Doctoral Seminar Semester One 2018-19

Walter Benjamin, ‘Unpacking My Library’ (PDF)

About the text: In this essay, Benjamin reflects on collecting books; what they mean to him, where and how he has acquired them, and their relationship to memory and imagination. We might think about how Benjamin’s account compares to our own encounters with texts, whether as scholars or for personal enjoyment; these may well be in quite different contexts and intentions to the kind of experiences described by Benjamin.

Taster quote: “I have made my most memorable purchases on trips, as a transient. Property and possession belong to the tactical sphere. Collectors are people with a tactical instinct; their experience teaches them that when they capture a strange city, the smallest antique shop can be a fortress, the most remote stationery store a key position. How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in the pursuit of books!” (p.63)

Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (2004) (PDF)

About the text: Pascale Casanova’s work considers the evolution of literature and power structures. This extract from The World Republic of Letters discusses the development of literary “centres” from the early modern period to the present day.

Taster quote: “The original dependence of literature on the nation is at the heart of the inequality that structures the literary world… The simple idea that dominates the literary world today, of literature as something pure and harmonious, works to eliminate all traces of the invisible violence that reigns over it and denies the power relations that are specific to this world.” (p71)

Marjorie Garber, ‘Introduction’ in Shakespeare and Modern Culture (2008) (PDF)

About the text: In this introduction to her book, Garber outlines some of the ways Shakespeare has emerged in literature and culture over the past few centuries. Garber’s approach revolves around a bold claim: that “Shakespeare makes modern culture and modern culture makes Shakespeare”. We could use this as a starting-point to revisit discussions about prestige and influence, and to evaluate the importance of Shakespeare (and his sources!) for authors and texts in our own research.

Sample quote: “Characters like Romeo, Hamlet, or Lady Macbeth have become cultural types, instantly recognizable, when their names are invoked…. it is one of the fascinating effects of Shakespeare’s plays that they have almost always seemed to coincide with the times in which they are read, published, produced, and discussed. But the idea that Shakespeare writes us – as if we were Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, constantly encountering our own prescripted identities, proclivities, beliefs, and behaviours – is, if taken seriously, both exciting and disconcerting” (p.i)

Fred Botting and Justin D. Edwards, “Theorising Globalgothic” (PDF)

About the text: In honour of Halloween we’re reading about ‘Globalgothic’ this week, vividly introduced in this short essay by Fred Botting and Justin Edwards.

Taster quote:

“The rush of new commodities, consumption, products and money is tied to an increasingly illusive economic system that has been, at times, aligned with the sorcery of witches, zombies and disembodied, dispirited phantasms. Hence seemingly archaic figures for postmodern times – witches, zombies, monsters, ghosts and vampires – spring up in numerous and diverse locations, crossing geographic, cultural and medial divide”

Topic: “The Weird and the Eerie” (led by Vicki Williams)

We are reading three (very!) short texts this week:

• ‘Introduction: The Weird and the Eerie (Beyond the Unheimlich)’ from Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie (PDF)
• Yohann Koshy, ‘The Revolution Will Be Weird and Eerie’,  — https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/z4g4gj/the-revolution-will-be-weird-and-eerie.
• HP Lovecraft, ‘Notes on Writing Weird Fiction’, http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/essays/nwwf.aspx .

Notes to consider:

As you are reading, try and pick up on different elements of ‘weird’ and ‘eerie’- how might we understand and define these phenomena?

Taster quote:

“The allure that the weird and the eerie possess is not captured by the idea that we ‘enjoy what scares us’. It has, rather, to do with a fascination for the outside, for that which lies beyond standard perception, cognition and experience.” (Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, p.8)

Topic: Pressures and Discrimination

This week we will discuss essays from two texts that reflect on pressures and discrimination within and beyond academia: Emilie Pine’s Notes to Self (2018) and Eula Biss’s Notes from No Man’s Land (2009). These are personal essays that urge us to consider structural pressures and discrimination in academia, the demands on academics to continuously expand their output, and issues of race and gentrification. Many thanks to Liam Harrison for suggesting our reading for this week.

• ‘This is not on the exam’, from Emilie Pine’s Notes to Self (2018) (PDF)
• ‘Is this Kansas’, from Eula Biss’s Notes from No Man’s Land (2009) (PDF)

Taster quote: “When I examine my antipathy to emotion at work, I realise that I think feelings – having them, showing them, talking about them – are not just a sign of femininity, but a sign of weakness. I have internalised the idea that to be taken seriously as an intellectual, I have to deny all those feelings, all that femininity, all that weakness. I think this in spite of myself, and in spite of my feminism – and all the women on my reading lists, and all the women-forward events I organise, and all my research on women speaking out, and all my criticism of ‘manels’, and all the posters on my office door advertising marches for reproductive rights.” (Emilie Pine, Notes to Self, p.170)

(Week 9)

Shackleton room (Arts 439)

This week will be led by Rona Cran.

(Week 10)

Shackleton room (Arts 439)

If you would like to propose a text or topic for this seminar, please email d.butchard@bham.ac.uk.

(Week 11)

Shackleton room (Arts 439)

If you would like to propose a text or topic for this seminar, please email d.butchard@bham.ac.uk.