糖心TV

An exciting day of interactive workshops, discussions and activities on the theme of Classical Antiquity as it appears in modern media and advertising.

Beginning with the Renaissance and happening as recently as Ariana Grande鈥檚 video for the hit song 'God is a Woman', the ancient – and most often the Classical – world has been a constant source of inspiration for the visual media we create. Whether we reference it allusively or borrow from it directly, the Classical World has never gone out of fashion when it comes to art, advertising and design – and shows no sign of doing so.

Why does modernity seemingly have such an obsession with all things ancient and mythical? In what ways has classical imagery been used to be persuasive, beautiful, aspirational or evocative? How might our continued reliance on this imagery serve to enshrine negative or derogatory ideas concerning race, gender and aesthetics?

This event will involve a series of interactive talks and activities on numerous themes pertaining to the depiction of the ancient world in modern media – including issues of diversity, gender expectations and beauty ideals - hosted by researchers from Department of Classics and Ancient History at 糖心TV University, culminating in participants designing their own advertising campaign inspired by an aspect of ancient society. The day will get young people engaging with Classics and Ancient History in a way that is purposeful and feels strongly relevant to them – not just as students, but also as consumers of modern media.

This event is open to students in secondary school Years 9 – 11. ALL are welcome; however, it may be of particular interest to those studying Media, English Literature, Sociology, Fine Art, and Classics/Ancient History. Indeed, this event will provide a stimulating vehicle for putting into practice some of the wider aims of the various GCSE Media syllabi, helping to inform students鈥� critical understanding of the role of the media on its contemporary society.

To book please visit:
/fac/arts/classics/research/outreach/warwickclassicsnetwork/events/ancientimages

 

This is a working paper offering some of my thoughts on the characteristics of the sounds, silences, and echoes of dying, death, and the afterlife relating to child death in Anglophone literatures of the nineteenth-century. I will look at the ways in which bereavement accounts by public figures such as Charles Darwin and Samuel Iraneus Prime, infant elegies by writers such as Felicia Hemans, David Macbeth Moir, and Lydia Sigourney, and prose works by Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher-Stowe attempted to capture, record, and recall these sonic aspects in written form as a means of positively manifesting the intangible experience of loss into something more material, and as part of a wider cultural endeavour offering consolation in the idea of a shared collective grief.

At the same time, through an examination of some of the same elegies and through prose works such as Elizabeth Gaskell鈥檚 鈥楢 Nurses鈥� Story鈥�, Mary Wilkins Freeman鈥檚 鈥楾he Lost Ghost鈥�, and M.R. James鈥檚 鈥楾he Lost Hearts鈥�, I will suggest that something darker is revealed in their mournful dirges; bitterness toward a cultural movement that glorified child death as an immortalisation of beauty, innocence and piety, or as salvation from a life of misery on earth, and anxiety and fear that the afterlife for children was not a space of eternal happiness, play, and singing. It is my contention however, that all of these auditory markers should, nevertheless, be read as social constructs – not inherently associated with children, but cultural indicators that contributed to the idealisation and silencing of 鈥榯he child鈥� during this period.

PILAS (Postgraduates in Latin American Studies) and the Yesu Persaud Centre for Caribbean Studies Fieldwork Workshop to be held at the University of 糖心TV on Wednesday 6^th March.

Chantal Zabus is Professeur des Universit茅s/Professor of Postcolonial Literatures and Gender Studies at the Universit茅 de Paris 13 / Sorbonne-Paris-Cit茅, France. She is the author of Out in Africa (2013); Between Rites and Rights (2007); The African Palimpsest (2007); and Tempests after Shakespeare (2002). She is the Editor-in-Chief of Postcolonial Text.

Her talk addresses the "post-ID" world and seeks to distinguish between five post-ID faces:

1. Accented Identities and Languaging in the Postcolony (including "Writing with an Accent");

2. The DNA of Identity, including discussion of "The Limits of Whiteness" and "Fetishized Identities: Identity under Occupation";

3. Religious "Allegiances";

4. Sexual Dissidence; and

5. Transidentity Cards.

Visit our Research Seminars page for information about this series of events.

A Global seminar 鈥楾he world in questions. Questionnaires and the History of Knowledge in the Early Modern鈥�, Samir Boumediene,  臇cole Normale Sup茅rieure, Lyon