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20th - 21st Centuries, Aesthetics, Philosophy, Theory, American Studies, Culture, Text and History, Gender and Sexuality, Insights

2021 Ellen Craft Essay Prize Awarded to PhD Student Katie Arthur

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By Professor Mark Turner, PGR Lead

It is a pleasure to announce to the KCL English community that the Scottish Association for the Study of America (SASA) has awarded the 2021 Ellen Craft Essay Prize to one of our PhD students, Katie Arthur, for her brilliant essay, ‘Arousing Disgust: Visceral Configurations of Obscenity through Literal, Literary, and Governmental Bodies in William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (1957)’.

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Early Modern and Shakespeare, Insights

Bard Takes: A new podcast supported by KCL English Department

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What do we really think about Shakespeare? As one of the world’s most iconic writers, we all have certain preconceptions and biases about him and his work which can impact how we watch, read and study them. The Bard Takes Podcast follows a Shakespeare Studies student exploring these preconceptions and the truth behind Shakespeare’s work, with guests including staff and students from King’s College London, Shakespeare’s Globe and beyond.

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20th - 21st Centuries, Contemporary, Life writing, Creative writing and Performance, Long Read

NewThink: What would happen if we criminalised creative expression?

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PhD student George Oliver shares an extract from a short-listed creative writing piece that speculates on the criminalisation of public creative expression…

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20th - 21st Centuries, Book Review, Contemporary, Culture, Text and History, Life writing, Creative writing and Performance, Long Read

“And I said that, I”: Connie Palmen’s novel Your Story, My Story

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by Sylvia Solakidi

In this blog, King’s graduate Sylvia Solakidi explores the role of betrayal in the quest for love and knowledge in Connie Palmen’s novel about the contentious romance of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

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20th - 21st Centuries, Culture, Text and History, Insights, Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Alienation on the Strand; Solitude in Street Haunting

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WOOLF’S WRITING HAS BEEN A PART OF MY LIFE FOR SO LONG I NO LONGER KNOW IF IT TAUGHT ME TO SEE THE WORLD THIS WAY OR JUST TAUGHT ME TO NOTICE THAT I DO.

– TRACY SEELEY

There is perhaps no greater comfort nor reward granted by reading than resonance. It is an indescribable liberation to have our feelings corroborated; to sift through the works of writers centuries past and happen upon an unassuming strand of words that instantly articulates the inarticulable, that echoes an acute emotion lying dormant within. These discoveries serve as whispers through time, as a consoling hand-squeeze in the ether. In my first year studying on the Strand, Virginia Woolf’s 1930 essay Street Haunting: A London Adventure offered me this solace.

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