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Seminar Series

The Cultural Production and Social Justice seminars will bring together colleagues and postgraduate students working on different themes, media, languages, time periods, and theoretical frameworks relating to questions of cultural production and social justice. Kindly supported by the Faculty Research Workshop scheme, the seminars aims to provide a space for intellectual exchange and for exploring potential collaborations for research, teaching, and funding applications. 

Lead Convenor & Contact: Dr Melina Mandelbaum (mmm55@cam.ac.uk

Co-convenors: Prof. Sarah Colvin, Dr Charlotte Woodford, Dr Tara Talwar Windsor, Alrik Daldrup 

Supported by the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics 

2024-2025

Easter 2025

16 May, 1-2pm, Room 336, Raised Faculty Building

Natasha Kennedy (Brighton): Towards a Heterolingual Poetics – Representations and Recognitions of Linguistic Identities

28 May, 3-4pm, online, joint event with German Graduate Research Seminar

Shoshana Schwebel (University of British Columbia): A Gentle Approach to Studying Trauma in the Work of Emmy Hennings

 

Lent 2025

28 February,  1-2pm, Selwyn College

Jiayao Jiang (Cambridge, Italian): Rome as a Shared Legacy: The Monuments Men and the Transnational Efforts for Heritage Preservation

7 March, 1-2pm, Selwyn College

Dr Kirstin Gwyer (Oxford): Superposition and Strange Loops: Black Literature and Quantum Physics

 

Michaelmas 2024

6 December, 1-2pm, in Room 336, Raised Faculty Building

Ruth Murphy (Cambridge, Italian): Reflections on literature and politics in Hannah Arendt's thought  

2 December – 4.30-6pm (followed by drinks) in the Ramsden Room at St Catharine's College

Joint event with German Section SRC: Radical Diversity and Cultural Production in Contemporary Germany

Book launch for:

  • Jeannette Oholi, Afropäische Ästhetiken. Plurale Schwarze Identitätsentwürfe in literarischen Texten des 21. Jahrhunderts (transcript, August 2024)
  • Selma Rezgui, Laura Marie Sturtz & Tara Talwar Windsor (eds.) Rewriting Identities in Contemporary Germany: Radical Diversity and Literary Interventions (Camden House, October 2024)
  • Joseph Twist (ed.), Cultural Responses to the Far Right in Contemporary Germany. Kunstszene gegen rechte Szene (Brill, June 2024)
  • Maha El Hissy (ed.), »Die ganze Geschichte fasse ich an der Hand« Literatur und Kunst zur Einwanderung ins Nachkriegsdeutschland (Verbrecher Verlag, June 2025)

 

Previous years

Easter 2024

Friday 3 May, 1-2pm, Seminar Room 336, Raised Faculty Building

Dr Anna Richards (Birkbeck): Tutelary phantoms in Marie Espérance von Schwartz’s Gemma, oder Tugend und Laster (1877) and the late nineteenth-century anti-vivisection debate

Lent 2024 

Friday 9 February, 1-2pm, Seminar Room 3, Alison Richards Building 

Prof. Mark Devenney (Brighton): ‘Fiktionsbescheinigung: Thinking the Violent Fictions of Citizenship with Erpenbeck and Shibli’ 

Thursday 22 February, 1-2pm, location TBC 

Weibing Ni (Cambridge): ‘Reimagining Intimacies between Afro-/Creole and Sino-Caribbeans: Marronnage in Raphaël Confiant, Patricia Powell, and Victor Chang 

 

Latest News

New podcast on language and rhythm

1 April 2025

We are delighted to announce the launch of a new podcast, Language and Rhythm, made by Cambridge TV and funded by the British Academy and the Schröder Fund, University of Cambridge. You can listen to the full series or watch a taster video.

Paul Hoegger wins Pilkington Prize

20 March 2025

Congratulations to Paul Hoegger, who has been awarded a Pilkington Prize for excellence in teaching.

Dr Abhimanyu Sharma publishes new study on Indian Sign Language

20 March 2025

Dr Abhimanyu Sharma, Teaching Associate in German Linguistics, has published a study which calls on the Indian Government to recognise Indian Sign Language as an official language.

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