Spring 2010 | Public lectures and events | Video

Contributor(s): Professor Richard Sennett | Richard Sennett's award winning Sociology of Literature explores the role of narrative in social research and in writing sociology.

Contributor(s): Dr Jane Darcy, Brian Dillon, Sally O'Reilly | Consciousness of our own mortality is at the heart of the human experience, and has long fascinated writers and artists, inspiring quite an obsession with the body and its well-being. This panel will examine the relationship between creativity, illness and the imagination.

Contributor(s): Will Alsop, Professor Rosemary Ashton, Leo Hollis, Hans Ulrich Obrist | How do we attempt to understand the sprawling "modern Babylon" that is London, with its layers of social, political and cultural history? Can art, architecture and literature help us to 'read' this complex city?

Contributor(s): Michael Blackburn, Mario Petrucci, Richard Tyrone-Jones | Three poets discuss the interrelationship between art and literature and the social sciences. What are the links between these seemingly polarised disciplines? Does art have any concrete influence on the social and political sciences?

Contributor(s): Professor Mary Evans, Professor Nicola Lacey, Robert Mighall, Professor Juliet Mitchell | Robert Louis Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde develops an extraordinarily rich intersection between literary fiction, legal norms and the scientific imagination. This panel discussion brings together legal academics, psychoanalytical theorists and specialists in nineteenth-century literature in a conversation focused on the historical and cultural significance themes in the novel. The discussion will span the emergence of the new science of criminology, late nineteenth-century anxieties about the permeability of social divisions, the consistency of scientific and popular theories of monstrosity, degeneration and depravity, and Stevenson's dismay that he had been turned into a professional author by the success of Jekyll and Hyde.

Contributor(s): Stephen Grey, Andrew Mueller, Ros Wynne-Jones | A discussion of war journalism in its historical context. How the great correspondents of the past managed to tell the world about conflicts around the globe. And how in the digital age, governments and the military seek to prevent free reporting of war. Can we ever really report objectively and openly on war?

Contributor(s): Justine Mann | Does the task of writing a novel both excite and daunt you? Using the political novel as an example, this workshop will examine how to progress from initial ideas to a successful draft. Participants should emerge with an understanding of the task that lies ahead and a greater sense of what is required in terms of structure, characterisation and plot.

Contributor(s): Yannis Stavrakakis | How is order sustained in capitalist societies? This lecture highlights the mutual engagement between authority, fantasy and enjoyment. Yannis Stavrakakis is associate professor at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

Contributor(s): Richard Bronk, Professor Margot Finn, Dr Neil Vickers | The session examines how the reading of literature can expand the analytical imagination, provide alternative metaphors and supply vital empirical evidence. Three academics from very different disciplines discuss ways in which literature can be invaluable to the broader research community.

Contributor(s): Andrew Franklin, John Lanchester, Adrian Wooldridge | The publishing industry has arguably seen its worst financial year in decades, with flagging book sales and dwindling literature coverage in the national press. How will literature will fare in the current climate, and in the years to come? Will major publishers' dwindling revenues mean fewer - and less varied and ambitious - books on the market? Or is this a golden age for hard-edged, gritty recession literature, and incisive coverage of current social and political issues?