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High and Low: Ninth Annual English Postgraduate Conference

High and LowCultural Levels in Word and Image

Thursday 9th June 2011, 9.30am – 5.00pm
Dalhousie Building Lecture Theatre 2, University of Dundee

High and Low is the ninth annual Postgraduate Conference held by the English Programme, University of Dundee, and runs in conjunction with the Scottish Word and Image Group annual conference. It will address configurations of high and low in literature and visual media and is particularly interested in the perceived distinction between highbrow art and lowbrow entertainment, and the ways in which middlebrow texts, and other amalgamations of these two categories, are able to negotiate the apparent gulf between them. Of particular relevance to this dichotomy are texts that have been subject to critical re-evaluations over time, works that mix the sacred and the profane, and artistically sophisticated products of trash culture.

The keynote lectures will be delivered by Dr Faye Hammill (University of Strathclyde), entitled “Sophistication and the Middlebrow: Smart Magazines in America”; and Peter Kramer (University of East Anglia), entitled ‘The Clockwork Orange Controversy’.

The conference will be opened on Wednesday 8th June at 6.00pm by a wine reception and reading by the celebrated poet Don Paterson, whose works include Nil Nil (Faber, 1993), God’s Gift to Women (Faber, 1997), The Eyes (Faber, 1999), Landing Light (Faber, 2003; Graywolf, 2004), Orpheus (Faber, 2006) and Rain (Faber, 2009; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010). Paterson, originally from Dundee, teaches poetry at the University of St Andrews and received the OBE in 2008 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010.  Please see our separate news announcement for further details of this event.

To register, please complete the Registration Form: PDF Version or Word Document Version. The conference fee is £25 (this includes lunch and tea/coffee).

Programme

9.00am Registration
9.25am Welcome, Keir Elder
Session One: Keynote (Chair: Keith Williams)
9.30am Dr. Faye Hammill (University of Strathclyde), 'Sophistication and the Middlebrow: Smart Magazines in America'
10.15am Questions
10.35am Break (Tea and Coffee in 1G06)
Session Two (Parallel): Text and Image (Chair: Chris Murray)
11.00am Laura Findlay (University of Dundee), ‘Performance and Art in Don DeLillo’s The Falling Man’
11.20am John Tyson (Emory University), ‘The Parasite: Hans Haacke’s Art of Textual Exhibition’
11.40am Lindsay Jones (University of Dundee), ‘Title TBA (Work of Neil Gaiman)’
12.00pm Stephen O’ Donnell (University of Dundee), ‘The High, the Low, and the Zombie: The History of Zombie Comics’
12.20pm Questions
12.40pm Lunch (Buffet Lunch in 1G06)
Session Two (Parallel): Film, Representation and Mass Culture (Chair: Anthony Paraskeva)
11.00am Jay James May (University of York), ‘’…these mingled joys of art and erudition’: Pleasure in Materialist Cinema’
11.20am Jonathan Theodore (University of London), ‘Title TBC (Decline and Fall of Rome as represented in Culture and the Arts)
11.40am Chris Kydd (University of Dundee), ‘Last Year in Marioland: High and Low in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’
12.00pm Davide Caputo (University of Exeter), ‘Polanski, Perception and the Postmodern’
12.20 Questions
12.40pm Lunch (Buffet Lunch in 1G06)
Session Three (Parallel): Early Modern (Chair: Jodi-Anne George)
1.30pm Elizabeth Rogers (University of Dundee), ‘Highs and Lows of Comedy in Shakespeare’
1.50pm Leslie Drury (University of Aberdeen), ‘’They’ll drink their ale, and tell a tale’: Alewives and Authorship in Early Modern England’
2.10pm Questions
2.25pm Short break
Session Three (Parallel): Writing and Adaptation (Chair: TBC)
1.30pm Marina Cano López (University of St. Andrews), ‘Regency Novel and chick lit move in: Alexandra Potter’s Me and Mr. Darcy’
1.50pm Martyn Colebrook (University of Hull), ‘‘Literary? Literary? I’ll give you Literary. Chopping up Black Hoes and Little Sambos Wanking is Not Literature’ (or so they say): Splatterpunk, Fantasy, transgression, Subversion and a whole lot of other fun in Bill Drummond and Mark Manning’s The Wild Highway.’
2.10pm Questions
2.25pm Short break
Session Four: Popular Culture (Chair: TBC)
2.35pm Dr. Konstantina Georganta (University of Glasgow), ‘Trade Monopoly as Casus Belli and Other Oddments of 1922’
2.55pm Jack Rundell (University of York), ‘The Contested Kinaesthetics of the Roller Skating craze 1884 – 1916’
3.15pm E. Charlotte Stevens (University of Warwick), ‘Decoding the Captions: Relations of Audio and Video Sources in Fanvids’
3.35pm Questions
3.55pm Break (Tea and Coffee in 1G06)
Session Five: Keynote (Chair: Brian Hoyle)
4.15pm Peter Kramer (University of East Anglia), ‘The Clockwork Orange Controversy’
5.00pm Questions
5.20pm Closing Remarks
 
6.30pm Conference Dinner – Chambers, South Tay Street, Dundee

For more information please contact Keir Elder, Postgraduate Representative, English Programme, School of Humanities, Dundee, DD1 4HN (email: k.j.z.elder@dundee.ac.uk; twitter: www.twitter.com/HighandLowCon).


Image by Koren Shadmi. Used with permission of the artist.
Posted: 26 May 2011

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