As we draw closer to the middle of term, we are thrilled to welcome new researchers and projects to Oxford. A month to go until our FRIGHTFriday event in collaboration with the Ashmolean Museum, which is the national Festival Finale for the Being Human Festival. If you haven't already, make sure you sign up for your free ticket. 

There are collaboration and funding opportunities related our 2017 Headline Series 'Humanities & Identities', which is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and also supported by the Vice-Chancellor's Diversity Fund. Check our website for more information. 

We have one remaining Book at Lunchtime event for Michaelmas Term 2016, details of which can be found in the Highlighted Events section.

We hope to see you at one of the many events!

Highlighted Events

Book at Lunchtime: 'Critical Lives: Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinksy'

12:30 - Lunch, 13.00-14.00 - Discussion, Wednesday 9 November, St Luke's Chapel, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter.

Two books will be discussed at this event: Pyotr Tchaikovsky by Philip Ross Bullock (Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages), and Igor Stravinsky by Jonathan Cross (Faculty of Music). They will be joined by Kate Kennedy (Wolfson College) and Rosamund Barlett.

FRIGHTFriday - the art and science of Hope & Fear

We are looking forward to FRIGHTFriday at the Ashmolean Museum. It will be a diverse and dynamic national Festival Finale of the Being Human Festival. The festival is led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership with the AHRC and the British Academy. Tickets are free! For more information, please click here.

News and Blogs

Wole Soyinka at Ertegun House

Tessa Roynon, from Race and Resistance programme, reports back from the Wole Soyinka at Ertegun House event on the 20 October 2016. This is part of the 'Voices Across Borders' blog series. Read more here.

Comics Network visits the Lakes International Comic Art Festival

The Comics and Graphic Novels network visited the Lakes International Comic Art Festival, 14th-16th October 2016.  Having just hosted their first event on Thursday 13th October with V For Vendetta artist David Lloyd at the Pitt Rivers Museum, the Comics Network had a stall at the festival and sought to promote their seminar series, as well as to learn more about the academic study and public reception of comics in both the UK and abroad. Read more here.

OCCT Week 2 Updates

Eleni Philippou looks ahead to upcoming events and opportunities for the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation programme. There are calls for papers, job opportunities, and registration details for various events.

 Read more here.

Oxford-Venice Initiative: Collaborations with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini

Ita Mac Carthy and Richard Scholar report on the Inaugural Cini-Oxford Conversazione which took place 19-20 September 2016 in their 'Early Modern Keywords and the Return to Philology' blog. It brought six Oxford researchers (doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and senior academics, in English and Modern Languages) into a scholarly exchange with Cini librarians and fourteen other invited participants. 

Read more here.

New Opportunities

New Network Scheme
Each academic term TORCH will sponsor the creation and/or development of up to three multi- or interdisciplinary research networks by providing a venue, funding, a web presence and publicity. Deadline: midday, Friday 11 November. 

Humanities Innovation Challenge Competition
You are invited to propose innovative ideas which can lead to entrepreneurial activity, social impact or enterprise. Although the Challenge is open to individuals, we would also like to encourage cross-disciplinary team-work, in which case at least one member of the team should come from the Humanities Division. First deadline for submitting a summary of your idea: Friday 4th November.

Oxford Medieval Studies Grants

The TORCH Oxford Medieval Studies Programme invites applications for small grants to support conferences, workshops, and other forms of collaborative research activity organised by scholars at postgraduate (whether MSt or DPhil) and/or early career postdoctoral level from across the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford. The closing date for applications is Friday of Week 4 of Michaelmas Term 2016 (4 November).

Oxford-Venice Initiative: Collaborations with the Fondazione Giorgio Cini

TORCH is now inviting Oxford researchers to submit applications to pursue individual research projects at the Cini’s new Vittore Branca Center for visiting scholars. Deadline 2 December 2016.

Postdoctoral Opportunities in the Humanities 2016-2017

There are a number of Junior Research Fellowships being advertised at Merton College, Christ Church, St John's College, Pembroke College, and Queen's College. Deadlines range from the 18 November until 6 January 2017.

Upcoming Events

#NeverHillary Vs #NeverTrump: The US Election on Social Media

Tuesday, November 1, 2016 - 3:00pm - 5.00pm.Blue Boar Lecture Theatre, Christ Church, St Aldates, Oxford.

This panel discussion on #NeverHillary Vs #NeverTrump: The US Election on Social Media' is hosted by TORCH #SocialHumanities network.The 2016 US presidential election is the most "electric event" in electoral history—in the fullest sense of the term. Social media is playing an unprecedented role in the campaigns, allowing the candidates to interact with and influence voters to a greater extent than ever before (via memes, targeted advertisements, hashtags, bots, and other mechanisms). According to Frank Speiser of SocialFlow, "This is the first true social media election."

Cathy Come Home 50th Anniversary Screening

Sunday, November 13, 2016 -1:00pm to 4:00pm. The Lecture Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building, Woodstock Road, Oxford.

The Public Health Film Society, in association with Public Health England, the journal Architecture_Media, Politics and Society, and TORCH are hosting a FREE screening of Cathy Come Home on the 50th Anniversary of this influential film. Please join us for the screening and panel discussion on housing and health, and the the continuing relevance of Cathy. 

Where do you get your ideas from?

Wednesday, November 2, 2016 - 6:45pm. Old Library, University Church, High Street, Oxford.

The University Church is hosting a series of events on 'The Muse: A Six-Part Series on the Creative Spark'. This event 'Where Do You Get Your Ideas From?' is a workshop and reading exploring the inspiration for poems. Join poet Antony Dunn, winner of Oxford University's Newdigate Prize, for a 90-minute workshop and/or a 30 minute reading with Q&A. The workshop will be a lively mix of discussion, reading, and writing exercises and play before Antony reads from his new, fourth collection, Take This One to Bed.

Start Where the People Are: Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement

Thursday, November 3, 2016. 5:00pm - 7:00pm. Seminar Room, Radcliffe Humanities, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford.

 In the first ‘The Arts of Leading’ event of the academic year, aimed at bringing humanities perspectives to bear on the nature of good leadership, Stephen Tuck (History) will be joining us to speak on leadership in the Civil Rights Movement. He will talk about varieties of leadership in the Civil Rights Movement, comparing the leadership model of Martin Luther King with leadership in the movement’s grassroots. This event is intended for those from all disciplines interested in better understanding leadership and will include time to develop ideas of what we might learn about leadership from the Civil Rights Movement through questions and discussion.

Looking back on 2015-16

As we being an exciting new academic year, we look back at some of our highlights from 2015-16. 

Events Calendar, Weeks 4-5

Monday 31 October

12:45-14:00 | Literature Beyond Literary Studies: Intermediality and Interdisciplinary

Event organised by the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation Discussion Group

Tuesday 1 November

15:00-17:00 | #NeverHillary vs #NeverTrump: The US Election on Social Media Panel Discussion

Panel discussion

17:00 | "Keep the Damned Women Out” The Struggle for Coeducation

Nancy Malkiel (Professor Emeritus of History, Princeton)

17:00-18:30 | #NeverHillary vs #NeverTrump: The US Election on Social Media Workshop

Interactive hands-on workshop

Wednesday 2 November

17:00 | Phenomenology, Imagination, and Perception

Reconsideration of the concept of imagination and its relation to perception

17:15-18:30 | Women's Studies and Gender Studies Roundtable Discussion

With researchers from CGIS, IGC, and the Women's Studies M.St.

18:00-20:00 | Developmental risk and resilience: The challenge of translating multi-level data to concrete interventions.

2016 Loebel Lectures in Psychiatry and Philosophy 

18:45 | Where do you get your ideas from?

Part of 'The Muse: A six-part series on the creative spark'

Thursday 3 November

14:00-15:30 | Mutamma, Tamil Dalit spirit healer and community leader: a provocation to our received understandings of agency

Part of the Gender and Leadership in a Volatile World seminar series

16:00 | Victorious in Name Only: The Portuguese Republic and Its Empire at War, 1916-1918

Speaker: Professor Felipe Rebeiro de Meneses (Maynooth University)

17:00-19:00 | Prof. Stephen Tuck; Start Where the People Are: Leadership and the Civil Rights Movement

An 'Arts of Leading’ event

17:00 | African Studies Research Seminar- Mau Mau and Rastafari: Kenya’s War in Jamaica at the End of Empire

Seminar with Professor Myles Osborne

17:00 | James Byres of Tonley (1733-1817): Jacobites and Etruscans in Grand Tour Rome

A History of Art Research Seminar

17:15 | Urban Comix: Collaboration, Production, Resistance

Part of the Postcolonial Writing and Theory seminar series

18:00-20:00 | Developmental risk and resilience: The challenge of translating multi-level data to concrete interventions.

2016 Loebel Lectures in Psychiatry and Philosophy 

Friday 4 November

09:30-17:00 | Developmental risk and resilience: The challenge of translating multi-level data to concrete interventions.

2016 Loebel Lectures in Psychiatry and Philosophy 

12:45-14:00 | Looking Back, Looking Forward: Reflections of the Obamas in Office

A seminar organised by the Oxford Race and Resistance Programme

17:00-18:30 | Medieval Occitan Reading Group

Michaelmas Term 2016 seminars

Saturday 5 November

All Day | Colloquium: Biography Beyond Borders: American and European biography

Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) event

10:00-18:00 | Early Ethiopian and Other Eastern Illuminated Gospel Books: Text and Image

Conference linked to the 'Hidden Gospels of Abba Garima, Treasures of the Ethiopian Highland' exhibition 

Saturday 5 November and Sunday 6 November

All Day | The Hidden Gospels of Abba Garima, Treasures of the Ethiopian Highlands

Exhibition on the Gospels of Abba Garima

Monday 7 November

11:00- 13:00 | Trusted Source Article Writing Workshop

Find out more about Trusted Source and how to get involved

Tuesday 8 November

13:00-14:00 | The Private Life of the Diary

Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) event

17:30 | Ulrike Draesner

Join us for the launch of her re-writing of the Nibelungenlied

17:30-19:00 | The Chief: Douglas Haig and the British Army

Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) event

Wednesday 9 November

09:00 | US Elections 2016

Rothmere American Institute Open House

11:00-16:00 | Salons, Circles, Majalis: The Sociable Side of Literature

Part of the Cultural Forms in Comparison Series

12:00 | US Elections 2016

Interpreting the Results

12:30-14:00 | Critical Lives: Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Igor Stravinsky

A Book at Lunchtime discussion with Jonathan Cross, Philip Ross Bullock, and Rosamund Bartlett. Chaired by Kate Kennedy.

17:30-19:00 | Representing the uterus in terracotta, metal and fabric: votive wombs revisited

Part of the Ancient Medicine Seminar series

17:30-19:00 | Psychic Dreams and Newspapers in the Late Nineteenth Century

Speaker: Dr kitt price (Queen Mary, University of London)

18:45 | Melpomene's Craft: Exploring the Theory and Practice of Historical Acting

Part of 'The Muse: A six-part series on the creative spark'

Thursday 10 November to Friday 11 November

All Day | International Society for First World War Studies Conference

The 9th Conference for International Society for First World War Studies

All Day | The 9th Conference of the International Society for First World War Studies

Event organised by Globalising and Localising the Great War

Thursday 10 November

14:00-15:00 | Hillary Clinton Killed Feminism? Gender, Leadership and the New Hampshire Primary

Part of the Gender and Leadership in a Volatile World seminar series

16:30 | Edward Lhuyd and Roderic O' Flaherty on Celtic alphabets

Part of The Oxford Celtic Seminar series

17:00 | The Cost of Marvel and the Price of Magnificence: Pietro Tacca’s Monumental Bronzes

A History of Art Research Seminar

17:15 -19:00 | Roger Sabin: 'The Origins of Comics Criticism'

A Comics and Graphic Novels: The Politics of Form event

17:30 | Guest Lecture on Bronislawa Nijinska

Speaker: Professor Lynn Garafola (Columbia University).

Friday 11 November

12:30-14:00 | Working with Data: Excel, XML, and Poetry

Part of the Researching the Eighteenth Century seminar series

17:00-18:30 | Anglo-Norman Reading Group

Seminars during Michaelmas Term 2016

17:00-20:00 | Barbara's Story Screening

Award winning story of one woman’s journey with dementia through the health care system.

Saturday 12 November

10:00-12:00 | Health Film Workshop 2

Workshop on documentary film making for health films by Artem Agafonov.

10:00-12:00 | Health Film Workshop 1

Part of the Public Health Film Festival.

11:00-16:00 | Oxford at War 1914-1918 Roadshow

Do you have a family story or local history about the First World War?

13:00-14:00 | Up For Air Screening

UK premiere of film about Jerry Cahill, a 60-year-old polevaulting coach battling Cystic Fibrosis.

Sunday 13 November

10:00-12:30 | Public Health Film Screening

Films from this year's competition

13:00-16:00 | Cathy Come Home 50th Anniversary Screening

Part of the Public Health Film Festival 2016

17:00-19:00 | Public Health Film Competition Awards Ceremony

And the winner is...