins, and became aligned with the ‘dismal’ pursuit of profit. By establishing a network across the fields of literature, history, business studies, law, philosophy, politics and beyond, we explore how economics shares with the humanities a view that individuals are driven by desire, imagination and creativity, as well as consider how this perspective can transform how we understand ‘value’ today.

For queries about the project, please contact Leanne Stokoe (leanne.stokoe@ncl.ac.uk)

We're enhancing interdisciplinary research to better understand our natural world.

In April 2019 Newcastle University declared a climate emergency and made a commitment to support change through research and teaching. Clearly, dealing with this emergency involves dealing with questions related to the environmental humanities - a collection of ideas emerging from a belief that we need more than scientific solutions to address the precarity of our planet’s habitability. Following a preliminary workshop in February, Shane McCorristine (HCA) and Ella Mershon (SELLL) have been awarded NUHRI funding to develop a new environmental humanities initiative in the University next year. This will enable researchers working on EH and environmental science topics across faculties to connect, drawing on the scholarship, collections, and institutional supports in the University.

For more information on this project, please contact either Shane McCorristine or Ella Mershon.

For more information contact Faye Smith.

This project will promote and encourage research cooperation and networking between the Faculty of humanities and Social Science and The Research Alliance.

The project will encompass a public workshop focused on interdisciplinary future research directions in heritage, history and memory. An internal sandpit will allow HASS colleagues to get to know key representatives from the Research Alliance, offering structured networking activities in small groups, and free-flow time for informal networking.

The public workshop will discuss the challenges and opportunities inherent to the interdisciplinary fields of Memory Studies, (Critical) Heritage Studies, (Public) History, and beyond. What is changing in terms of boundary-keeping between disciplinary communities? Are new fields, concepts and forms of knowledge developing, and if so, with what aims and ambitions?

The workshop will result in a special issue of an academic journal, and in generating greater awareness of Newcastle University’s strengths in Heritage, History and Memory. The sandpit will enable new connections and relationships to be built between HASS colleagues and Research Alliance members.

For more information about this project please contact Dr Susannah Eckersley Susannah.Eckersley@newcastle.ac.uk

In psychological therapies involving speakers of limited English proficiency, interpreters play a critical role in facilitating communication between therapists and therapy service users. As language is at the core of talking therapy, the presence of an interpreter certainly has an impact on the three-party interaction and the quality of care provided to service users. This project aims to investigate the complexity of triadic interaction and the challenges facing clinical psychologists and interpreting professionals when working with each other in mental health setting. Bringing together clinical psychologists and interpreters, this project hopes to promote better understanding and build up trust between two professionals through interprofessional collaboration.

For more information about this project, please contact Jade Biyu Du (Biyu.Du@newcastle.ac.uk). 

Through discussion and screening this project explores cultural and industrial changes as well as innovations in practice to consider what kinds of stories can be brought to the screen. Writers will share experiences of collaboration, and reflect on training needs, opportunities and challenges for the next generation of writers. The project will involve scholars (including delegates from the French Studies conference running alongside), students and practitioners of screen media. This interdisciplinary, transnational project considers contemporary screenwriting practices from cultural, creative and industrial perspectives. Issues for debate include:

• screenwriters’ professional situation and practice – precarity and collaboration
• current industry challenges and impact for the next generation of writers

Cutting across creative practice, literary/screen arts and humanities, this project fosters intercultural engagement and knowledge exchange for students, scholars and practitioners of screen media and creative writing. It showcases screenwriting practice and research (Gharavi; Leahy and Vanderschelden) in an international context, connecting with a major conference (French Studies) and regional stakeholders (e.g. North East Screen). 

For more information about this project please contact Dr Sarah Leahy sarah.leahy@newcastle.ac.uk

Hosted by The Word, South Shields, Friday 1st June 2018.

‘The voice is sound not speech. But speech constitutes its essential destination.’ (Adriana Cavarera, For More Than One Voice: Toward a Philosophy of Vocal Expression).

This event was funded as an Institute Banner Project. It had two key research questions:

1. How do we recover the voice, past and present?
   
   This question is relevant to arts and humanities scholars and practitioners who work historically with textual sources only. It is also relevant to clinicians who work with patients who have had major surgery on their vocal cords. In both cases the voice is ‘lost’.
   
   
2. How do we work together across faculties and sectors to understand the cultural value of voice?

The voice was the focus of the day. Attendees came from different disciplines and sectors. There were participants from places as diverse as Opera North, Leeds, to the Royal Marsden Hospital, London. We discussed what we mean by voice including tone, timbre, and pace. We also discussed why it matters.

First, we recognised that we still have no shared language for describing the voice. Does the description of a voice as husky or scratchy mean the same thing in different cultures? We also recognised that disciplines have different histories when it comes to foregrounding the voice as an object of study.

Some are more silent than others. Or rather, some move too quickly from physical voice to metaphor when the two are inextricably linked. A productive next step would be the recovery of the history of the voice in different disciplines to enable our conversation to continue. On one point, though, we were all agreed: that the voice is a carrier of meaning in and of itself beyond words. Even its silence is meaningful.

Many thanks to our brilliant provocateurs:

• Richard Wistreich (Royal College of Music)
• Jo Nockels (Opera North)
• Peter Adegbie (preacher & poet, Sunderland)
• Vinidh Paleri (Royal Marsden, London)
• Sue Bradley (Rural Economy and The Oral History Collective, NU)
• Felicity Laurence (independent musical educationalist)
• Christos Salis (Education, Communication, Language Sciences, NU)
• Christos Kakalis (Architecture, Planning, Landscape, NU)

You can read Helen Shaddock’s blog post about the day, Recovering the Voice event at The Word.

Cancer Research UK / Wikimedia Commons

The SeaScapes Project is a £5 million project that aims to involve communities along the North East coast between the River Tyne and the River Tees in the protection and celebration of an amazing stretch of coastline. The scheme encompasses 23 small projects both on-shore and beneath the sea that will allow locals and visitors alike to uncover the hidden ‘beneath the waves’ heritage of this coastline and to value, protect and reconnect with this remarkable shoreline. The project seeks to encourage local ownership of this shoreline and actively encourage communities to participate in efforts that will revitalise and sustain this beautiful natural, industrial, cultural and maritime landscape for generations to come.

For more information visit http://www.exploreseascapes.co.uk/ or email Maggie Roe.