What really makes a good book? How do you judge literary quality? And how many of these 400 novels have you read?  Help us complete the largest ever survey of contemporary novels and let us know what you think! 

https://nquire.org.uk/mission/the-2020-reader-review/contribute 

Please contact us for details.

Ecolinguistics is concerned with how language shapes worldviews and encourages people to protect or destroy the ecosystems that life depends on. This may involve anything from examining the techniques that advertising uses to promote ecologically destructive products to how nature poetry represents animals, plants and the physical environment as deserving of respect and care. Narrative is a powerful force for influencing worldview but tends to be left to ecocriticism rather than be included in ecolinguistic analyses. This talk looks at example narratives to make the case for why and how narrative analysis can be included in ecolinguistics.

Econarrative: an ecolinguistic approach Tickets, Wed 27 Apr 2022 at 16:00 | Eventbrite

Wed, 27 April 2022

16:00 – 17:00 BST

This is an online event.

‘Here, I found beasts like minotaurs, useful for war’. Let the twelve winds blow you to the far corners of the Earth; meet mermaids and mandrakes; and follow the trail of Adam’s burnt footprints all the way back to Eden.

Storyteller and medievalist Daisy Black takes you on a tour around the medieval map of the world. A show full of marvels, saints and giants, heroes and devils, grisly cannibals and Norwegian skiers. Weaving together medieval maps and travel writing with oral storytelling, this show is your passport to visit the world as a 14th-century traveller. Just watch out for the monsters lurking at the edges of the map…

This event will be streamed live. Book below to receive joining details.

This event is suitable for ages 11+

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Online event.

Come along to a bostin’ tea party in this virtual café and share your favourite Black Country words and phrases, especially those related to food. Listen to some Black Country poetry from the University of Wolverhampton’s Dr Rob Francis, and share your memories and thoughts about the distinctive Black Country dialect.

Once you sign up, you’ll be provided with a resource pack to get you thinking, along with some Black Country recipes so you can make your own ‘fittle’ (food) before the event, and share it online. Put the kettle on! It’ll be smashing – or bostin’!

This event is suitable for anyone who likes language and food

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To attend this virtual event, email Sebastian Groes at: s.groes@wlv.ac.uk  to receive a Zoom link.

Care work has never felt more prominently placed in the public eye: the pandemic has exposed appalling healthcare inequities, placing social justice at the centre of a renewed political understanding of the structural threats to well-being. In this talk I’ll consider Watson’s most recent book, The Courage to Care: A Call for Compassion, alongside Dear Life: A Doctor’s Story of Love and Loss, by palliative medicine specialist Rachel Clarke. Echoing Watson’s endorsement of ‘detail’, Clarke suggests that ‘for all the high-tech wizardry of modern medicine – the scans, the genomics, the molecular analyses – it is still the case that invariably, simply paying close attention to what a patient is telling us, a doctor can work out their diagnosis’. By foreground what they see as the crucially affective imperatives of caregiving, they cultivate a sentimental style of observation and reflection that we might find both uncomfortable and instructive. The language of pathos in The Courage to Care and Dear Life makes no attempt to hide how intensely such writer-practitioners emphasize the importance of ‘humanizing’ sentiments – kindness, compassion, empathy – that literary critics have come to view with some suspicion. But in so doing, they actually complement one key ambition of the ‘critical medical humanities’ in recent years: to articulate experiences of illness and care alike beyond the clinical discourse that surround them.

David James is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature at the University of Birmingham. His recent books include Discrepant Solace: Contemporary Literature and the Work of Consolation (Oxford University Press, 2019 and Modernism and Close Reading (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is currently at work on Sentimental Activism (forthcoming with Columbia University Press), a book that assesses the contemporary reanimation of sentimentalism across a variety of literary genres and in the itineraries of cultural criticism.

This is an online event

Chaired by Sebastian Groes. To book please contact s.groes@wlv.ac.uk

CTTR is celebrating the achievements of Stephen E. Gregg who, since coming to Wolverhampton, has published four books: Engaging with Living Religion (2015), Swami Vivekananda and NonHindu Traditions (2019), The Insider/ Outsider Debate: New Perspectives in the Study of Religion (2019) and The Bloomsbury Handbook to Studying Christians (2020). Recently, Stephen was elected President of the British Association for the Study of Religions for 2021-2024.
 
In this seminar, Stephen will talk about his research, including reflections on new approaches to the Study of Religion that are foregrounded in his work. He will also highlight the central theme of religious identity from his recent publications, arguing for a nuanced, relational, antitextbook understanding of religious belonging and practice. Building on his ongoing project Transnational Guru Communities: Lived Religion and Multifaith Identity at Skanda Vale, he will argue that previous research on ‘multifaith’ identities has misrepresented the lived religion at Skanda Vale by being focused on the category of Hinduism. He argues for a multipraxic form of religion, focusing on embodied performance, rather than abstracted cosmology. In so doing, he hopes to suggest a new way of understanding the transmission of authority in a second-generation religious community.

Sat 12 October, 2019, 1pm – 2pm, John Lee Theatre at the Birmingham and Midlands Institute

With R. M. Francis (Writer), Kerry Hadley-Pryce (Writer), Frédérique Santune (Graphic Designer)

The Black Country is a region that is - as popular opinion has it - forgotten, neglected and rejected, a place wallowing in its post-industrial trauma. This event shows that the Black Country is the opposite of ‘left behind’. We focus on the richness, diversity and vibrancy of Black Country culture by taking the audience on an imaginary walk across the region. Writers R. M. Francis (Transitions) and Kerry Hadley-Pryce (The Black Country) uncover untold stories whilst graphic designer Frédérique Santune demonstrates how Augmented Reality can bring the past back to life. The event reveals the Black Country for what it truly is: diverse, wonderful, adaptable and resilient.  

Saturday 12^th October, 3pm – 4pm in the John Lee Theatre at the Birmingham and Midlands Institute

We are living in a time when traditional ways of thinking are challenged. From debates about climate change to the rights of LGBTQ persons, emancipatory struggles are pushing for a more diverse and inclusive worldview. What literature belongs to this brave new world? What established works of literature should no longer be taught? Should there be a canon at all? At this event we discuss ground-breaking research by Professor Van Dalen-Oskam that shows there is a shocking unconscious gender bias in our literary value judgment. A guest writer discusses a woke canon from a writer’s point of view. 

With Professor Karina van Dalen-Oskam (Huijgens Institute, Amsterdam), Dr Aidan Byrne (English Literature, Wolverhampton), and a guest writer.