For this festive edition of Works Loved, we’ll be sharing texts that explore festivities, celebrations, and other occasions that are – or should be – joyful. All types of texts, phrases, and festive figures are welcome, from Scrooge to Santa – or feel free to change the tone with a non-festive favourite.
Reflections:
We had a great discussion across many different aspects of feasts, festivities, gifts, Christmas. We talked about the fraught nature of gatherings, the pressures, shame, and delights of giving gifts, and nostalgia and haunting seem to recur in Christmas-themed texts.
• Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
• Ali Smith, Winter (2017)
• The Mabinogion (12th – 13th centuries)
• Derek Mahon, ‘After the Titanic’ and ‘Dawn at St Patrick’s‘, from New Collected Poems (2011)
• O. Henry, “The Gift of the Magi” (1905)
• Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)
We also talked about Charles Dickens’s “The Signalman”, and films including: Muppets Christmas Carol, Christmas Again, and A Christmas Story. Props to Toria’s amazing WHAM! Last Christmas sweater.
Time and Place
- Wed 11 Dec, 1-2:30pm
- Shackleton Room (Arts 439)
This event is run by Dorothy Butchard (d.butchard@bham.ac.uk). Please email Dorothy if you have any question, but you’re welcome to just turn up – no need to register in advance!
About Works Loved
In ‘Works Loved’ sessions, we switch up our usual format and each bring, read from, and discuss a short extract from a text that proved foundational to our research or thinking about literature. This could be a poem that convinced us not to drop out as an undergraduate, a novel that suggested we might need to do an MA to understand it, or an essay that launched the idea of postgraduate study. Academia can often feel overwhelming, with multiple pressures competing for our time and headspace. This seminar is about remembering why we got into this business in the first place – namely, the ‘love’ (and we can discuss this term) we feel for the books, poems, and ideas that make up our discipline.
There’s no advance reading in these weeks – just come along with your chosen text, and be ready to read from it, tell us why it matters to you, and discuss it and other texts. All varieties of text are welcome – if yours isn’t something you can easily read from, just come and tell us about it instead.
Thanks to Rona Cran who first introduced this format for a session – it has brought a lot of joy!