February 2024

Welcome to the February 2024 edition of CAMC Curates, the newsletter for the Centre for Arts, Memory and Communities. CAMC Curates provides monthly updates from our postgraduate and staff researchers about recent news, events and publications. 

RECENT NEWS | RECENT NEWS | RECENT NEWS

New Publication, ‘Emotional Objects’ Special Journal Issue, Juliet Simpson, et al. – Now out!

Juliet is delighted to announce the publication of her ‘Emotional Objects: Northern Renaissance Afterlives in Object, Image and Word’, edited by Juliet Simpson and Gabriele Rippl, Journal of the Northern Renaissance, 14 (2023), online open access (pdfs available soon).

This special issue with an Introduction by Juliet Simpson and Gabriele Rippl, and seven articles by internationally-leading scholars of art, literature and cultural memory, brings together new perspectives on and approaches to why and how Northern Renaissance visual and literary ‘afterlives’ and other responses to the Northern Renaissance (from the 1870s-1920s) become activated via objects, images and words in potently emotive contexts of reception, viewing, writing, collecting and imaging. Taken together, they illuminate the overlooked significance and interventions of these Northern Renaissance emotional objects and afterlives in navigating the most urgent and conflicted realities of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century art, culture and politics, including their key entanglements with the cultural modernisms and debated cultural identities of pre- the First World War, and in the dislocations that followed.

See the full issue (Selected highlights: Editorial).

See full article (Juliet Simpson and Gabriele Rippl, ‘Emotional Objects – Northern Renaissance Afterlives in Object, Image and Word’).

Anthony Luvera's recent book chapter, co-authored with Sarah Allen (South London Gallery), 'It's Not Enough to Just Point a Camera,' is featured in Contemporary Photography as Collaboration, edited by Mathilde Bertrand (Université Bordeaux Montaigne) and Karine Chambefort-Kay (Paris-Est Créteil University), published by Palgrave Macmillan. Making photographs has always been a collaborative act. A myriad of creative decisions, social interactions, divisions of labour, and many other forms of contribution are usually buried in service to the photographer’s ‘unique vision’. But what takes place when these processes of collaboration, co-production, or social encounter are positioned as an integral part of the work presented to an audience? When the ‘subjects’ are recast as ‘participants’ taking part in a socially-engaged, community, collaborative, or participatory photography practice?  Anthony Luvera, in conversation with curator Sarah Allen, reflects on a number of practical, theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues that can arise when working collaboratively. These questions form a significant thread running through Luvera’s practice as an artist, writer and educator, in the long-term collaborative projects created with people who have experienced homelessness in cities and towns across the UK. Themes of authorship, agency, consent, power, and representation are particularly highlighted, exploring lines of questioning such as: Who stands to benefit from collaboration? Who determines the parameters of an invitation to participate? Whose needs, intentions or ambitions can be fulfilled, and to what ends?

Louise Adkins is co-organising a Workshop & Exhibition. Reading and Writing Bodies in Space (Wednesday 06th - Friday 08th March) explores language as a spatial, temporal, material and social practice through the production of ‘publications’ in a variety of formats (artist books, chapbooks, alternative cartographies, workshops and performance). To find out more about the group and how to book a place on a workshop, please visit this link. For Practice Notes # 1 members of the group will share their research via a series of workshops and gallery exhibits.

PROFILE | PROFILE | PROFILE

Damian Sutton joined CAMC from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, having been Associate Head of Research and leading Masters programmes. Previously he was head of the Art and Design Research Institute, Middlesex University, and research developer at The Glasgow School of Art. Damian completed his PhD at Glasgow in 2002, publishing it as Photography, Cinema, Memory: The Crystal Image of Time in 2009. Damian has also written and edited on a wide variety of subjects in film, photography, and art history, including AHRC projects on Fred and Ginger, and on Christmas and consumption. His work has been translated into multiple languages. Damian’s current research is for a monograph on the history and legacy of Alexander Gardner’s ‘Portrait of Lewis Payne’ (1865) made famous by Roland Barthes. This involves writing a new history of its creation and the context of nineteenth century photography, as well as its role on modern theory.

PGR NEWS | PGR NEWS | PGR NEWS

Kirsty Harrod has been awarded a postgraduate bursary for a visit to the Fondation Hardt in Geneva, a research centre for the study of Classics. Bursaries are provided by the Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies, the Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies and the Jowett Copyright Trust. 

Congratulations to Madeleine Bracey who is part of the team that was just awarded Best Radio Entertainment Show 2023 with Radio 4/podcast series You're Dead To Me. Madeleine has been a research intern on this series. Comedy.co.uk Awards 2023 has awarded the series Best Radio Entertainment Show for a third year running.

IHR History Lab Annual Conference 2024 | Call for Papers

Adeola Eze is part of the conference convenors team that is organising this year's annual conference of The Institute of Historical Research’s History Lab, which will take place on Friday 19^th July 2024. They are inviting postgraduate researchers (MAs by research and PhD students), early career researchers, and established academics based in UK institutions in history and all related disciplines to submit abstracts for 20-minute papers or 5-10-minute lightning talks. This conference, titled 'Objects and Identity: Exploring Cultural Significance on Material Culture, History and Identity’, seeks to foster insightful discussions and research on the profound influence of material objects on the course of history and the formation of societies and their cultural identities. The theme invites scholars from diverse academic fields to examine the relationship between material culture and personal and collective identities within historical contexts. The deadline for submissions is 29 March.

Learn more here.

Congratulations to Sarah Capel for receiving a distinction in her assessment for Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) qualification.