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.

Sunderland Literature Festival 2017

Once again, several members of the School of Culture will be taking part in the Sunderland Libraries Literature Festival (download the full programme here). These events feature our staff/students:

Colin Younger (Senior Lecturer): Expressive Writing as Therapy, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 10th October 3-4.30pm

This workshop will explore expressive writing approaches to support mental health well-being as part of Mental Health Day.

Dr Alison Younger (Senior Lecturer): Folklore and Fable in the North East, Houghton Library, 16th October 2-3pm
This session will explore the extraordinary folklore and fables of North East England.

Short Story Competition Launch, Waterstones, The Bridges, 16th October 5pm
In association with Waterstones, the University of Sunderland will launch a Short Story Competition.

Dr Geoff Nash (Senior Lecturer): The Gothic Terrorist: from Robespierre to Jihadi John City, Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 18th October 5-6.30pm
Gothic, terrorism, and the terrorist are rarely linked - why is this? Geoff Nash addresses the question by tracing a Gothic dimension to images of terror coming out of the political violence of the French Revolution, analysing the appearance of the anarchist terrorist in late nineteenth century fiction, and discerning in stories and journalism about contemporary terrorists and terrorist groups the hated/desired figure of the Gothic outsider.

Colin Younger (Senior Lecturer): The Hero’s Journey: How to Write a Best Seller, Washington Town Centre Library, 21st October 11-12.30pm

The Hero’s Journey is a concept at the heart of many stories and by following the structure you too will be able to write your own best seller.

Dr Sarah Dobbs (Senior Lecturer): Prosegression, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 28th October 1-3pm
This session explores and pushes the boundaries of prose fiction, giving all writers new and exciting structures to work from. After the session, feel free to submit work from the workshop for consideration for a new journal in prose fiction - Prosegression, which is coming soon. Peer reviewers include flash fiction experts David Gaffney, Tania Hersham and the world’s first professor in short fiction, Professor Ailsa Cox.

Spectral Visions Press Book Launch, Holmeside Coffee, Holmeside, 31st October 6pm
Spectral Visions Press is an innovative publishing house located at the University of Sunderland. It specialises in publishing outstanding works of creative writing, niche pieces, and writing concerned with, and inspired by, Gothic literature and Gothic studies. To include ‘Tyne And Wear’d’ and ‘A Bestiary of Monsters.’ Pay bar available.

Philippa Abbott (Doctoral student): The Struggle of the Female Victorian Underclass, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 1st November 5-6.30pm
‘The Angel in the House’ was the ideal to which many Victorian women were expected to aspire. However for those at the lowest end of the social scale, this ideal was unattainable as with no money they could not feed their family and had to go out to work. Mrs Sheppard (from William Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard 1839) contradicts some of the assumptions made by Victorian society and highlights the struggles that women of the lower and underclasses battled with on a daily basis.

Steve Watts (Head of School of Culture): John Buchan, Richard Hannay and The 39 Steps, City Library@ Museum & Winter Gardens, 2nd November 10-11.30am
An exploration of the extraordinary life of John Buchan with an introduction to his most enduring character, the irrepressible Richard ‘Dick’ Hannay, acknowledged as the forerunner and inspiration for 007 James Bond through this classic novel.

Dr Peter Hayes (Senior Lecturer): Scott Joplin: The Triumph of the Tragedy of his Opera, City Library @ Museum & Winter Gardens, 3rd November 2-4pm
Scott Joplin is famous for his piano ragtime. However, Joplin also aspired to be an opera composer and wrote two operas, one of which, Treemonisha, still survives. Treemonisha folded after a single performance in New York, and its failure is said to have contributed to Joplin’s early death. A surprising connection between Sunderland and Scott Joplin will be revealed and explained in a combined lecture on Joplin’s life and performance of some of his works.

Sunderland Literature and Creative Writing Festival 2016

Several members of the School of Culture will be taking part in the Sunderland Literature and Creative Writing Festival this autumn. Click on the links below to find out who will be doing what and where. The festival starts on September 30th (the full schedule is here).

Spectral Visions book launch

Against the Grayne: Learning about your Reiver ancestry

Witchcraft and wizardry in Wearside

Northern Gothic: Jane Harvey's The Castle at Tynemouth (1806)

Eternity in an hour: William Blake and popular music

Gothic Wearside

World books to read before you die

Apples and Snakes performance poetry

Flash Fiction in a flash: how to write it and how to get it published

Reading philosophy to lose weight

The terrorist novel from Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent to Hamid Mohsen's The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Of Peter and Jemima: An introduction to the extraordinary life of Beatrix Potter

'Not quite a Geordie': The ethnonyms of North East England

Wizards, goblins and forbidden love: Sir Walter Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel

'My own, my native land'

University of Sunderland and Waterstones short story competition

A fatal North East marriage: Mad Lord Byron and the Princess of Parallelograms

Halloween guided fantasy

Monstrum

The Department of Culture is pleased to announce the launch of Monstrum - a journal for Spectral Visions Press. Monstrum is a celebration of all things monstrous and supernatural, from the doppelganger to Penny Dreadfuls; from folklore to Gothic of the Borders. Monstrum aims to publish the best articles on the latest thinking in Gothic and Literary studies.

The deadline for proposals for our inaugural issue is 31st January 2015. The Call for Papers is available for download on the Submissions page.

You can follow Monstrum on twitter or you can like Spectral Visions Press on Facebook.

Monstrum Volume 1: Issue 1 will be available late 2015. For further information contact Colin Younger (colin.younger@sunderland.ac.uk).

Canny Culture

The Department of Culture is teaming up with the ‘Canny Space’ at the Church of the Holy Trinity in Sunderland to launch 'Canny Culture' - a series of events organized by academics and students in the department. The inaugural event, which will take place on Friday 26th September 2014 between 6-10 pm., sees the launch of Spectral Visions: The Collection (ed. Colin Younger), an anthology of short stories and poetry written by our own students, staff, academics from other institutions and local (and not so local) writers. There will also be talks by Professor John Strachan (Bath Spa University) and Dr Mike Pearce (Sunderland University) on aspects of the history and dialect of the region.

The evening also includes live music, a light buffet and a wine reception.

Limited copies of the book will be available at the event but it can also be purchased on Amazon here. 

All are welcome and admission is free. RSVP to colin.younger@sunderland.ac.uk.

The Canny Space

Church of the Holy Trinity

Church Street East

Sunderland

SR1 2BB

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Spectral Visions III on YouTube

You can get a sense of what went on at the recent Spectral Visions III conference by visiting this YouTube channel. Highlights include Dr Alison Younger on 'Gothic Fairy Tales' and Colin Younger on 'Creating Gothic Characters'.

Spectral Visions III: The Vampire Strikes Back

The Faculty of Education and Society’s English team is holding its annual Spectral Visions Conference on 26th June 2014 at St Peter's Campus between 9am and 4pm. Sixth formers from across the region will be attending a variety of talks and workshops on topics as diverse as how monsters talk, ghosts from Goethe to Shakespeare, and angels, zombies and monsters of the First World War.

Further information can be obtained from Caroline Noble (Faculty of Education & Society, Marketing, Recruitment and Admissions Department). Email: caroline.noble@sunderland.ac.uk. And you can read the Spectral Visions blog here.

Culture undergraduate to speak at Chicago conference

Chloe Campbell

Third Year English and American Studies undergraduate Chloe Campbell has been invited to speak at a conference at DePaul University in Chicago in May 2014. The invitation to Joss Whedon: A Celebration came as a result of an article Chloe wrote for the Spectral Visions blog, which was republished in the US based Watercooler Journal. Entitled 'The Chosen Ones: Feminism and Gender Studies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer', the article is a feminist primer to the Whedonverse. Chloe has received financial support from the Department of Culture to attend the conference.

Witchcraft and The Wicker Man

This Hallowe'en, Professor William Hughes of Bath Spa University will be giving a lecture at Sunderland which provides an eco-critical reading of the 1970s British cult horror movie The Wicker Man. The event, organized by the Department of Culture's Spectral Visions team takes place at 6.00pm on Thursday 31st October in Priestman 118 (the lecture theatre). Admission is free but please book early to avoid disappointment as places are limited. For further details and to reserve your place email colin.younger@sunderland.ac.uk.

Spectral Visions II online

Keynote lectures from the Spectral Visions II conference can be viewed below.

Dr Alison Younger (Sunderland University) on 'Gothic Monstrosities'

Professor John Strachan (Bath Spa University) on 'Gothic and Surrealism'

Spectral Visions II: The Revenge

Following the success of Spectral Visions in 2012, the MA English team present Spectral Visions II: The Revenge, which takes place at the St. Peter's Campus of the University of Sunderland on Friday June 21st 2013.

The keynote speakers are Willy Hughes and John Strachan, from Bath Spa University, and Franklin Bishop (Newstead Abbey). Professor Hughes will be speaking on vampires in Gothic fiction and Professor Strachan will consider Surrealism and Gothic. Franklin Bishop's topic is John Polidori's The Vampyre.

Spectral Visions one-day conference

The MA English team at Sunderland is hosting a day conference on 26th June designed to 'lift the veil' on the enduringly popular genre of 'Gothic'.

Keynote speakers include Professor Willy Maley (University of Glasgow) on 'the Dark Side of Macbeth'; Professor John Strachan (University of Northumbria) on Surrealism and Gothic, and Dr Alison O'Malley-Younger (University of Sunderland) on the Gothic Monstrosity.

Workshops delivered by the MA English team include: Dr Susan Mandala on 'the Neanderthal in Fiction'; Dr Alex Pheby on 'Gothic Fantasies - Guided Writing', Dr David Fallon on Wuthering Heights, Dr Alison O'Malley-Younger on 'Late Victorian Gothic', and Mr Colin Younger on 'Northern Ghost Stories and 'Boggle' Tales'. There will also be presentations by current MA students, and an opportunity to speak to them about the course.

Conference organizers in Gothic garb