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The
Department
of
English
&
Humanities
in
the
School
of
Arts
at
Birkbeck
is
one
of
the
most
vibrant
English
departments
in
the
country.
We
are
based
in
Virginia
Woolf's
former
house
in
Gordon
Square,
Bloomsbury,
in
central
London.
Many
of
our
academics
are
world-
class
researchers
with
international
reputations.
Our
department
is
acknowledged
as
a
centre
of
academic
excellence
where
there
are
frequent
opportunities
to
hear
and
discuss
research
and
ideas
with
leading
thinkers,
writers
and
practitioners.
In
addition,
students
will
note
the
the
friendly
approach
of
our
academic
staff,
who
are
not
only
experts
in
their
subjects,
but
also
have
a
wealth
of
experience
in
teaching
and
encouraging
students.
At
this
blog
you
can
find
out
more
about
what
we've
been
reading,
watching,
and
thinking
about
recently.
Like
many
people
I
think
of
myself
as
revering
William
Shakespeare,
and
also
imagine
that
I
know
the
outline
of
his
late
play
The
Tempest
(c.1611).
But
a
few
minutes
into
the
current
RSC
production
at
the
Barbican,
directed
by
Gregory
Doran
with
Simon
Russell
Beale
as
the
wizard
Prospero,
I
started
to
realise
that
I
hadn’t
seen
Shakespeare
on
stage
for
some
time,
and
haven’t
looked
closely
at
the
text
of
The
Tempest
for
still
longer.
Watching
Prospero
provide
lengthy
back-
story
to
his
daughter
Miranda,
I
had
no
doubt
that
Shakespeare’s
magniloquence
was
reliably
in
place
in
every
line
on
the
page,
but
was
less
sure
that
rattling
through
it
in
a
lengthy
monologue,
voice
straining
on
a
bare
cavernous
stage,
was
a
good
mode
of
narrative
exposition.
Maybe,
I
thought,
I’d
watched
more
superhero
movies
than
was
good
for
my
ability
to
concentrate
on
this
stuff.
For
that
matter,
before
the
play
I’d
spent
four
hours
with
Martin
Keown
and
Kevin
Kilbane
on
Radio
5live:
perhaps
this
hadn’t
left
my
English
at
Shakespearean
levels.
David
Eldridge
on
David
Storey’s
“The
March
on
Russia”
David
Storey
is
often
perceived
as
a
hero
among
playwrights,
and
even
among
those
writers
who
are
in
ignorance
of,
or
out
of
sympathy
with,
his
work.
And
it’s
for
one
simple
reason.
He
cuffed
The
Birkbeck
Alumni
Team
Subject
Librarian
for
Science
(Biological,
Earth
&
Planetary,
Psychological)
There
is
a
persistent,
outdated
belief
that
all
of
our
most
useful
content
needs
to
be
available
‘above
the
fold’
on
the
homepage
or
people
simply
won’t
find
it.
Some
folk
imagine
that
web
users
won’t
scroll.
This
was
certainly
the
case
in
the
20th
century
when
mass
web
use
was
in
its
infancy
(and
on
desktops),
but
is
no
longer
true.
Now,
thanks
to
the
proliferation
of
devices
with
small
screens
that
people
use
to
access
the
web,
along
with
advances
in
readable
screen
technology
and
the
advent
of
social
media
channels
that
require
you
to
scan
lots
of
content,
people
have
not
only
learned
how
to
scroll
and
read
online,
but
scrolling
has
become
the
norm.
This
means
we
no
longer
have
to
put
all
of
our
most
important
information
above
the
fold
–
indeed,
we’re
no
longer
expected
to
–
which
means
we
can
be
more
flexible
when
it
comes
to
homepage
design.
In
the
evening,
an
audience
of
more
than
fifty
viewers
watched
two
documentary
theatre
pieces
performed
by
the
Theatre
of
Displaced
People.
Natalia
Vorozhbyt,
whose
plays
have
been
staged
across
Europe
and
the
US
including
several
commissions
from
both
the
RSC
and
the
Royal
Court
Theatre,
brought
out
the
story
of
a
Kyiv
playwright’s
research
trip
to
the
front
line,
painful
entanglement
with
her
heroic
military
consultant,
and
‘all
the
love
a
sly
writer’s
heart
can
muster’.
The
videos
of
everyday
life
in
the
war
zone
punctuated
her
Monologue
No.
1
as
piercing
reminders
that
the
sore
stage
piece
was,
indeed,
a
document,
and
Vorozhbyt
was
living
through
it
again
for
our
benefit.
But
Tóibín’s
primary
business
is
not
with
such
value
judgments
but,
more
usefully
perhaps,
an
analysis
of
how
the
powerful
presence
of
each
father
was
negotiated
by
each
son.
This
sounds
unpromisingly
like
Harold
Bloom
territory,
but
is
more
substantial
because
it’s
a
matter
of
real
detail
rather
than
interpretive
fantasy
–
though
it’s
ill-
served
by
the
hyperbolic
idiom
of
‘killing’
the
father
that
Tóibín
uncritically
picks
up
from
Ellmann
(pp.135-
6),
which
doesn’t
do
justice
to
reality
and
its
nuances.
In
each
case
it
can
be
plausibly
said
that
the
latter
generation
in
part
used
the
resources
and
examples
of
the
first,
in
part
strongly
differed
from
it.
Joyce’s
homage
to
John
Stanislaus’s
bar-
room
banter,
while
dedicating
himself
to
art
in
Trieste
and
Paris,
is
one
evident
case.
Oscar
Wilde
is
shown
to
have
enjoyed
trips
around
rural
sites
with
his
father,
in
a
way
belied
by
his
later
reputation
(pp.71-
2);
his
career
in
writing
plainly
differed
from
Sir William’s in medicine and social policy. Some of W.B. Yeats’ thoughts appear almost directly
derived from his father (who wrote in April 1913, for instance: ‘rhetoric expresses other people’s
feelings, poetry one’s own’ [p.100]: a thought very close to one of the poet’s most familiar
aphorisms), but his hard-headed determination to complete and publish so many works and
undertake so many practical activities contrasts with a father who appears to have been almost
physiologically incapable of completing a drawing. Thus, despite the evident differences between
these three writers and their families, Tóibín does draw together quite a coherent case about
inheritance and divergence. I had a great experience at Birkbeck. I started out doing an Introduction
to
Writing Fiction course through Hammersmith & Fulham Adult Education. It was my first attempt at
writing
fiction since the beginning of high school and I really enjoyed it. The course was Birkbeck affiliated
and
the
tutor said, if anyone wanted to pursue it further, to apply to Birkbeck, which offered a range of
further Creative Writing courses. That’s exactly what I did, enrolling on a 2 year, Certificate in
Creative Writing (which is now the BA Creative Writing, I believe) and then onto the MA Creative
Writing too. It was in the second year of the Certificate Course, when I’d chosen to continue with
Fiction, rather than the Poetry or Drama options that were also available, that I wrote and
workshopped the first chapter of my novel – the chapter that would go on to win the CWA Debut
Dagger and secure me a literary agent. A gain from my long separation from The Tempest, though,
was
frequent
surprise at what actually happened. When Prospero’s slave Caliban lay under a sheet and was
discovered by a clown with painted face and horn, I felt bewilderment and intrigue: was this clown
indeed,
as
Caliban himself says, a spirit of Prospero’s island? Only gradually did I realize that the clown was
Trinculo, yet another of the dispersed survivors from the opening shipwreck (and actually named as
a
Jester in the dramatis personae). Did you remember that Ferdinand and Miranda have a wedding
ceremony blessed by a set of goddesses who appear out of nowhere and sing opera? (In the text a
stage
direction stipulates: Juno’s car appears in the sky, which seems at least as ambitious as Exit pursued
by
a
bear.) Or that Caliban, Trinculo and their fellow chancer Stephano are deterred from an attack on
Prospero
by
the
spirit Ariel conjuring a blitz of raucous barking dogs? (Enter divers spirits, in shape of dogs and
hounds, hunting them about.) Quite possibly, but you still might never have seen these moments
realized in such spectacular form as in Doran’s production. Screens, projections, graphics, lights:
Ariel’s magnified image floating in a great cylinder, looking like the Silver Surfer and giving me
hope that this play wasn’t so incompatible with superhero movies after all. The plainness of
Prospero’s first scene was transcended by all these, but also, for me, by the simple interest of
character and action. How would Caliban’s motives emerge? What would transpire amid the party of
royal shipwreck survivors? Would Miranda’s high opinion of Ferdinand dip if she ever saw another
man? By the late scene when Prospero abjured his magic and broke his staff, the dynamics of
character and emotion had become compelling, and I had even caught up with the language,
ascending from Keown to appreciate the tremendous chunky vividness of this: Yet still more than
Caliban, Ariel is the production’s wandering star. His presence is assisted by special effects, but the
actor Mark Quartley himself is at the heart of it: constantly on tiptoe, always poised to fly from one
location to the next, a creature made of potential movement. I know that all the actors on stage will
have
learned
to
adapt their bodies to move in different ways – not least Dixon’s hunchbacked and loping Caliban –
but
Quartley takes this to another level. He’s like a ballerino, seamlessly conveying a sense of living on
another plane from the human beings he floats among. It’s curious that the magic is supposed to be
Prospero’s, but so much of it seems reliant on the agency of this dazzling figure: almost as though,
like
Caliban, he has never realized the true extent of his own powers. Save my name, email, and website
in
this
browser for the next time I comment. Written before Nelson’s breakthrough book The Argonauts,
Bluets is a modern kind of hybrid – a new kind of creative/critical writing. Rather than taking as its
plot a story – it follows a train of thought – an idea – beginning with the idea of colour – or rather
being in relation to a colour: ‘Suppose I were to say I had fallen in love with a colour.’ As we move
toward our 200th anniversary in 2023, part of the Birkbeck archive was rediscovered in an offsite
storage facility. This has proved to be a rich source, not only providing insights not into our
institutional history but also stories of both staff and students allowing us glimpses into their lives.
We
now find ourselves in the position of having two sections of the archive, each telling our story from
different perspectives. © 2024 Insight Productions Ltd. All Rights Reserved. What do you do at
Birkbeck? The ‘above the fold’ myth Hear from Birkbeck students and researchers who have
benefitted from the support of our community. Jane Van de Ban, Web Content Manager for
Birkbeck, gives insight into the functionality and strategic design behind our new homepage. Read
part
one
and
part
two
in
our
blog
series about the redesign project. Or maybe he didn’t care. Or maybe I misread the scene. There’s
more
than
one
way
to
be
a
puppet, and more to be a machine. I’m very excited as I’m lucky enough to be involved with
moving the Birkbeck Library site to the new design – I’m a Library Assistant in the Disability and
Dyslexia Support team at the Library. I’m really keen on the structured data and accessibility
approaches used in the new design. Would love to know more But that’s not all. In addition to
these elements, you will find that we offer routes to destinations across our site through large visual
signposts; that accessibility is at the heart of our design and our Reciteme bar means all visitors can
access
our
information
more
easily; and that our redeveloped pages are responsive, which means they change, depending on the
size of the browser you are using to access them, in order to provide an optimal browsing experience.
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * “After ten years out of
formal education, Birkbeck was the perfect option for me. I hadn’t studied A-levels and was able to
join Birkbeck after taking the necessary access courses to prepare me for my degree. Birkbeck’s
evening classes allowed me to be in full-time employment while studying in order to support myself
as
a
mature student. Gollum, Frodo and Sam cross the Dead Marshes. [Image used under fair dealings
provisions] The Department of English & Humanities in the School of Arts at Birkbeck is one of the
most
vibrant
English
departments
in
the
country.
We
are
based
in
Virginia
Woolf's
former
house
in
Gordon
Square,
Bloomsbury,
in
central
London.
Many
of
our
academics
are
world-
class
researchers
with
international
reputations.
Our
department
is
acknowledged
as
a
centre
of
academic
excellence
where
there
are
frequent
opportunities
to
hear
and
discuss
research
and
ideas
with
leading
thinkers,
writers
and
practitioners.
In
addition,
students
will
note
the
the
friendly
approach
of
our
academic
staff,
who
are
not
only
experts
in
their
subjects,
but
also
have
a
wealth
of
experience
in
teaching
and
encouraging
students.
At
this
blog
you
can
find
out
more
about
what
we've
been
reading,
watching,
and
thinking
about
recently.
When we were working with Pentagram, our design agency, to develop our new homepage, we had
long discussions about whether the carousel should stay or go: we were initially resistant to the idea
of
losing it. After all, it was an efficient way to showcase lots of information about Birkbeck in one
space, wasn’t it? Actually, no it wasn’t.
Your
email
address
will
not
be
published.
Required
fields
are
marked
*
Two
of
the
objective
set
for
Stage
1
of
the
Digital
Transformation
Project
were
to:
Did
you
find
mistakes
in
interface
or
texts?
Or
do
you
know
how
to
improve
StudyLib
UI?
Feel
free
to
send
suggestions.
Its
very
important
for
us!
When
we
commissioned
Pentagram
to
come
up
with
a
new
web
design
with
and
for
us,
based
on
our
new
visual
ID,
we
knew
we
wanted
to
showcase
Birkbeck
effectively.
We
knew
–
because
Birkbeck
staff
and
students
told
us
–
that
the
Birkbeck
website
didn’t
work
for
our
visitors
as
well
as
it
might
and
that
it
looked
dated
and
staid.
Birkbeck
has
been
transforming
lives
by
helping
people
access
higher
education
for
nearly
200
years.
This
year,
2020,
we
celebrate
our
100th
anniversary
of
our
membership
of
the
University
of
London.
When
Birkbeck
joined
the
University
of
London,
it
was
on
the
condition
that
it
should
continue
to
provide
evening
teaching,
and
this
remains
our
central
mission.
For
more
than
15
years
I’ve
partnered
with
media
and
destination
clients
who
tap
into
my
marketing
and
journalism
prowess
to
create
content
solutions
for
B2C
and
B2B
marketing
endeavors.
I’ve
also
taught
these
same
lessons
to
university
students
around
the
world.
Get
in
touch
to
learn
more.
Mary
Lynn
Bracht
discusses
the
impact
of
Birkbeck’s
MA
Creative
Writing
in
the
publication
of
her
first
novel,
White
Chrysanthemum,
after
submitting
the
first
five
chapters
as
her
dissertation.
Save
my
name,
email,
and
website
in
this
browser
for
the
next
time
I
comment.
It
turns
out
that
web
carousels
aren’t working for website users, but internal audiences love them. So, while we thought people were
finding out all about Birkbeck from the rotating images and messages in the carousel, in fact, our
visitors
weren’t interested at all: they did not always see them; scrolled past them; went straight to our
course finder; or noticed just one image and followed that link. Our carousel was giving us a false
sense of security and, as a result, we were not working hard enough to ensure our visitors
understood what Birkbeck was about. The figure evokes a range of cartoonish paraphernalia and
nostalgic imagery – for me Pinocchio and Chucky first came to mind. In developing the work,
Wolfson seemingly drew on a number of US references, from illustrations of Huckleberry Finn, to
Howdy-Doody, a cowboy puppet from a children’s TV show in the 1940s and 50s, to Alfred E.
Neuman, the mascot of the satirical magazine Mad. There is a persistent, outdated belief that all of
our
most useful content needs to be available ‘above the fold’ on the homepage or people simply won’t
find
it. Some folk imagine that web users won’t scroll. This was certainly the case in the 20th century
when mass web use was in its infancy (and on desktops), but is no longer true. The first panel
examined theatrical and cinematic representations of the war. Georg Genoux, the co-founder of the
Theatre of Displaced People and one of the filmmakers behind the Berlinale award-winning School
#3, discussed his experience of volunteering and engaging with children in war-torn territories.
Playwright and screenwriter Natalia Vorozhbyt and the military medic turned theatre maker Alik
Sardarian both spoke about their involvement in documentary theatre forms and changing
perceptions of society at war. Olesya Khromeychuk (Kings College), a historian researching the
participation of women in military formations during the Second World War and in the ongoing
conflict in Donbas, gave a paper on the current militarisation of Ukrainian society. With remarkable
candour about her personal investment in the topic, Khromeychuk also talked about putting her
experience of war and loss into her play All That Remains which she staged with Molodyi Teatr
London in 2018. Mark Blacklock on Roly Porter at Corsica Studios Two months ago I saw Roly
Porter at Corsica Studios. I first heard Porter’s work when he was recording as one half of Vexd, a
duo operating in the noisier, more adrenalized end of the dubstep spectrum, I agree to my personal
data being stored and used as per the Gasholder Privacy Policy Is our homepage working the way
we
wanted? Joseph Brooker on a special screening of A Taste of Honey presented by Birds Eye View
JO: I wonder if we ever catch up with ourselves? GEOF: I don’t know. JO: Now you’re a real
Edwardian, aren’t you? GEOF: What’s that? JO: A proper Ted! Responsibilities will include running
writing workshops and seminars, as well as administration and assessment of the modules. The role
may also involve the convening of some modules. All teaching takes place within the Department of
English and Humanities’ evening timetable, between 6pm and 9pm, and will occur in the autumn,
spring and summer terms. “After ten years out of formal education, Birkbeck was the perfect option
for
me. I hadn’t studied A-levels and was able to join Birkbeck after taking the necessary access courses
to
prepare me for my degree. Birkbeck’s evening classes allowed me to be in full-time employment
while studying in order to support myself as a mature student. As Virginia Woolf said, writing is just
getting the right words in the right order. When London Triptych first got picked up by Myriad, they
suggested I restructure so, rather than three narrators, each section (set in the 1890s, 1950s and
1990s) would be separate. I was umming and ahhing but my agent stepped in and said that it wasn’t
the
book we were selling; it needed the triple narrative. If you’re structuring a story in three narratives,
how
do
you
keep the reader interested in all three equally? And balance the flow of information so one isn’t
overloading the other two? But that’s not all. In addition to these elements, you will find that we
offer routes to destinations across our site through large visual signposts; that accessibility is at the
heart of our design and our Reciteme bar means all visitors can access our information more easily;
and
that
our
redeveloped pages are responsive, which means they change, depending on the size of the browser
you
are
using to access them, in order to provide an optimal browsing experience. Poets and writers, theatre
directors and performers, documentary photographers, historians, and literary scholars: the
participants of the symposium Depicting Donbas (25–26 April) represented a truly cross-disciplinary
congregation. What united them was the recognition of the ongoing war in the Donbas region of
Eastern Ukraine, essential for their creative practice and academic work. They were invited to
London by the symposium’s organisers, Molly Flynn (Birkbeck) and Uilleam Blacker (UCL SSEES),
to
advance our understanding of the European war which has already taken 13,000 lives. As we mark
five
years
since the annexation of Crimea and the launch of Russian military campaign in Donbas, this
symposium could not but be more urgent. Your email address will not be published. Required fields
are
marked
*
Save
my
name,
email,
and
website
in
this
browser
for
the
next
time
I
comment.
A gain from my long separation from The Tempest, though, was frequent surprise at what actually
happened. When Prospero’s slave Caliban lay under a sheet and was discovered by a clown with
painted face and horn, I felt bewilderment and intrigue: was this clown indeed, as Caliban himself
says, a spirit of Prospero’s island? Only gradually did I realize that the clown was Trinculo, yet
another of the dispersed survivors from the opening shipwreck (and actually named as a Jester in the
dramatis personae). Did you remember that Ferdinand and Miranda have a wedding ceremony
blessed by a set of goddesses who appear out of nowhere and sing opera? (In the text a stage
direction stipulates: Juno’s car appears in the sky, which seems at least as ambitious as Exit pursued
by
a
bear.) Or that Caliban, Trinculo and their fellow chancer Stephano are deterred from an attack on
Prospero by the spirit Ariel conjuring a blitz of raucous barking dogs? (Enter divers spirits, in shape
of
dogs and hounds, hunting them about.) Quite possibly, but you still might never have seen these
moments realized in such spectacular form as in Doran’s production. Screens, projections, graphics,
lights: Ariel’s magnified image floating in a great cylinder, looking like the Silver Surfer and giving
me hope that this play wasn’t so incompatible with superhero movies after all. The plainness of
Prospero’s first scene was transcended by all these, but also, for me, by the simple interest of
character and action. How would Caliban’s motives emerge? What would transpire amid the party of
royal shipwreck survivors? Would Miranda’s high opinion of Ferdinand dip if she ever saw another
man? By the late scene when Prospero abjured his magic and broke his staff, the dynamics of
character and emotion had become compelling, and I had even caught up with the language,
ascending from Keown to appreciate the tremendous chunky vividness of this: Find out more about
Jonathan Kemp on his website on or for Creative Writing course info at Birkbeck click here Of
course, we know these results aren’t solely due to the work we did on the web, as these objectives
are
shared by colleagues across the college, and we work collectively to achieve them. However, we can
at the very least be reassured that our website is helping us to meet these objectives and, as we track
user engagement with our site (through user testing and the use of online tools like Hotjar), we can
see that it is now easier than ever for our users to find the content they need to decide to study with
us
–
and
we
can also see that they are engaging with our content in the way that we hoped (watch this video of
someone reading our home page).
What we study in the writing workshop is how to deploy craft to achieve effect in order to produce
affect in the reader. Flannery O’Connor in her indispensable essay The Nature and Aim of
Fiction says that ‘the meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.’ Your
email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * A puppet hangs in the air by
chains. Its body is routinely hiked up and dropped with increasing degrees of force. It’s a puppet but
it’s a boy puppet, or even the kind of boy that might have a creepy-cute puppet such as this. And
when its blue-screen eyes flare and spin, this puppet, which is also a boy, is suddenly very much a
machine; a machine like the apparatus that raises and lowers him. Over the course of this uncanny
installation by US artist Jordan Wolfson at Tate Tanks, the edges of bodies and things, humans and
machines, all start to blur and disassemble, though the object stays resolutely intact. The discovery of
water on Mars has fuelled speculation about the potential for life on the Red Planet, both in terms of
extra-terrestrial activity but also as a new home for humankind. Graham has always been fascinated
by Mars and having completed a BSc in Planetary Science at Birkbeck, is now undertaking research
on the planet’s glaciers through a funded PhD. Joseph Brooker on Stan & Ollie (2018) Turn to
Hardy in any alphabetical order and you find: ‘See Stan Laurel’. David Thomson Stan & Ollie starts
in 1937, with the duo near their commercial peak on the set of Way Out West. But this prologue is
brief: Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. If you would
like to provide an alumni profile and be featured in our e-newsletter and blog email
[email protected]. Organisation: And what does a man do when he loves a woman? We don’t get
to hear the full refrain here, instead the object plummets to the ground. Perhaps what a man does
when he loves a woman is less important than the pleasure he gets from violent theatrics, in
producing culture, in producing himself. But given that the lyric is cut just before the word ‘woman’
would soar, this installation is curiously haunted by women, though their place in the aggressive
structure remains unclear. © 2013 - 2024 studylib.net all other trademarks and copyrights are the
property of their respective owners Do students think they’ll wind up famous? Perspectives on Asia
and Africa - Graduate Institute of International Joseph Brooker on 1917 (2019) April 1917: two
lance corporals, Blake and Schofield, are sent across no man’s land to warn another battalion, the
2nd Devonshires, that their attack on German lines is a misplaced walk into a trap. Lance corporal
Blake’s brother is a Lieutenant Writing Courses in London | City Lit Your generosity makes this kind
of student support and high-level research possible. I was honoured to chair the final panel of the
day which brought together visual narratives from Crimea and Donbas. Emine Ziyatdinova, the
documentary photographer now based in London, has captured the annexation of Crimea through
the lenses of her family history. Born in Uzbekistan, where her family was deported from Crimea in
1944 by Stalin’s regime, she grew up as a part of the Crimean Tatar indigenous minority in post-
Soviet Ukraine. Today, Crimean Tatars are forced to relive their people’s history of repressions as
they are subjected to arrests and persecutions by the occupying Russian authorities. Anastasia
Vlasova is a Ukrainian documentary photographer living in Kyiv who has covered the EuroMaidan
Revolution, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17
near Donetsk. Within her striking photographs from Donbas, raw images of war sit next to gentle
depictions of teenagers living in the grey zone near the front line. Vlasova and Ziyatdinova’s projects
give visibility to vulnerable and often marginalised characters whose stories would otherwise be lost
within the larger picture of Europe’s forgotten war. Save my name, email, and website in this
browser for the next time I comment. The figure evokes a range of cartoonish paraphernalia and
nostalgic imagery – for me Pinocchio and Chucky first came to mind. In developing the work,
Wolfson seemingly drew on a number of US references, from illustrations of Huckleberry Finn, to
Howdy-Doody, a cowboy puppet from a children’s TV show in the 1940s and 50s, to Alfred E.
Neuman, the mascot of the satirical magazine Mad. When I interviewed Ian Martin at the Lancaster
Words festival in July 2017, he talked about how this speech came about. He was bedridden at the
time following a lumber puncture, in severe pain, writing on a laptop propped up on his knees. And
every time he finished a scene, he’d have to save the work onto a memory stick and – in those pre-
superfast-broadband years – hobble to the next room to plug the drive into another computer and
email the scene off. On this particular day the process was so exhausting, so dispiriting, the pain so
awful that on reaching the second computer Ian poured all his rage and pain out into Jamie’s Al
Jolson rant, changing what was in the original draft a straightforward put-down into a piece of
sweary poetry. On one level I agree, because it’s an Americanisation of British academy, if you like;
they’ve been running courses there for the last forty years, if not longer. And it’s fairly recent here.
It’s brilliant as it gives loads of writers a salary, but if you look at all your favourite authors they
didn’t study creative writing anywhere – they just wrote or read. And it’s astonishing how many
students want to be writers but “don’t like” reading. Creative Writing | Imperial College London Is
our homepage working the way we wanted? Creative Writing BA | Brunel University London With
regards to your publication query please contact the creative writing department directly who may be
able to assist you. It might also be worth checking out Mechanics Institute Review, a literary reviews
which was founded at Birkbeck, they accept submissions annually. The term ‘above the fold’ comes
from the world of printing presses and ink, where newspapers ensured their best story was featured
on the top half of the paper so, when folded in half for the newsstand, the front-page lead story could
easily be seen by passersby. This concept carried over to the web, where people equated the bottom
edge of their browser window to the fold in a newspaper. Some colleagues are worried that, a bit
like those newsstand customers, web visitors will simply scan the headline and, if not presented with
every key messages at a glance, they will walk on by. Library Services, Birkbeck, University of
London At that time, we didn’t ask people to scroll, but our website was tiny and not even the place
most people turned to find out about us. Imagine this – Google was only founded in 1998! Like
many other websites in the 90s, it mostly comprised text that was uncomfortable to read on screen.
Michael was 12 years old when he and his siblings were brought to the UK by their father. Only a
few years later, his father left – and Michael and his siblings were taken into care. Aged 16 and
without a passport or a birth certificate, Michael was unable to access state support. Things began to
unravel as Michael tried to provide for his younger siblings: he was sent to prison for using someone
else’s identification papers to work. No comments yet! Add one to start the conversation.
Many
thanks
for
your
help.
It’s
important
to
have
queer
stuff
out
there.
It
baulks
to
be
called
a
gay
writer,
not
to
have
it
qualified,
but
what
you
do
sexually
does
have
an
impact.
I
write
about
what
I
write
about
because
I’m
gay.
And
to
be
candid
about
the
body
is
a
political
gesture,
inspired
by
the
likes
of
Edmund
White
and
Genet.
These
things
inform
you
and
what
you
want
to
say:
if
what
you
say
then
finds
a
readership,
that’s great. Creative Writing BA | Brunel University London When we commissioned Pentagram to
come up with a new web design with and for us, based on our new visual ID, we knew we wanted to
showcase Birkbeck effectively. We knew – because Birkbeck staff and students told us – that the
Birkbeck website didn’t work for our visitors as well as it might and that it looked dated and staid.
Emma Illingworth Joseph Brooker on Colm Tóibín’s Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of
Wilde, Yeats and Joyce(2018) Colm Tóibín’s short book collects three essays published in the
London Review of Books, and before that delivered as the Richard Ellmann lectures in Modern
Literature at Emory University in Since the new pages and design went live on 16 May, we have
seen a number of results that suggest that we are meeting these objectives. For example, compared to
the
period immediately before the go-live, prospectus requests have gone up 200%, Open Evening
registrations 70% and applications 50%. And we’ve seen a 130% increase in views of our research
content. © 2024 Insight Productions Ltd. All Rights Reserved. The first panel examined theatrical
and
cinematic representations of the war. Georg Genoux, the co-founder of the Theatre of Displaced
People and one of the filmmakers behind the Berlinale award-winning School #3, discussed his
experience of volunteering and engaging with children in war-torn territories. Playwright and
screenwriter Natalia Vorozhbyt and the military medic turned theatre maker Alik Sardarian both
spoke about their involvement in documentary theatre forms and changing perceptions of society at
war. Olesya Khromeychuk (Kings College), a historian researching the participation of women in
military formations during the Second World War and in the ongoing conflict in Donbas, gave a
paper on the current militarisation of Ukrainian society. With remarkable candour about her personal
investment in the topic, Khromeychuk also talked about putting her experience of war and loss into
her play All That Remains which she staged with Molodyi Teatr London in 2018. The three essays
treat Wilde, Yeats and Joyce in turn, making them resemble one of Ellmann’s own ventures in this
format of prestige lecture and ensuing slim volume: Four Dubliners (1987). (The fourth Dubliner was
Beckett, who makes his discreet appearance in Tóibín’s introduction.) Ellmann wrote full-scale
biographies of all three writers: the design of Tóibín’s book thus seems in part explained by its
origins in the Ellmann lectures. Tóibín’s angle is to write of them in relation to their fathers, whose
own actions and words often dominate each essay. Sir William Wilde, a pioneering eye and ear
surgeon in Victorian Dublin and a Renaissance man who conducted the Irish census and wrote books
on archaeology, is shown to been if anything an even more substantial figure than his artistic son. In
this case the mother, Jane Elgee aka the nationalist poet Speranza, was a major cultural presence also.
John Butler Yeats, diverted from the law into drawing and painting, can’t be said to emerge as a
more important talent than William Butler Yeats, but Tóibín’s many quotations from his letters do
make plain his gift for voluminous, spontaneous, sometimes inspired opinion. Though Tóibín doesn’t
say
so, the three generations of fathers arguably show a declension; John Stanislaus Joyce managed to
drink away a highly paid job and the fortune of a family that needed it, while producing no work
that might begin to compensate for these failings. One exhibit in his defence might be his political
work for the Parnellite cause, but those efforts could presumably have been matched by many others
from the nationalist cadres of the time. The more typical case for his defence, reprised by Tóibín, is
that his verbal wit fed into Joyce’s writing. That’s surely true, but it took James Joyce to cast the
material for posterity. Unlike his younger brother Stanislaus, Tóibín reminds us, the novelist became
indulgent of his father’s failings, assisted in this by living several countries away for the last three
decades of his life. After reading Tóibín’s volume I don’t much share the indulgence, especially as
the
previous two fathers are so much more impressive than Joyce’s, so in the context of this particular
book he seems even less accomplished than usual. After I left Birkbeck, I was very focused on
finishing the novel. It took 8 years, all told, to finally finish it, and then a further 2 years to land a
publishing deal. My debut novel, Brothers in Blood, was published in September 2018 and I am
currently working on a follow-up, which is due out at the end of 2019. One of the things that pushes
us into language is to explore our own interiorities, or those of others. But the thing that pushes us to
do
that is often a lack of confidence, the idea of the loner immersed in books. When it comes to
switching modes, going from sensitive artist to shameless self-promoter, it’s tough; so it’s important
to
see them as two separate strategies. You have to discover the writer you are: you might want to be
Kathy Acker but actually you’re Jane Austen. Aristotle called the study of rhetoric, the education of
the
emotions. In this sense Creative Writing practice intervenes in the rigid essay writing and has an
interesting effect – the subjective ‘I’ starts to emerge. Writers who study affect by trying to achieve it
in their work begin to understand something about the creative transmission of language and the way
in which experience is encoded into that. The writer learns something not just about how to write
better, but about themselves too – what linguistic tics and prejudices might be evident in even the
smallest choice of adjective. Howdy Doody created by E. Roger Muir [Image is in the Public
Domain] Of course, we know these results aren’t solely due to the work we did on the web, as these
objectives are shared by colleagues across the college, and we work collectively to achieve them.
However, we can at the very least be reassured that our website is helping us to meet these objectives
and, as we track user engagement with our site (through user testing and the use of online tools like
Hotjar), we can see that it is now easier than ever for our users to find the content they need to
decide to study with us – and we can also see that they are engaging with our content in the way that
we hoped (watch this video of someone reading our home page). Creative Writing (MA) —
Birkbeck, University of London What do you do at Birkbeck? I have long planned to get my poetry
published, and perhaps the time has come for me to do something about it. I am more interested in
producing a slim volume rather than separate poems in poetry periodicals, which is what I hav done
at intervals so far. Do please let me know how to go about it. I’d like this to be connected with
Birkbeck. We promise not to send you any rubbish! For more info view our privacy policy Depicting
Donbas was made possible with support from Birkbeck Research Centres Collaboration Fund, UCL
Octagon Small Grants, Birkbeck School of Arts Strategic Research Fund, Birkbeck Centre for
Contemporary Theatre, Birkbeck Research in Aesthetics of Kinship and Community, and Birkbeck
Institute for Gender and Sexuality. English with Creative Writing - BA (Hons) | London South Bank
The concerns that colleagues on our campus have expressed largely cluster around three issues: long
pages; use of large images; and the loss of the carousel – a filmstrip of images that you can click
through. The concerns that colleagues on our campus have expressed largely cluster around three
issues: long pages; use of large images; and the loss of the carousel – a filmstrip of images that you
can click through. MIR – http://mironline.org/ “Birkbeck has been everything I hoped for, and more.
Though much of my course was delivered through remote learning due to the pandemic, Birkbeck
seminars and workshops became the highlight of my week, while the assignments spurred me on to
try new approaches in my writing. But if I may be permitted to be a bit sweary myself for a
moment: this is of course bollocks.
Alik Sardarian performing his autobiographical monologue Product with Christopher Wray One
section of the archive is held in the main Birkbeck building and is comprised of records pertaining to
the history of Birkbeck from an organisational context, including minutes of various committees,
published student journals and newsletters, annual reports, calendars, early student registers and staff
information. × Organisation: Find out more about our part-time and full-time University of London
Postgraduate courses, 2022/2023 entry, taught by evening study: Browse by subject. Michael was 12
years old when he and his siblings were brought to the UK by their father. Only a few years later, his
father left – and Michael and his siblings were taken into care. Aged 16 and without a passport or a
birth certificate, Michael was unable to access state support. Things began to unravel as Michael tried
to provide for his younger siblings: he was sent to prison for using someone else’s identification
papers to work. After I left Birkbeck, I was very focused on finishing the novel. It took 8 years, all
told, to finally finish it, and then a further 2 years to land a publishing deal. My debut novel,
Brothers in Blood, was published in September 2018 and I am currently working on a follow-up,
which is due out at the end of 2019. “Birkbeck has been everything I hoped for, and more. Though
much of my course was delivered through remote learning due to the pandemic, Birkbeck seminars
and workshops became the highlight of my week, while the assignments spurred me on to try new
approaches in my writing. Main Birkbeck Building, Birkbeck Image Collection. Is our homepage
working the way we wanted? Library Services, Birkbeck, University of London The first panel
examined theatrical and cinematic representations of the war. Georg Genoux, the co-founder of the
Theatre of Displaced People and one of the filmmakers behind the Berlinale award-winning School
#3, discussed his experience of volunteering and engaging with children in war-torn territories.
Playwright and screenwriter Natalia Vorozhbyt and the military medic turned theatre maker Alik
Sardarian both spoke about their involvement in documentary theatre forms and changing
perceptions of society at war. Olesya Khromeychuk (Kings College), a historian researching the
participation of women in military formations during the Second World War and in the ongoing
conflict in Donbas, gave a paper on the current militarisation of Ukrainian society. With remarkable
candour about her personal investment in the topic, Khromeychuk also talked about putting her
experience of war and loss into her play All That Remains which she staged with Molodyi Teatr
London in 2018. The long read: How to get your novel published There’s a lot of starry eyed-ness
around creative writing; and yet what always drove me to it was the opposite. Jean Genet said, “the
only two things a poet needs are anonymity and poverty”: there’s that sense in which the true spirit of
literature is being compromised by capitalism, and the need to be rich and famous is driving the
desire to write a book, rather than the need to express the human soul or psyche. The ‘above the
fold’ myth I have bedimmed Since we launched the new homepage, some people have mourned the
loss of the carousel – the sliding set of images that used to adorn the top of the homepage. They are
concerned that, with the loss of the carousel, we no longer convey the unique character of Birkbeck
at a glance. Browse all Birkbeck Library Archives and Special Collections, University of London
descriptions available to date on the Archives Hub. We keep the “p” word on hold at first and get
them to focus on writing, before being introduced to agents and the industry. Very few will become
full-time writers; yet it doesn’t mean just because you’ve done a degree or MA you’re going to skip
off into a book deal. But it doesn’t devalue what you’ve done either – these are transferable skills.
Nadia Bishai, Ph.D. London. Creative Writing (MA) — Birkbeck, University of London Birkbeck,
University of London Mary Lynn Bracht discusses the impact of Birkbeck’s MA Creative Writing in
the publication of her first novel, White Chrysanthemum, after submitting the first five chapters as
her dissertation. [Image used under fair dealings provisions] We will carry on the conversation of the
Russo-Ukrainian war, annexation of Crimea, and human rights in the region on 21 May. Join us for
the screening of The Trial: The State of Russia vs Oleg Sentsov, followed by a panel discussion with
Molly Flynn (Birkbeck), Olesya Khromeychuk (Kings), Rory Finnin and Josephine von Zitzewitz
(Cambridge). Writing Courses in London | City Lit When we commissioned Pentagram to come up
with a new web design with and for us, based on our new visual ID, we knew we wanted to
showcase Birkbeck effectively. We knew – because Birkbeck staff and students told us – that the
Birkbeck website didn’t work for our visitors as well as it might and that it looked dated and staid.
Creative Writing/English Department – http://www.bbk.ac.uk/departments/english/ Is our homepage
working the way we wanted? It’s an exciting time at Birkbeck as we continue to uphold the ethos
and pursue the central mission of providing access to education for all. Birkbeck is still London’s
only specialist provider of part-time evening higher education as well as being a world-class research
institution. The archive will continue to tell the story of Birkbeck as an institution as well as all those
who work, study and research here. You can follow Birkbeck’s journey to its 200th anniversary. Find
out more about our part-time and full-time University of London Postgraduate courses, 2022/2023
entry, taught by evening study: Browse by subject. NSTA - National Science Teachers Association
There are survivors of WWII alive today who are still protesting war crimes committed against them
over seventy years ago. They are Korean women who were forced into sexual slavery in military
brothels by Japanese soldiers and euphemistically called ‘comfort women’, which means ‘prostitutes’
in Japanese. These women prefer to call themselves ‘halmoni’, meaning ‘grandmothers’, which is a
deeply respected position in Korean society; one that was denied to most of them because of their
captivity. The first ‘comfort woman’, Kim Hak-Sun, came forward in 1991 to testify what she
endured during WWII. Over 200,000 women and girls were enslaved, but less than 260 were
registered with the Korean government. Over twenty years after Kim’s testimony, the grandmothers’
plight for reparations, recognition and dignity were still largely unanswered. This injustice and their
stories affected me deeply; moreso because these women were disappearing – dying from illness and
old age. MIR – http://mironline.org/ © 2024 Insight Productions Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Joseph
Brooker on The Tempest at the Barbican A Masters degree in Creative Writing or English literature or
an equivalent qualification with specific subject knowledge of fiction and drama. It’s a lot less
looked down upon that it was ten years ago. I still prefer to let someone else promote the book. And
you’ll need an editor to work with: the significance of the editor has always been there, from Ezra
Pound to Lord of Flies. Proust self-published – so there’s nothing wrong with it. Organisation: One
of the things that pushes us into language is to explore our own interiorities, or those of others. But
the thing that pushes us to do that is often a lack of confidence, the idea of the loner immersed in
books. When it comes to switching modes, going from sensitive artist to shameless self-promoter, it’s
tough; so it’s important to see them as two separate strategies. You have to discover the writer you
are: you might want to be Kathy Acker but actually you’re Jane Austen. In the evening, an audience
of more than fifty viewers watched two documentary theatre pieces performed by the Theatre of
Displaced People. Natalia Vorozhbyt, whose plays have been staged across Europe and the US
including several commissions from both the RSC and the Royal Court Theatre, brought out the
story of a Kyiv playwright’s research trip to the front line, painful entanglement with her heroic
military consultant, and ‘all the love a sly writer’s heart can muster’. The videos of everyday life in
the war zone punctuated her Monologue No. 1 as piercing reminders that the sore stage piece was,
indeed, a document, and Vorozhbyt was living through it again for our benefit. Creative Writing
(MA) — Birkbeck, University of London I started teaching in 1999, and became involved in setting
up a two-year programme in creative writing. I’ve seen changes in how the subject is delivered, and
now students are getting publishing deals with big houses. We encourage students to connect and
make friends and share work outside class, giving them an understanding of their own limitations.
Interviews will be held on week commencing 17 June 2019. Julia Bell A similar process has
informed Ian’s next project, which again teams him with Armando Iannucci – and long-time
collaborator David Schneider – in the adaptation of a French graphic novel about the death of Stalin
and the machinations within the Kremlin to succeed him. Not the most obvious pitch for a comedy
film, but then Ian Martin has never been one for the obvious. The Death of Stalin will be released
later this year. Amer Anwar graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from Birkbeck in 2010. His
recent novel Brothers in Blood was featured in The Times Books of the Year 2018, Guardian Best
Books of the Year 2018, Crime Time Best of the Year and was the winner of The CWA Debut
Dagger award. We spoke to Amer about his time at Birkbeck and what he’s been up to since
graduating… English with Creative Writing - BA (Hons) | London South Bank Birkbeck has been
transforming lives by helping people access higher education for nearly 200 years. This year, 2020,
we celebrate our 100th anniversary of our membership of the University of London. When Birkbeck
joined the University of London, it was on the condition that it should continue to provide evening
teaching, and this remains our central mission. I was born in Philadelphia, studied journalism at
NYU, moved to Paris, became a French citizen, taught media courses in London, gained five pounds
in Naples, and worked briefly in Beijing as an editor before moving back to NYC.