Bristol Mini-Series: Thinking Reciprocity

(don't miss out on Lady GaGa's Tele-Historicism by guest-blogger Michael O'Rourke below)

by EILEEN JOY

Readers of ITM who may be in the UK for July should think about attending the "mini-series" of events sponsored by Bristol University from July 8-10, the cross-temporal themes of which very much touch upon subjects dear to ITM, and for which William Desmond and Carolyn Dinshaw are serving as featured speakers. One of the events, "Desiring the Text, Touching the Past," looks particularly interesting and will be featuring papers on Dante and Barthes, metafiction and belief in the TV series Dr. Who and Supernatural, blackness in speculative fiction and fan fiction, the erotics of reception in photography and TV, the sensual intellect in Augustine's Confessions, grammar as a vehicle for transtemporal contact in Dante and other medieval theorists of language, and reading the letters of Theophylact of Ochrid, a 10th-century Byzantine archbishop living in Bulgaria, as "fanwork," among several other really interesting-looking papers. You can read the abstracts for all of the papers to be included in the "Desiring the Text" event here.

***Thinking Reciprocity*** [a mini-series]
Bristol University, 8-10 July 2010

Registration is now open for Thinking Reciprocity, a mini-series of events comprising "Reception and the Gift of Beauty" and "Desiring the Text, Touching the Past" and organized with the aim of starting new conversations about reception, subjectivity, and creativity as they relate to classical, medieval, and post-modern texts. We are eager to develop ways of thinking about how the self navigates and creates the world of the text and the text of the world. We believe that classical and medieval traditions share much with contemporary discourse and that by considering specific texts and how we think about them, we can open new lines of exploration into their living development in their interplay with the reader, author, viewer, lover.

Places are limited, so please register early.

Discount for postgraduates & delegates attending both events.

1. Reception and the Gift of Beauty in the Western Tradition

Keynote Speaker: Prof. William Desmond, Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven
Thu-Fri 8-9 July
Single-Day registration available.

Registration forms, conference schedule, and abstracts are available here.

2. Desiring the Text, Touching the Past: Towards an Erotics of Reception

Keynote Speaker: Professor Carolyn Dinshaw, New York University
Saturday 10 July

Registration forms, conference schedule, and abstracts are available here.