A new year, and a new theme for Works Loved. In our first session of 2020, we’ll share texts that explore fresh starts, new beginnings, and other kinds of reinvigoration. All types of texts are welcome – and as always, feel free to mix up the tone with a drastic ending! An extra challenge: accounts of new starts often come at the end of texts, but let’s try to avoid spoilers.
Reflections:
We’ll post a list of the texts and ideas we talked about here after the session. In the meantime, check out our Christmas list.
Time and Place
- Wed 11 Dec, 1-2:30pm
- Location: Arts 439 (Shackleton Room)
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 the format from our regular Page Breaks meetings 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!