HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTRE
Annual Report (2001-2002)
The current year has been one of the most successful to date for the Humanities Research
Centre both in terms of the number and quality of its public events and of the level of
attendance registered at each one of them.
The tenth Donald Charlton Lecture, ‘Angels and Demons’, was given in February by
Professor Terry Eagleton (Manchester). The event attracted a large audience from across
departments and faculties, and was followed by a lively debate on literature and ethics.
The 2001-2002 HRC Visiting Fellow was the Peruvian novelist and intellectual Mario Vargas
Llosa. The main event of Vargas Llosa’s visit to Warwick, which took place in March, was a
public lecture, in conversation with Prof. John King. The event, chaired by Prof. Susan
Bassnett, focused on Vargas Llosa’s recent novel, The Feast of the Goat. The event was held
in the Arts Centre Conference Room and was advertised in collaboration with the Writers at
Warwick programme. The success of the lecture both within Warwick and among the general
public was such that tickets were sold out weeks in advance and a video link had to be set up
with another lecture hall. During his stay at Warwick, Vargas Llosa also took part in a ‘master
class’ with students of the undergraduate degree in creative writing, commented on the work
of postgraduates from various Humanities departments and centres, and had a lunchtime
meeting with the university's Latin American community as well as with representatives of
some of the Latin American embassies in the UK.
In the course of the academic year, the Centre also organised and supported a variety of
conferences and symposia: ‘J M Coetzee: The Ethics of Intellectual Practice’, organised by
Jane Poyner (HRC Doctoral Fellow); ‘Rethinking the Colonisers: British Colonial Elites in
the 18th and 19th Centuries’, organised by Christer Petley (HRC Doctoral Fellow);
‘Borderlines: Migrant Writing and Italian Identities (1870-2000)’, organised by Dr Jennifer
Burns and Dr Loredana Polezzi (Italian); Benita Parry Conference, organised by Prof Neil
Lazarus (English); ‘Ancient Warfare’, organised by Prof Michael Whitby (Classics); ‘Women,
Charity and Philanthropy in Britian and America 1800-2000’, organised by Dr Tim Lockley
and Dr Sarah Richardson (History); ‘Emine Sevgi Ozdamar and the Turkish-German Cultural
Interchange’, organised by Dr Erica Carter and Dr Georgina Paul (German) and ‘Race and
Ethnicity in the Atlantic World 1500-1800’, organised by Dr Tim Lockley (History). All
events were highly successful and attracted a large number of speakers and delegates from UK
and international academic institutions.
The Centre continues to sponsor a number of Faculty-based Interdisciplinary Research
Seminars: Caribbean Studies, convened by Professor Gad Heuman (Caribben); Medieval
Studies, convened by Dr. Christiania Whitehead (English) and Dr. Peter Mack (English);
Warwick Workshop for Interdisciplinary German Studies, convened by Dr. Patrick Major
(History), and Dr. Helmut Schmitz (German); 18th Century Reading Group, convened by Dr.
Claire Walsh and Dr Sue Gordon (Luxury Project); War and Genocide Studies Group,
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Humanities Research Centre – Annual Report 2001-02
convened by Dr. Mark Levene (History) and Dr. Robin Clifton (History); English Literature
Research Seminar, convened by Dr Karen O’Brien, Lynn Robson and Claire Brock (English);
Research Seminar in Italian Studies convened by Dr Simon Gilson (Italian) and Seminars in
Women’s History convened by Maria Luddy (History). These seminars discuss research, invite
outside speakers, and develop research proposals. The seminar programme is under constant
review and new strands may be added in the near future.
The Centre also sponsors an ‘Interdisciplinary Seminar in the Humanities’, which this year
was jointly organised by Dr Nadine Holdsworth (Theatre Studies) and Dr Margot Finn
(History). The programme featured speakers from within the Faculty and from the wider
scholarly community, including Derek Paget, Sara Mills, Anne Gerritsen and Partha Mitter.
The structure of the interdisciplinary seminar has recently been revised and a new scheme has
been advertised across the faculty. Starting from the next academic year, bids will be invited
for the organization of two short series of thematically linked events to be held in the Autumn
and Spring/Summer terms. The first series (Autumn 2002) will be devoted to ‘The Art of
War’ and will be convened by Dr Michael John Kooy (English).
The Warwick Humanities Series, published by the Humanities Research Centre in
collaboration with Ashgate, aims to bring together innovative work of a high academic
standard which crosses disciplinary borders in the Arts and Humanities. It provides a forum
for volumes exploring new dimensions of cultural history from the early modern period to the
present, and for works that investigate aspects of contemporary cultural production within and
across national boundaries. The series reflects the breadth of the interdisciplinary work carried
out at Warwick's Humanities Research Centre, and includes work of both European and extraEuropean scope. The series is edited by Dr. Loredana Polezzi (Italian Studies) and Dr. Karen
O’Brien (English & Comparative Literature). The series received a number of new book
proposals. A collection of essays on Italo Calvino and a monograph on George Eliot and
European culture have already been approved for publication, while proposals for volumes on
Umberto Eco, ‘traces of Borges’, Silone and the writing of exile, and ‘the archaeology of
imagination’ are being evaluated.
Titles in the Series:
Acts of War, Tony Howard and John Stokes
David Jones, Artist and Poet, Edited by Paul Hills
George Eliot and Europe, Edited by John Rignall
Epistolary Selves, Edited by Rebecca Earle
The World of Savonarola, Edited by Christine Shaw and Stella Fletcher
In a Queer Place, Edited by Kate Chedgzoy, Emma Francis and Murray Pratt (forthcoming)
German Culture and the Undesirable Past: Representations of National Socialism in
Contemporary Germanic Literature, Edited by Helmut Schmitz
This year, the Centre has continued to sponsor two (internal) Doctoral Fellowships. The
Fellows contribute to the life of the HRC by organising a one-day post-graduate
interdisciplinary conference, and are given financial support for their PhD dissertation
research. The two fellowships for 2002-2003 were assigned to Vicky Long (‘Medicine and the
Media in Late Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century Britain’) and Charlotte Ross (‘LiteratureScience: Between the Disciplines’). The Centre has also obtained renewed financial support
for the Doctoral Fellowship Scheme from the University and the Warwick Graduate School.
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Humanities Research Centre – Annual Report 2001-02
From next year we will be able to advertise three scholarships of £1000 each, equally divided
between research expenses and conference funds.
Before leaving Warwick, the former Vice Chancellor, Prof. Sir Brian Follett, gave the HRC a
small fund which has allowed the Centre to continue its Research Incentive Scheme, under a
new name (Humanities Research Fund) and with revised objectives. The fund, which offers
support for research projects, conference travel and unusual publication expenses (such as
those incurred in copyright clearance for text and illustrations), has been in operation since
last October and is scheduled to run for a further two years.
The HRC programme for 2002-2003 promises to be just as rich and exciting. We have
secured two prestigious speakers for the main events of the year: Prof. Roger Chartier, of the
Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), will deliver the next Donald Charlton
Lecture; while the 2002-2003 HRC Visiting Fellow will be the renowned Kenyan writer,
playwright and intellectual Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Additionally, the centre will sponsor two
graduate conferences and continue to organize and support other events.
Dr Loredana Polezzi
HRC Director, 2001-2002
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Humanities Research Centre – Annual Report 2001-02