Humanities Research Centre
Annual Report 2005-2006
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
In the course of the academic year, the Centre organised and supported a variety of
conferences and events:
Intellectual Diasporas/Departures
Organised by Dr Kate Astbury (French)
12th – 13th September 2005
Carlos Monsiváis – a round table discussion on Contemporary Mexican Cinema
Organised by Professor John King (CAS)
Wednesday 28th September 2005
Henry Green, 1905 – 73 A Centenary Celebration
Organised by Professor Jeremy Treglown (English and Comparative Literary Studies)
Friday 28th – Saturday 29th October 2005
Trouble in Paradise? Ecocritical Responses to the Contemporary Caribbean
Organised by Erin Somerville (CTCCS)
Saturday 26th November 2005
Writing The Other America: The estuary of the Americas in the literary imagination of
the Caribbean and Latin America
Organised by Michael Niblett and Kerstin Oloff (English/CTCCS)
Saturday 25th February 2006
Virtue and Vice
Organised by Dr Elizabeth Clarke (English and Comparative Literary Studies)
Saturday 8th April 2006
Ignacio Durán, cultural attaché, Mexican Embassy,
introduced a screening of Luis Buñuel’s "Los Olvidados"
Americas Research Seminar
Monday 24th April 2006
Writing Class: Representations of Working – Class Spaces in Modern Britain
Organised by Nicola Wilson (English and Comparative Literary Studies)
Saturday 6th May 2006
Between Peterborough and Pentecost: Nonsense Literature across Space and Time
Organised by Dr Carlo Caruso and Dr Elisabetta Tarantino (Italian)
12th – 13th May 2006
Mcdowell – between Wittgenstein and Hegel
Organsied by Professor Michael Luntley (Philosophy)
13th – 15th May 2006
Mario Vargas Llosa at Seventy
Organised by Professor John King (CAS)
Saturday 20th May 2006
4th Warwick Symposium on Parish Research
Organised by Dr Beat Kümin, Dr Peter Marshall and Dr Penny Roberts (History)
Saturday 20th May 2006
National Postgraduate Analytic Philosophy Conference
Organised by Professor Bill Brewer (Philosophy)
30th June – 2nd July 2006
Dickens and the French Revolution: Crowds and Power
Organised by Professor Colin Jones (History)
14th – 15th July 2006
The 14th Donald Charlton Annual Lecture was given by Professor Sigrid Weigel on 16
February 2006. Her talk was well attended and provoked a lively debate.
The 2005-2006 HRC Visiting Fellow, the Argentine writer and academic Professor
Tomás Eloy Martínez, unfortunately had to postpone his trip to Warwick only a few
days before he was due to fly to the UK on 30 January 2006. He underwent major
surgery in New York and we send him all our good wishes for a complete recovery.
We hope to welcome him at Warwick sometime in the 2006-2007 academic year.
The Interdisciplinary Research Seminar
This year’s seminar organised by Dr Liz Barry (English) and Dr Rachel Moseley (Film & TV
Studies) entitled ‘A Cultural History of Celebrity’ focused on the much-discussed
modern phenomenon of celebrity. It brought together ideas of celebrity, heroism
and the icon in intellectual and cultural life and in popular culture. It challenged the
familiar narrative of the displacement of heroism (active, socially useful, respected)
by celebrity (passive, parasitical, despised) in modern life, and to interrogate its terms
and assumptions. It also examined the impact of celebrity on cultural production,
considering the public figure of the artist and the intellectual and exploring how their
renown may not just follow from their work but also shape and direct it.
The series involved intersections between many different disciplines, such as those of
history, cultural studies, film and television studies, literary criticism and art history.
Invited speakers included Ludmilla Jordonova, Steven Connor, Uta Kornmeier,
Stephen Cheeke and Su Holmes, and subjects included Nelson and heroism,
Byromania in the early nineteenth century, Madame Tussauds and the waxworks
museum, and the phenomenon of celebrity publications such as Heat magazine.
Doctoral Fellowships
This year the Centre was able to sponsor three (internal) Doctoral Fellowships. The
Fellows contribute to the life of the HRC by organising a one-day postgraduate
interdisciplinary conference and are given financial support for their PHD dissertation
research. The fellowships were awarded to:
Erin Somerville (CTCCS)
Trouble in Paradise? Ecocritical Responses to the Contemporary Caribbean
Nicola Wilson (English)
Writing Class: Representations of Working – Class Spaces in Modern Britain
Michael Niblett and Kerstin Oloff (English/CTCCS)
Writing The Other America: The estuary of the Americas in the literary imagination of
the Caribbean and Latin America
All these conferences attracted important national and international participants
and were very successful.
Arts Faculty Research Committee
The Arts Faculty Research committee met twice during the 2005-06 year. Its wider
activities focused in particular on three areas: the visit to Warwick of Philip Esler, the
new chief executive of the Arts and Humanities Research Council; the drafting and
approval of a research strategy document for the Faculty; and a joint away-day
organised with the Social Studies Research committee to encourage cross-Faculty
interdisciplinary collaboration. The Esler visit, at which several staff presented findings
from their AHRC-funded research projects, was a substantial success: the Director of
Research Support Services, Kate Hughes, subsequently learned that Professor Esler
circulated an 18-point document at the AHRC prompted by issues raised by staff and
postgraduate students at Warwick. The Faculty's new research strategy document
has now been circulated to the new Vice Chancellor, and provided the basis of the
Faculty's reconfigured research web pages over the summer. The away day, jointly
organised by Margot Finn, Richard Higgott, Nickie Mukkle and Liese Perrin,
has initiated preliminary collaboration for a number of grant applications, to the
Mellon-Sawyer programme and the Leverhulme Trust.
Newsletter
The 3rd issue of the HRC Newsletter was published. The Newsletter showcases
research being carried out by the arts and humanities community at Warwick as well
as advertising forthcoming HRC events. It is mailed out to the arts and humanities
departments of every major UK HEI as well as other arts organisations and many
overseas institutions.
Future Projects
Humanities Research Fund
We have managed to secure funding from the Centre to re-launch this fund from
October 2006. Guidelines for applications to the fund have been sent out to
departments and we are confident that the small grants that we can award will play
a significant role in promoting research in the faculty.
The 15th Donald Charlton Lecture will be given by Professor Gerald Martin, University of
Pittsburgh, in January 2007. Gabriel García Márquez has called Professor Martin his
‘tolerated’ biographer and Professor Martin will be talking about the pleasures and
pitfalls of writing the biography of perhaps the world’s best known novelist.
The first Callum MacDonald lecture, organised by the Department of History, will be
given by Professor Alan Trachtenberg of Yale University on 23 January 2007. His
lecture is entitled, ‘Noir Decade: Cultural Perspectives on the 1940’s’.
The HRC Visiting Fellow for 2006-07 will be Professor Gary Radke of Syracuse University,
New York State. Professor Radke, one of the leading authorities on the art of
Renaissance Italy, will give a major public lecture in the Arts Centre as well as
contributing to teaching in the History of Art Department. His visit chimes with a year
of activities to celebrate forty years of Warwick in Venice.
Forthcoming Conferences include the 2005-2006 Doctoral Fellowship winners
The Riddle of Devolutionary Identity
Organised by Zoe Brigley & Jonathan Morley (English/CTCCS)
Saturday 18th November 2006
Marketing the Movies: Promotion, Advertising and Film Studies
Organised by Christopher Meir (Film & TV Studies)
Saturday 24th February 2007
Spooked: Cultures of Intelligence in Britain 1945 – 2006
Organised by Christopher Moran (History)
Saturday 12th May 2007
Next year’s Interdisciplinary Seminar Series, organised by Jennifer Smyth (History) will
focus on visual culture in the Americas.
Visual Cultures of the Americas: Comparative Contexts
In this seminar series for 2006-2007, internationally renowned scholars and filmmakers
from across the UK, Mexico, and the United States will discuss a range of topics on the
past and present contexts of North and Latin American visual cultures. The eight
seminars will consider issues spanning nineteenth-century images of Native and
African Americans and their dissemination in the Americas and Europe to the history
of mixed-race identities to the future of Latin American cinema. The series will offer
the possibility of rethinking concepts like race, gender, modernity, historical
representation and national identity as well as uniting some of the most important
new historical research and ideas about contemporary filmmaking. We are planning
an edited collection of the papers in 2008.
The participants are drawn from across the spectrum of humanities research: History,
Film Studies, History of Art, English and Comparative American Studies, and the
inherently interdisciplinary character of the series will undoubtedly attract an equally
diverse audience of Warwick faculty and students.
Autumn Term Programme

November 21, 2006: Nicola Miller, University College, London
Images of the United States in 19th-Century Argentina and Europe

December 5, 2006: Diane Negra, University of East Anglia
Race and Hollywood Cinema
Concluding remarks
The HRC has had another successful year and we will continue to foster and
encourage research in the faculty in the variety of ways outlined above.
John King (CAS) continues as director and Margot Finn (History) continues as
Chair of the Arts Faculty Research Committee.
Dr Liese Perrin from the University’s Research Support Services continues to be closely
involved in all our activities and initiatives, providing invaluable support at all levels.
The bedrock of the Centre is our secretary/administrator, Sue Dibben, whose
unrivalled enthusiasm; energy and efficiency ensure the delivery of such a rich
programme.
John King, HRC Director, 2005-2006