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The Culture & Arts Forum is an informal network which aims to support and promote the various departments within the University that are involved in cultural activity. At present the following departments, units and services are represented on the Forum:
Click on any of the above to find out what each of us is up to.
Provisional Programme:
1.45pm Welcome
1.50pm
Matthew Jarron (Museum Services)
Art with a Smile: Dentist art collectors in Dundee
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Dundee was one of Britain’s major art centres, with many enthusiastic patrons building up large private collections. Unusually, several of these were involved in dentistry, and this talk will reveal something of their exceptional activities.
2.05pm
Paul Harrison (Visual Research Centre, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design)
Connections: Art, Science and Multi-cultures
This presentation will reflect on some of the recent projects that Paul has undertaken addressing issues at the intersection of art, science and society.
2.20pm
Neil Paterson (Botanic Garden)
On Being Happy: Epicureans in the Garden
Our health is intimately connected to our mental attitudes and approach to life. The Greeks advocated living the Good Life but what precisely is that to be - Epicurus had an interesting answer.
2.35pm
Brian Hoyle (English, School of Humanities)
Please Mrs Plunket, You're Squashing My Itinerary
This presentation promises an in-depth reading of some of the Carry On and Doctor films - a plucky tribute to socialised medicine, Hattie and Sid.
2.50pm Refreshments
3.10pm
Sandra Wilson (Jewellery & Metal Design, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design)
Jewellery, Superstition and Well-being
This talk will explore recent research into superstitious jewellery, demonstrating the connections between values, beliefs, materials and ways of working, and suggesting a continued relevance of this approach for well-being in the 21st century.
3.25pm
Beth Lord (Philosophy, School of Humanities)
Equality, philosophy, and well-being
Many philosophers believe that living a good life requires us to adopt some principle of human equality. But what kind of equality should we aim for to ensure the well-being of individuals, groups, and communities? In this short talk I will suggest that 17th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza has an interesting and startlingly contemporary answer to this question.
3.40pm
Kenneth Baxter (Archive Services)
Dundee's Doctor Daughters: Early Female Medical Students at University College Dundee
Making use of the University Records and Medical Collections in the Archives, this talk will explore the experiences and remarkable achivements of some of Dundee's early female graduates including Margaret Fairlie and the wider impact they made upon the city and the wider world in a range of ways.
3.55pm Refreshments
4.10pm
Mary Modeen (Fine Art, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design)
Seeing the Unseen, Hearing the Unheard: Attending to the World, Reflectively
As sentient humans, how we take in the world can make the difference between a healthy attention, a rich curiosity, or a baffling ‘muddling through’ the surroundings in our everyday life. Art has the potential to point to the unseen, and interdisciplinary study offers a rich and complex foundation for uncovering the spectral traces of the invisible in the present.
4.25pm
Billy Kenefick & Derek Patrick (History, School of Humanities)
“Fine Physique and Admirable Bearing”: Image and reality and the Scottish Soldier
From Waterloo to the Second Boer War the Scottish soldier was praised for his military and physical prowess and throughout portrayed as a stoic defender of Empire. But does this image match up to reality, and is it a fair reflection of the physical health and well-being of the nation as a whole?
4.40pm
Edward Hall (Geography, School of the Environment)
Making and gifting belonging: creative arts and people with learning disabilities
This talk will argue that the making of arts objects and performances provides opportunities for expression and belonging for people with learning disabilities; that ‘gifting’ these to a wider society can create connection and recognition; and that the safe spaces where art is made can generate senses of belonging.
4.55pm Finish
Don’t miss the current exhibition in the Lamb Gallery – Human Race: Inside the History of Sports Medicine, funded by the Legacy Trust as an official part of the Cultural Olympiad.
At 6pm in D’Arcy Thompson Lecture Theatre (ground floor, Tower), Vicky Strange will be giving a free public lecture about her work as General Manager, Sports Competition for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow 2014. All welcome.
Provisional Programme
1.30
Matthew Jarron (Museum Services)
Welcome
1.40pm
Susan Mains (Geography)
Moving Image, Moving Place: Islands, Identities and Space-Time Emotions
This presentation will explore the ways in which media images of islands - particularly in the Caribbean - offer an important entryway into new understandings of how we represent emotions, space, and time
Alasdair Hood (Botanic Garden)
"A Rich Harvest of Most Beautiful Plants": A World Tour in the Botanic Garden
The University's Botanic Garden turned 40 this year. It was ahead of its time in being laid out on geographical lines. Come on a tour of the world's plants and explore our own British flora.
Brian Kelly (Continuing Education / Dundee Heritage Trust)
A Journey in Space and Time
Find out our real place in the cosmos as we voyage from Dundee to the most distant objects in the known Universe
Philip Braham (Fine Art)
Suicide Notes: From private pilgrimage to public outrage
The artist will discuss his contentious photographic series 'Suicide Notes' that met with moral condemnation in the press, but won the Royal Scottish Academy Morton Award in 2009.
2.40pm Refreshments
3.05pm
Graeme Stevenson (Music)
Space in Music
A look at music that was composed with the position of the audience or the performers as a key feature of the work
Keith Williams (English)
"I have always been given to paradoxes about space and time"
A talk exploring the place of new media in the fiction of HG Wells
Charles McKean (History)
Space and Time - a Revolutionary Theory
Revolutions require the right time, the right circumstances and above all the right place. Do they occur in the countryside? Rarely. For the last 500 years, authorities have been aware of this and designed against it. Yet in 1989 and again today, squares and plazas were crucial to dramatic political change.
Keith Skene (Continuing Education / Biosphere Research Institute)
Of Progress and the Golden Age: finding a place called home
The conservation movement and the Enlightenment had very different visions of where we belonged. We will examine these two schools of thought, exploring the repercussions for us today.
4.05pm Refreshments
4.30pm
Kenneth Baxter (Archive Services)
Time Travel without a TARDIS: Using archives to discover changing places and spaces in Dundee through time
This talk will show how material held by the University's Archive Services can be used to illustrate and understand how Dundee has changed in the past two centuries - its spaces and the people who inhabited them
Neil Paterson (Botanic Garden)
Deep Time and Broad Spaces: Space and Time in Darwin's Theory of Evolution
The strongest evidence for the fact of evolution comes from the distribution of species in space across the globe and Natural Selection demands vast expanses of time to do its work.
Brian Hoyle (English)
Cinema, Time and Space
Through an examination of works by a range of directors this talk will examine cinema's unique ability to manipulate time and space. By combining cinematic techniques with the viewer's imagination, filmmakers are able to extend, compress and elide time; eradicate the distance between locations; and present vastly different spaces to the viewer
Phil Vaughan (Graphic Design)
Comics: 3D space to 2D time
Exploring the technique of using 3D software to digitally create 2D comic art...
5.30 end
Programme
2.00 Welcome
2.15 Rachel Jones (Philosophy)
Identity and Diversity - Race, Gender and Philosophy
This talk will examine the ways in which attention to race and gender has changed the ways we read key philosophers of the past, and will also show how debates about gender and race are changing the ways we do philosophy in the present
2.30 Murdo Macdonald (Fine Art)
The Diversity of Responses to the Gaidhealtachd in Visual Art
This presentation explores the variety of responses to Gaelic culture by artists, with a particular emphasis on recent work explored in the AHRC funded project Window to the West
2.45 Cathy Caudwell (D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum)
Biodiversity and Museums
Museums have become the repositories of extinct creatures - Dodo, Tasmanian Wolf, Passenger Pigeon and many others. What can museums tell us about biodiversity? Are the collections simply a reminder that the world is a less diverse place than it used to be?
3.00 Keith Skene (Continuing Education)
In Search of the Driver of Diversity
There are millions of species of all shapes and sizes on our planet. What has led to this diversity? Answers may be found in the darkest hours of Earth's history, the Mass Extinctions.
3.15 Refreshments
3.30 Charles McKean (History)
Why unity and diversity need each other: the experience of Edinburgh
Enlightenment philosophers warmed to the idea of a unity which permitted diversity. Since the New Town of Edinburgh was the largest built example of Enlightenment thinking, that concept should have been evident upon the streets. Was it?
3.45 Neil Paterson (Botanic Garden)
Design and Diversity in Nature: William Paley, Charles Darwin and the Blind Watchmaker
Charles Darwin was much impressed as a young man by William Paley's "Natural Theology", with its many examples of apparent design in nature. In a great irony of history, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection was destined to subvert Paley's argument by providing design without a designer.
4.00 Vanessa Charles (Book & Paper Conservation Studio)
The Paper Trail: from Diamond Sutra to Damien Hirst
We take paper for granted; it sits in our pockets, covers our walls and piles on our desks. Sometimes precious, yet often intended to be ephemeral, this diverse material has a long history. The talk will explore our relationship with paper and show what measures conservators take to preserve it.
4.15 Graeme Stevenson (Music)
Live to Compose, Compose to Live
JS Bach was arguably the greatest composer of the Baroque, but this presentation will explore the diverse music produced by his sons at the start of the Classical period.
4.30 Refreshments
4.45 Chris Murray (English)
Is it a bird? Is it a Plane? No, it's a talk about Formal Diversity in Comics!
This talk will discuss how comics appropriate lots of different styles, forms and techniques from other media, and look at how diverse comic traditions (Japanese, French, etc) have informed the visual and narrative style of Anglo-American comics, and vice versa.
5.00 Caroline Brown (Archive Services)
Being different: "insanity" in the 19th century
The University of Dundee Archive Services holds the archives of Sunnyside and Liff Asylums. Who were the people who were admitted to the asylums, why were they considered insane, how were they treated and what happened to them?
5.15 Brian Hoyle (English)
Who Know Where They're Going? Diversity in the films of Powell and Pressbuger
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger were responsible for some of the finest films ever made in Britain, but they were slow to gain this recognition, partly because of their commitment to diversity in all things. They rarely covered the same ground twice and gathered around them a diverse technical crew to achieve their dream of "total cinema".
5.30 Rob Duck (Geography)
Geodiversity of Scotland: a personal perspective
Diversity in nature is usually taken to mean the diversity of living nature. Geodiversity, however, recognises the parallel importance of the range of abiotic nature and in this regard Scotland has no equal, as this personal perspective explores.
5.45 End
Click here to see the programmes from previous culture days.
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