ÌÇÐÄTV

Move beyond description and start making your own argument.

Learn how to identify what makes writing ‘critical’ and how to position your own voice in relation to your sources. You’ll practise transforming descriptive writing into analytical argument and discover techniques to strengthen your voice through topic sentences, signposting, and commentary.

Please join us in this new cross-faculty working group which connects a range of disciplines including Literature, History, Philosophy, and Life Sciences.

With the word HUMAN, the opening session on Wednesday 29 October 2025, 5-6pm, FAB4.78 is led by Dr Curie Virág, Associate Professor in World Philosophies, who will introduce a short pre-circulated text to open the conversation. Here’s a brief description of the text chosen by Dr Virág for the session:

In her Afterword to the Catalogue of Inscriptions of Metal and Stone, Li Qingzhao (1084-1155), one of the most celebrated women poets of imperial China, presents an autobiographical account of her life before and after the Jurchen invasions of 1125–26, a cataclysmic event that forced her to flee south with whatever possessions she could take with her, and that effectively ended her life as she knew it. It is a shattering document of the trauma of displacement caused by invasion and war – but also a testimony to Li’s resistance to the dehumanising forces of her predicament, achieved through her remarkable act of writing. The selection of texts includes two of Li’s poems about her yearning for the homeland that she had left behind.

Please find the full programme below. The reading is attached.

Please to attend as seats are limited. We hope to see many of you there!

Best,

Paola Sanges Ghetti (SMLC)

Dr Michela Coletta (SMLC)