As we move swiftly through Hilary Term, TORCH brings you more to explore. Continuing with this year’s Annual Headline Series theme of ‘Humanities & Identities’, various TORCH networks, programmes and collaborating groups will be hosting events, activities, research-led discussions and opportunities over the coming weeks. Take a look below and on the TORCH website for more information. As always, we are happy to hear from the wider community about potential collaboration. We can offer support in-kind through online marketing, coverage and also with research support activities, including advice on project and events management, outreach and engagement, evaluation, and connections with museums. Please feel free to email us on torch@humanities.ox.ac.uk with your enquiries.

This month is also LGBT History Month. There are a number of events and activities taking place around Oxford including the Out In Oxford series of events organised by the Pitt Rivers Museum. We would like to wish the Pitt Rivers the best of luck with their sold out event this weekend!

Highlighted Events

Hiphop, Knowledge & the Academy

2:30pm to 5:00pm, 17 February 2017

St Luke's Chapel, Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford

Next week the TORCH Race and Resistance Network will host their 2017 Headline Event on “Hiphop, Knowledge and the Academy”.

Why do universities need to archive and research contemporary popular culture? How can the study of hip hop foster new understandings of cultural value and knowledge in academia? Finally, yet importantly, what kind of knowledge can be exchanged between researchers of hip hop in the US and institutions in the UK working with hip hop, British rap and grime? How can we think comparatively about similar projects and initiatives in the UK? These are some of the issues that will be addressed.

Professor Marcyliena Morgan (Executive Director of The Hiphop Archive) will introduce students and researchers in Oxford to The Hiphop Archive and Research Institute at the Hutchins Center, Harvard University: the motivation behind its creation, its institutional structure, areas of research, and emphasis on the three targets ‘Build, Respect, Represent’. The Hiphop Archive was established in 2002, and its mission is to facilitate and encourage the pursuit of knowledge, art, culture, and responsible leadership through hip hop.

The event has now sold out however, if there are any ticket holders who do not attend, their seats will be re-allocated on a first come first serve basis.

News and Blogs

Humanities Poster Competition 2017

TORCH is holding a research poster showcase and competition for early career academics (DPhils and postdoctoral researchers). Selected posters will be displayed in the Radcliffe Humanities building. A prize of £150 in book tokens will be offered for the winning poster, £100 for second place, and £50 for third place.

Posters should be submitted electronically (preferably in portrait, pdf format, suitable for A1 printing) to training@humanities.ox.ac.uk by Friday 10th March 2017.

Click for more information.

Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews (2014)

In this blog post for the TORCH Comics Network, Emma Parker, University of Leeds, reviews Sarah Lightman’s edited collection, Graphic Details: Jewish Women’s Confessional Comics in Essays and Interviews (2014). Sarah Lightman spoke at the TORCH Comics Network about this collection and her other work on 19th January 2016.

Click here to read the blog post.

Edwidge Danticat: Creating Dangerously

Friday 27th of January saw a first for the University of Oxford: a seminar on the work of Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat, presented as a joint event by TORCH’s Fiction and Human Rights Network and the Race and Resistance Programme. While Danticat is well known and well-received in the US for her both fiction and non-fiction work (largely thanks to Oprah Winfrey’s infamous Book Club), her name is not as familiar on this side of the Atlantic. Yet, as became apparent over the course of the discussion, there is much we can gain from an encounter with her texts and the worlds they open up to us. While her work is a great pleasure to engage with, being both eminently readable and suggestively experimental, it also does much to aid our understanding of the relations between writing , reading, politics, representation, mobility, desire and belonging, moving from universal truths about the human condition to the intractably specific texture of her own Haitian-American upbringing.

Read this blog post in full here.

Transatlantic Activist Networks and Post-Reconstruction African American Literary Production

In this blog post, Professor Barbara McCaskill, who spent four months researching at the Bodleian during the spring and summer of 2016, discusses the influence of transatlantic collaborations among US and UK activists on the development of audiences for African American literature.  By studying such networks in relationship to individual writers such as Rev. Peter Thomas Stanford and W. E. B. Du Bois, she argues, we can discover how they influenced the reception and development of African American literature long after the goal of ending slavery had faded.   

You can read this Voices Across Borders blog post in full here.

New Opportunities

New Network Scheme

TORCH invites applications from colleagues seeking to establish, or consolidate, multi- or interdisciplinary research networks to be based at the Radcliffe Humanities Building.

Each academic term The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (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. Funding will ordinarily be up to £2,500. Funding is for one year (renewable for a further year on application after first year). Applicants may also apply for funds from the John Fell Fund. The next deadline is midday Friday 17 February 2017

Andrew W. Mellon 'Humanities & Identities'

TORCH and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation are pleased to announce four exciting new research funding opportunities as part of the 'Humanities & Identities' Headline Series. These include funding for a postdoctoral researcher, 'Global South' visiting professorships and fellowships, Knowledge Exchange fellowships, and conference and workshop funding. Please check the website for further details on deadlines.

Bowra Junior Research Fellowship in the Humanities 

Wadham College proposes to elect a fixed-term non-stipendiary Junior Research Fellowship in the Humanities from 1st October 2017. The post is intended to provide a college attachment for a post-doctoral researcher in TORCH, and will be tenable for one year in the first instance and renewable for a further two years, or until the Faculty research post terminates, whichever is the sooner. 

The successful candidate will have produced research of a high quality (taking into account the stage of their career). The committee will consider the degree to which candidates’ careers may be enhanced by such an association, and equally the ways in which candidates are likely to enrich the academic life of the college. Preference will be given to those who have not previously held an equivalent early career post. Deadline 28 April 2017

Talking Religions

The Empires of Faith project (University of Oxford/ British Museum), in partnership with TORCH, invites applications for Talking Religion.

Talking Religion is a new research group, running in Trinity and Michaelmas of 2017, that will look at the importance of material culture for the study of religion. Talking Religion will combine a series of interdisciplinary workshops, hands-on experience at both the Ashmolean and the British Museum, and the opportunity to present findings in both academic and public contexts. The research group is organised to coincide with the forthcoming Empires of Faith exhibition on Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish and Hindu art of the first millennium AD in the Ashmolean running from October 2017 to February 2018.

Call for applications

The ten successful applicants will become associate members of the Empires of Faith research project. They must be available for both a series of workshops in Trinity Term, and public engagement activities related to the forthcoming exhibition in the Ashmolean in Michaelmas and Hilary term. Deadline 15 November 2017

Women in Humanities Postdoctoral Writing Fellowship

Women in the Humanities is an interdisciplinary programme which aims to explore how gender and sex play out in history, art, philosophy, music, language and literature, as well as the ethics and politics of gender identity and equality in the Humanities.

A postdoctoral writing fellowship worth £5,000 is available to early career scholars within three years of the award of a doctorate who do not yet hold a permanent academic job. The fellowship will be tenable for between 3 and 6 months from 1 October 2017.

The deadline to submit applications is noon, 21 April 2017.

Oxford - FAPESP Collaboration Scheme

A call for proposals offering seed funding to support the exchange of researchers between Oxford and São Paulo, Brazil, has been published.

Funding is available for researchers within the areas of the Humanities and Oxford Networks for the Environment for collaborative projects.

Strong preference will be given to interdisciplinary projects and to projects that will be likely to promote sustained collaborative activity beyond the end point of the award period. Further information can be found on the FAPESP website. Deadline Monday 24 April. 

Upcoming Events

The Concept of the Transformational Leap in Russian Culture

Monday, February 13, 2017 - 2:00pm to 4:00pm

St Luke's Chapel, Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford

As it is well known, Russia's history includes several major transformations meant to completely reshape the country and change its essence, place of the world and historical identity. Such shocks include so called Westernizing reforms of the early XVIII century, revolution of 1917 and collapse of Soviet Union in 1991 not to mention such smaller but decisive upheavals as the Great reforms of 1860-s or the changes in the aftermath of Stalin's death in 1953. Given Russian obsession with history, it is unsurprising that the attitude to the transformations of such magnitude still divide the country into different ideological camps and continues to provoke intellectual civil wars. These debates make the general consensus about the desirability and logic of these transformations especially important and revealing. The talk will analyse the genesis, the causes and the structure of this implicit consensus that continues to play decisive role in Russian intellectual history until the present day.

This event is organised by the TORCH Crisis, Extremes & Apocalypse Network.

Book at Lunchtime: Politics and Public Space in Contemporary Argentine Poetry

Wednesday, February 8, 2017 - 12:30pm to 2:00pm

Seminar Room, Radcliffe Humanities Building, Woodstock Road, Oxford

This book addresses the connection between political themes and literary form in the most recent Argentine poetry. Ben Bollig uses the concepts of “lyric” and “state” as twin coordinates for both an assessment of how Argentinian poets have conceived a political role for their work and how poems come to speak to us about politics. Drawing on concepts from contemporary literary theory, this striking study combines textual analysis with historical research to shed light on the ways in which new modes of circulation help to shape poetry today.

The book's author, Professor Ben Bollig (Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford) will explore the issues raised with:

Maria del Pilar Blanco (Professor in Spanish American Literature, University of Oxford)
Eduardo Posada-Carbo (Professor of History and Politics of Latin America, University of Oxford)
Leigh A. Payne (Professor of Sociology, University of Oxford)

The session will be chaired by Bart van Es (Professor of English Literature, University of Oxford).

Free and all welcome. Lunch will be available from 12.30, with discussion from 13.00-14.00.

Booking is essential.

Women Celebrating Women - Strength in Diversity

Saturday, February 25, 2017 - 3:00pm to 6:00pm

Asian Cultural Centre, Manzil Way

This fun, family-friendly event features entertainment, music, food, stalls, and much much more. Speakers include refugees, migrant NHS professionals and women who have stood up to racism and worked in refugee camps and with homeless people; the event aims to strengthen diversity and celebrate the achievements of women, which will be represented through speakers from across the community.

Speakers include Kate Clanchy (Poet), Caroline Gregory (Huffington Post and long time volunteer with refugees), Eden Habtemichael (Asylum Welcome & Refugee Resource), Rachel Crouch (Head Teacher, St Nicholas Primary School), Elise Benjamin (Councillor, Green Party) and Mrs Smith (Soup Kitchen).

This event is open to all people, all ages and all backgrounds and is a family/children friendly event to promote diversity and cohesion.

This event is part of the Oxford International Women's Festival 2017. No booking required.

You can view the Facebook page here.

Identity and Confessional Mobilization in Medieval Baghdad

A Micro History of the Neighbourhoods of Bab al-Basra and al-Karkh (945-1258)

Wednesday, February 15, 2017 - 5:00pm

Garden Room, Stanford House, 65 High Street, Oxford

The TORCH Long History of Identity, Ethnicity, and Nationhood network are hosting the seminar series 'The Long History of Ethnicity & Nationhood Reconsidered'. This new seminar series reconsiders broad themes in ethnicity and nationalism studies through interdisciplinary and comparative discussion, drawing on wide examples across time and place.

This seminar is on 'Identity and Confessional Mobilization in medieval Baghdad: a Micro History of the Neighbourhoods of Bab al-Basra and al-Karkh (945-1258)' with Nassima Neggaz (University of Oxford).

Looking back on 2015-16

As we move swiftly through the new academic year, we look back at some of our highlights from 2015-16. 

Events Calendar, Weeks 5-6

Monday 13 February

14:00 – 16:00 | THE CONCEPT OF THE TRANSFORMATIONAL LEAP IN RUSSIAN CULTURE

Speaker: Professor Andrei Zorin (Oxford, Russian)

14:15 | INSULAR MINUSCULE: FROM WEARMOUTH-JARROW TO WESSEX

Part of the Palaeography and Manuscript Studies seminar series

17:00 | DISCUSSION OF ISAIAH BERLIN AND THE ENLIGHTENMENT

Part of the Besterman Enlightenment workshop series

Tuesday 14 February

12:30 – 14:00 | READING GROUP

Centre for Gender, Identity, and Subjectivity

16:00 – 17:30 | THE NEUROSCIENCE OF MORAL AGENCY (OR: HOW I LEARNED TO LOVE DETERMINISM AND STILL RESPECT MYSELF IN THE MORNING)

Speaker: Dr William Casebeer

17:00 | HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY - AND HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE MANDELA?

Speaker: Colin Bundy (University of Oxford)

17:30 | ISPLACEMENT: IRISH POETRY AND POETS OF IRISH DESCENT IN BRITAIN

With Weidenfeld Visiting Professor in Comparative Literature Sean O'Brien

18:15 | HOW SHALL WE SING THE LORD'S SONG IN A STRANGE LAND?

Speaker: Jonathan Arnold (University of Oxford)

Wednesday 15 February

13:00 – 14:00 | TRANSNATIONAL RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND NEGOTIATION OF DIFFERENCE AMONG ZIMBABWEAN CATHOLICS IN BRITAIN

Part of the International Migration Institute Seminar Series

13:00 – 14:00 | COLLECTING PLACES: JOHN MALCHAIR'S DRAWINGS OF C18TH OXFORD IN THE CONTEXT OF HIS MUSIC COLLECTING

Speaker: Alice Little (DPhil Music, University of Oxford)

17:00 | IDENTITY AND CONFESSIONAL MOBILIZATION IN MEDIEVAL BAGHDAD

Speaker: Nassima Neggaz (University of Oxford)

17:00 | THE MATERIAL PRESENCE OF ABSENT ANTIQUITIES

With Caroline van Eck (Cambridge University)

17:00 | BOOKS AND DOCUMENTS IN ANCIENT CHINA

Public lecture by Olivier Venture

17:30 - 18:30 | THE BOOK THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD

With Heather Love

17:15 – 19:15 | MASTERCLASS IN CHINESE TO ENGLISH LITERARY TRANSLATION

Acclaimed literary translator Nicky Harman gives a masterclass on Chinese to English literary translation.

17:30 – 19:00 | ANCIENT MEDICINE SEMINAR

Speaker: Dr Catherine Darbo-Peschanski (CNRS/LAB, Paris)

17:30 – 19:00 | THE HUMAN BODY AND ITS SPACES IN GREEK AND ROMAN WORLD: REFLEXIONS ABOUT THE INSIDE AND THE OUTSIDE

Part of the Ancient Medicine Seminar series

17:30 – 19:00 | TRUSTED SOURCE EDITORS CIRCLE: PUBLISHING & THE NATIONAL TRUST

Workshop for those interested in editing as part of the TORCH-National Trust collaboration

Thursday 16 February

14:00 – 15:30 | IRAQ WOMEN'S FICTION OF WAR: A STORY OF SURVIVAL

Part of the Feminist Mappin in a Volatile World: Spaces of Creativity and Survival series

16:30 | IRISH AND LATIN TERMS FOR SHAPE-SHIFTING

Part of The Oxford Celtic Seminar series

17::00 | SAME LOVE: A KENYAN GAY MUSIC VIDEO AS AN AFRICAN QUEER IMAGINARY

Speaker: Adriaan Van Klinken (University of Leeds)

17:15 | MEXICAN COMICS

With Ernesto Priego, Marisol Rodríguez, Francisco de la Mora, and Jessica Haradez

15:30 | SEA OF TROUBLES

With Susie Crow and Yolande Yorke and dancers of Yorke Dance Company

18:00 | UNSEEN CITY: TRAVELLING PSYCHOANALYSIS AND THE URBAN POOR

Public lecture with Professor Ankhi Mukherjee (University of Oxford)     

19:00 – 21:30 | OUT IN OXFORD: IS GENDER IDENTITY A CHOICE?

Free, public event

Friday 17 February

9:30 – 11:00 | HEIDEGGER READING GROUP

Graduate led reading group

13:00 – 17:30 | CULTURES OF COLLECTING IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN AND IRELAND

Interdisciplinary conference with speakers from inside and outside academia        

14:00 – 16:00 | PHENOMENOLOGICAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY READING GROUP

Convenor and contact: Marcin Moskalewicz           

14:30 – 17:00 | HIPHOP, KNOWLEDGE, AND THE ACADEMY

Professor Marcyliena Morgan (The Hiphop Archive, Harvard)       

17:00 | YOKO TAWADA AT OXFORD

Daad Writer in Residence at the University of Oxford

17:00 – 19:00 | ‘HIS MASTER’S VOICE’: MARTYRS AS TEACHERS AND PREACHERS IN THE ROMAN GESTA MARTYRUM

Part of the Cult of Saints in the First Millennium project

Saturday 18 February

ALL DAY | LORDS IN THE LANDSCAPE, 800-1300

Interdisciplinary postgraduate and early-career conference

14:30 | OUT IN OXFORD

Public event at the Pitt Rivers Museum

Monday 20 February

12:45 – 14:00 | OCCT DISCUSSION GROUP: WHAT IS GOOD LITERATURE?

An Experiment in Aesthetic Judgement & Implicit Comparison                              

17:00 | ENLIGHTENMENT FROM INDIA? FRANCE, INDIA AND GLOBAL EXCHANGES, C. 1721-99

Part of the Besterman Enlightenment workshop series                       

19:00 – 20:30 | THE POETRY SOCIETY ANNUAL LECTURE WITH JAN WAGNER

Lecture on the exchange of poetic ideas across borders by the German poet and translator

Tuesday 21 February

11:30 – 13:00 | MOTHERS ON THE MOVE

Speaker: Camillia Cowling (University of Warwick)        

15:30 – 17:30 | EAST ASIAN WORKING GROUP

Group is dedicated to the examination of the untranslated, underexplored theories of East Asian criticism

17:00 | DEFINING THE MIDDLE CLASS IN SOUTH AFRICA - A VULNERABILITY-BASED APPROACH

Speaker: Rocco Zizzamia (University of Oxford)

17:30 | ‘I AM ONLY ESCAPED ALONE TO TELL THEE’ OR ‘THE FASTER WE GO THE ROUNDER WE GET’

With Weidenfeld Visiting Professor in Comparative Literature Sean O'Brien

17:30 – 19:00 | MARTIN LUTHER: DIFFICULT HERO

Speaker: Lyndal Roper (Reigus Professor of History)

17:45 | GIVING OFFENCE: A 35000 YEAR HISTORY OF VISUAL SATIRE

With Martin Rowson

18:15 | WHAT IS RECEPTION HISTORY AND HOW DO WE DO IT?

Speaker: Sue Gillingham (University of Oxford)           

Wednesday 22 February

13:00 – 14:00 | MIGRATION, FAMILY AND THE CHANGING SIGNIFICANCE OF ABSENCE IN SENEGAL

Part of the International Migration Institute Seminar Series

14:00 – 13:30 | THE RELATION OF LITERATURE AND LEARNING TO SOCIAL HIERARCHY IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

With papers by Emma Claussen and Sue Wiseman       

17:00 | THE MATERIAL PRESENCE OF ABSENT ANTIQUITIES

With Caroline van Eck (Cambridge University)

17:15 | TORCH GENDER & AUTHORITY SEMINAR

Speakers: Serena Alessi (British School at Rome) and Rachel Delman (University of Oxford)               

17:15 – 19:15 | TRANSLATION AS AFTERLIFE

Exploring the possibility of translation as “afterlife” through a discussion of the Hebrew poets Orit Gidali and Hezy Leskly

17:30 – 19:00 | MEDICAL AUTHORITY, (PSEUDO)SCIENCE AND THE EXPLAINED SUPERNATURAL IN LATE VICTORIAN FEMALE GOTHIC FICTION

Speaker: Dr Helena Ifill (University of Sheffield)

17:30 – 19:00 | ANCIENT MEDICINE SEMINAR

Speaker: Dr Ido Israelowich (University of Tel Aviv)       

17:30 | YOKO TAWADA AT OXFORD: GERMAN READING AND Q&A

Daad Writer in Residence at the University of Oxford

18:00 – 19:00 | LGBT+ IDENTITY, RIGHTS, PRIDE AND COMMUNITY

Oxford Brookes event for LGBT History Month 2017

Thursday 23 February

14:00 – 15:30 | GLOBAL DIALOGUES & WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT IN EURASIAN CONTEXTS FEMINIST MONITORING PROGRAMME

Part of the Feminist Mappin in a Volatile World: Spaces of Creativity and Survival series        

14:15 | TRADITIONS IN MOTION: THE CIRCULATION OF TEXTS, 1100-1900

A Sixteenth-Century Hebrew Catechism by a Convert from Judaism, and its use by Modern Missionaries

16:00 – 17:30 | EGO-DOCUMENTS AND OFFICIAL HISTORY: CROWN PRINCE RUPPRECHT OF BAVARIA’S DIARY AND THE BATTLE FOR MEMORY, 1914-39

Speaker: Dr Jonathan Boff (University of Birmingham)

16:30 | WILDERNESS PEOPLE: LEARNED FAMILIES OF THE GAELIC COURT C.1200-1600 AD

Part of The Oxford Celtic Seminar series                   

17:00 | LAGOS GIRL POWER: PERFORMING POSTFEMINISM IN NIGERIA

Speaker: Simidele Dosekun (University of Sussex)     

17:00 – 19:00 | EMERGENCY, IMAGINATION AND MANAGEMENT

Speaker: Professor Steven Connor (Cambridge)     

17:30 | JOHN CRANKO

Lecture on the C20th choreographer by Dr Julia Burhle (University of Oxford)

17:30 | LAND, OUTDOORS AND NATURE

Part of the 'MOVING, TEACHING, INSPIRING: The National Trust & University of Oxford in the 21st Century' lecture series.

17:30 | THE PUNISHMENT OF PROMETHEUS: GÜNTHER ANDERS AND THE OBSOLESCENCE OF PHENOMENOLOGY'

Speaker: Chris Muller (Cardiff University)

Friday 24 February

9:30 – 11:00 | HEIDEGGER READING GROUP

Graduate led reading group               

12:30 – 13:45 | HISTORY UNDERGRADUATE DISSERTATION PRESENTATIONS

Hosted by TORCH Race and Resistance programme           

14:00 – 16:00 | PHENOMENOLOGICAL PSYCHOPATHOLOGY READING GROUP

Convenor and contact: Marcin Moskalewicz           

17:00 | DEAD AS A DODO? FOUR TALES OF WHY AND HOW LITERATURE SAVES LIVES

Ulrike Draesner gives the first Eugene Ludwig Lecture           

17:00 – 19:00 | WALTER BENJAMIN MEETS THE COSMICS

Speaker: Professor Richard Wolin (CUNY)                             

17:00 | FEMINIST FIGHT CLUB READING GROUP

Women in the Humanities Book Club

Saturday 25 February

10:00 – 16:00 | FRACTURED STORIES

When people migrate, what kinds of stories do they tell?

14:00 – 18:00 | SELF/KNOWLEDGE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND RESEARCH

Event organised by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing

18:00 -21:00 | OUT IN OXFORD: MY NORMAL TAKEOVER NIGHT

Curated by My Normal (a creativity based project aiming to give LGBTQ+ youth safe spaces and a bigger voice in Oxfordshire)