School of Culture research seminar

Dr Sarah Hellawell (Lecturer in Modern British History,
University of Sunderland)

The first School of Culture Research seminar of the academic year will take place on 14th November 2018. Dr. Sarah Hellawell's paper is entitled ‘A strong international spirit’: the Women’s Co-operative Guild and Interwar Internationalism’. Established in 1883, the English Women’s Co-operative Guild (WCG) was a mass membership association of working-class housewives and mothers. During the First World War, the Guild was an outspoken critic of militarism and maintained an absolutist pacifist response during the interwar years. Internationalist ideals and activities relating to peace, co-operation and the citizenship of women influenced the WCG during the 1920s and 1930s. Yet, the impact of internationalism upon the Guild has previously been overlooked by historians. This paper examines the dynamic between the international, national and local dimensions of the WCG. 

The seminar will start at 4 pm in Reg Vardy 111 and is open to all.

Slow tv

Professor Angela Smith has given a paper at the 26th Ross Priory International Seminar on Broadcast Talk 2018. Entitled 'Slow tv: the mesmerising antidote to political maelstroms', her talk traced the emergence of 'slow TV' as the antithesis of the fast-edited, fast-paced television that has developed as the dominant concept of the medium in the twenty-first century.  More recently, it has been heralded as the antidote to the rise of right-wing populist noise. 

Whilst the early cable channels showed ambient images of burning fires or tropic fish tanks, slow tv is slightly more dynamic and deliberately edited to be relaxing as well as informative.  Many of the visual tropes in slow tv come from arthouse cinema, particularly the lingering shots and sense of stillness. Unlike ambient tv, it has a narrative but not all of them have a narrator.  The narrative is sometimes left to the viewer to work out, such as the original slow tv show, Train Ride: Bergen to Oslo (2009).  Others have on-screen captions, such as The Ghan (2013).  Where voice-over narrative does exist, it is descriptive and lacking in the usual tropes of drama.  Angela's paper argued that the defining feature of slow tv is the narrative, but that this takes many different forms.

New novella from Sarah Dobbs

A new novella by Dr Sarah Dobbs is due out in the autumn. The Sea Inside Me (Unthank Books) is set in an England ravaged by civil strife and terrorism. An experimental zone, Newark-by-the-Sea has trialed the Process, the removal of traumatic memories to eliminate crime and fear from the minds of its citizens. Processing Officer Audrey is instructed to tail Candy, a girl resistant to the Process, whose memories are returning, As the Process is about to be rolled out countrywide, a darker, deep-rooted conspiracy coils smoke-like into view. Read more about this title on Unthank Book's website.