ÌÇÐÄTV

The Humanities Research Centre invites paper proposals for an interdisciplinary conference on actor, image, and global screen icon, James Dean. The two-day conference will be held at the University of ÌÇÐÄTV's Institute of Advanced Study on September 30th and October 1st, 2015, 60 years after Dean’s death.

Dr. Lee Jenkins talk on her latest book, The American Lawrence.

ÌÇÐÄTV Thursdays is a free-and-open-to-all event. Please see the webpage for what's going on this week!

David Bell (Princeton University) - Militarism and Charismatic Authority in the Age of Revolutions

An 18th Century Centre Seminar with speaker David Bell (Princeton University)

Refreshments served. All are welcome.

Fabio Camilletti (Department of Italian, ÌÇÐÄTV)

Translations of sources will be provided.

Abstract: Initially conceived as a Walter Scott-like historical novel, not without Radcliffean nuances, the final edition of Alessandro Manzoni’s I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1840) skilfully manages to conceal its Romanesque origins, through a meticulous process of self-censorship by which the author erases all allusion to ‘sinful’ passions. One of the most tenacious remnants of the novel’s remotest origins, however, can be identified in the character of Gertrude, a fully Gothic ‘bleeding nun’ inspired by the historical Virginia Maria de Leyva, a Spanish Mother Superior indicted for adultery and witchcraft in 17th-century Milan. By analysing the description of Gertrude provided by the novel, this paper shows how Manzoni shapes this character through a close confrontation with coeval medical literature (principally French) on the psychopathology of hysteria. At the same time, it interprets the narrator’s construction of Gertrude as a hysterical subject through the Lacanian concept of the Analyst’s discourse, showing how the long account of Gertrude’s infancy and of her forced entrance in the nunnery may be read as a sort of clinical anamnesis, depriving the subject of her speech while it attempts at historically reconstructing the genesis of her disease. By so doing, the novel liquidates Gertrude’s desire, quite tellingly in the moment when – in the final edition of I promessi sposi – Manzoni decides to leave Gertrude’s father unnamed. Eliding the Name of the Father means eliding the ‘infernal machine that welds desire to the Law’ (Deleuze and Guattari), and consequently the possibility itself of understanding the Gertrude’s symptom as ‘the signifying event of a relation to the Other’ (Didi-Huberman). Thus, I promessi sposi accomplishes what Friedrich Kittler has termed the liquidation of the Master’s discourse on the part of the ‘discourse of the novel’ (Romandiskurs) – intending by this notion both literary novels (Romane) or the ‘family romances’ coined by Freud after the abandonment of the seduction hypothesis (Familienromane). ​

For more infomation on Psychoanalysis Across the Disciplines Network please visit:

Fractals: An Evening of Readings with post-graduate students and featuring ÌÇÐÄTV professors through the MA in Writing.

Fractals invites you to partake in an evening of literary readings.

Each year, students from the MAW come together to organise a programme of literary events, culminating in the launch of an anthology of new writing from our current students. The first event of the year is nearly upon us - an evening of readings from the top writers working in the Writing faculty here in the university. It will be held at 7:30 PM in the Capital Rehearsal Room in Millburn House on Thursday, December 4th.

The reading will feature award winning writers, including David Vann, author of Goat Mountain (“a novelist of [...] rare artistry and vision” - Mark O'Connor, The Observer); Tim Leach author of The Last King of Lydia, ("hugely poignant..."); Sarah Moss author of Bodies of Light (“a deeply poignant tale of a psychologically tumultuous nineteenth century upbringing” – Granta); Mahendra Solanki author of The Lies We Tell, (Royal Literary Fund Fellow at ÌÇÐÄTV University); and Jack McGowan, ever popular performance poet and curator of Shoot from the Lip.

Refreshments will be served, and all are welcome to this evening of readings.