Sunderland academics contribute to the Being Human festival 2019

Once again, historians at Sunderland are contributing to the nationwide Being Human festival. Click on the links below to find out more:

Sunderland's unsung heroes (Sarah Hellawell)
Coffee and sedition (Delphine Doucet)

As part of the festival, Sunderland is also hosting a talk by the historian Michael Wood on how Wearmouth saved the West.

The photographic historian Caroline McKay will also be presenting A New Vision of the World.

Sunderland Literature Festival 2018

Once again, the School of Culture was well represented at the annual Sunderland Libraries Literature Festival, with talks by Dr Geoff Nash on the sea as literary imagery from Anglo-Saxon poetry to the novels of Amitav Ghosh; Dr Delphine Doucet on 'religion at the dinner table - a sixteenth century dialogue'; Dr Miguel Gomes on the Codex Amiatinus. The festival also saw the launch of the latest offerings from Spectral Visions Press - the School's own in-house student-led publishing company.

Being Human Festival 2018

 

Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership with the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, Being Human is a national festival promoting public engagement with humanities research. Between 17 and 23 November 2018, the School of Culture is hosting a series of public talks looking at this year’s theme of ‘Origins and Endings’ through the lens of Sunderland’s local history. The topics range from the Wearside origins of English republicanism to the end of heavy industry in the city. All are free to attend and open to all.


Click on the links to find out about these events.

• The North East Coast, the Sea and its Dangers (Dr Peter Hayes)
• A Place Fit for Heroes? The End of the First World War in the North East (Dr André Keil)
• Suffrage and Beyond in Sunderland: The City’s First Female MP  (Dr Sarah Hellawell)
•  The Lilburne Family and the Origins of English Republicanism (Dr Delphine Doucet)

Codex 2017

The latest edition of Codex has been published. Are you interested in riots in South Shields or Turkish Gothic literature? If so, visit Codex for top work from our class of 2017 undergraduates at the School of Culture.

School of Culture research seminars

Culture Research Seminar Series 
Faculty of Education and Society

The School of Culture is pleased to announce the new season of research seminars.


All sessions except otherwise stated will be in Reg Vardy 111


10th February 12 noon, Priestman 115: Iain Rowan (Sunderland University) New approaches to storytelling in the digital age


24th February 4pm: Dr. Kevin Yuill (Sunderland University) Rebels against the infinite: Attitudes to suicide in the fin-de-siecle USA


24th March 5-7pm, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens: Dr. Mary Talbot (author of The Red Virgin) and Dr. Laura O’Brien (Northumbria University) Revolutionary women: Imagining Louise Michel


7th April 4pm: Dr. Delphine Doucet (Sunderland University) Priestcraft, civil religion and toleration in the early modern period


12th May 4pm: Dr. James Koranyi (Durham University) Fascist Divisions: a Romanian German "historians' dispute" at the end of the Cold War


9th June 4pm: Dr. David Fallon (Sunderland University) “Can you say I am an old man?”: Sentiment and the Mask of Ageing in Thomas Holcroft’s Duplicity (1781)

History conference for sixth formers

Martin Luther King Jr.

On 11th September the History and Politics team will be welcoming over 120 sixth formers and their teachers from across the North East to a conference entitled 'Politics, Power and Rights'. The conference opens with a keynote address by Professor Clive Webb from Sussex University on British race relations and the American Civil Rights Movement. This is followed by parallel workshop sessions on a variety of topics, led by History and Politics staff, including 'Civil Rights before Brown v. Board of Education' (Dr Kevin Yuill); ''Charitable hatred': toleration after the Reformation' (Dr Delphine Doucet); 'Kings and Queens versus Social History' (Dr Peter Hayes). There will also be sessions on the Great Northern Coalfield 1700-1945 (Dr Stuart Howard), Britain between the two world wars (Dr Keith Wilson), revolutionary 'people' in the nineteenth century (Dr Laura O'Brien), and the second world war as a turning point for Britain (Dr Simon Henig). The closing keynote address, which reconsiders Martin Luther King's civil rights legacy, will be given by Dr Kevin Yuill.

Codex: A Journal of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship

The Department of Culture is pleased to announce the publication of the first edition of Codex: A Journal of Undergraduate Research and Scholarship in the Humanities. This annual online journal, edited by Mike Pearce and Delphine Doucet, is a showcase for the scholarship of undergraduates in the department. Work is nominated for publication by members of staff in English, History & Politics, and Languages. All correspondence should be addressed to the editors.

Translating cultures

Dr Delphine Doucet (History and Politics) has begun a collaborative project with historians from Newcastle and Northumbria Universities which will provide a window on how key ideas within early modern political and religious thought were received and adapted in the very different political cultures of a range of European regions. Calls for freedom of the press (as in Milton’s Areopagitica) or proposals for a republican form of government (Harrington’s Oceana) had very different resonances in eighteenth-century France or early nineteenth-century Germany from those that they had in their country and century of origin. This affected the translations themselves (which were often cut, embellished and adapted to suit the audience or context), but also the way in which they were received and read. By tracing how individual texts were presented and received in a range of different contexts across both time and space it will be possible to gain a much more accurate sense than is

Continental connections

The only known image of
John Toland (1670-1722)

Dr Delphine Doucet will be giving a paper at Continental Connections: Anglo-European Intellectual Networks, c 1500-1800, a conference to be held at Northumbria University on 2nd May. The one-day event explores a range of different, though sometimes overlapping, Anglo-European intellectual networks in the early modern period in an attempt to understand the many ways in which the English connected and shared their ideas with men and women on the Continent. Delphine will be speaking on ‘Translating republicanism and clandestine circulation: Toland’s Pantheisticon’.

Bodin's Colloquium of the Seven

'Colloquium of the Seven', Staastsbibliothek
zu Berlin

Dr Delphine Doucet (History and Politics) has published an article in the journal History of European Ideas called 'Questioning authorities: scepticism and anti-Christian arguments in the Colloquium Heptaplomeres'. Jean Bodin's Colloquium Heptaplomeres is one of the most important clandestine manuscripts of the early modern period. Presented as a fascinating dialogue between seven different religions it tackles some of the main debates of the early modern era. It has long been recognised as a key text promoting toleration. However, a close reading of the text and a focus on the way in which it used and debated written authorities (from ancient literature to the Scriptures) directs us toward another crucial issue of the period. Indeed, it challenges and questions received authorities by making use of the dialogue form to question each in turn. Each character relies on the likes of Aristotle, Augustine or the Bible to support their views only to see them challenged by the others through the use of counter interpretations or other authorities. This leads to seeing the text as fundamentally embedded in the sceptical arguments developing at the time, as noted by early modern readers who voiced their concerns about the way in which this text led to doubt, rather than about the potential toleration it promoted.