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Lightning Flashes and Electric Dashes: American Telegraphic Literature

Post author By Harriet Thompson
Post date 11 September 2019

Receiving a message on a Morse telegraph General Post Office, St Martin's-le-Grand, London, 1879. © World History Archive

by Harriet Thompson, PhD candidate in the English department at King’s College London.

William John Johnston’s Lightning Flashes and Electric Dashes is a volume of late nineteenth-century American fiction comprised of ‘contributions from the pens of all the prominent writers in the ranks of telegraphic literature’. Johnston was himself a telegraph operator, as well as a publisher, and editor of the profession’s leading trade journal ‘The Operator’. He published a number of notable works of telegraphic literature by women telegraphers, including Ella Cheever Thayer’s novel Wired Love and short fictional works by Lida Churchill and Josie Schofield.

Culture, Text and History Early Modern and Shakespeare Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Reflections from ‘The Early Modern Inns of Court and the Circulation of Text’ Conference

Post author By Katie Arthur
Post date 14 August 2019

The Dolphin's Back performing The Misfortunes of Arthur on June 14th at Gray's Inn Chapel

By Dr Romola Nuttall and Julian Neuhauser

‘The Early Modern Inns of Court and the Circulation of Text’ was one of the events supported by the King’s English Department and two of its research groups (the Text Histories and Politics Research Cluster and the Collaborative Seed Fund Partnership) in the academic year 2018-19. This ambitious two-day conference took place in Bush House on 14-15 June 2019. What began as a conference expanded to include a talk at Middle Temple by the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, (and Middle Templar) Lord Igor Judge, an event at Temple Church held in conjunction with the Inner Temple Historical Society and the Inner Temple Drama society, a Middle Temple Library exhibition of materials curated especially for the conference, and a professional revival of The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587) by the Dolphin’s Back theatre company in Gray’s Inn Chapel on 14 June 2019.

Tags Dolphin's Back, early modern inns of court, Francis Bacon, Gray's Inn, law, lawyers, Lincoln's Inn, manuscripts, Middle Temple, Middle Temple library, Othello, Ram Alley, Sergeants Inn, Shakespeare, The Misfortunes of Arthur

Life writing, Creative writing and Performance Modernism Visual and Material Culture

The Modernist Revue: A ‘whole made of shivering fragments’

Post author By Harriet Thompson
Post date 31 July 2019

Photo from Debussy’s La boîte à joujoux (The Toy Box), 1919

by Emily Moore

Emily Moore is a Master’s student at King’s College London, taking the ‘Modern Literature and Culture’ course. Interested in rhythm in modernist literature, she is currently working on a dissertation that compares the works of Virginia Woolf and Gertrude Stein.

On Friday 21st June, Kings’ Gilbert Scott Chapel rang with fragments of modernist culture. Forming part of the British Association for Modernist Studies’ 2019 Conference ‘Troublesome Modernisms’, ‘The Modernist Revue’, organised by Anna Snaith, Clara Jones, and Natasha Periyan, saw an evening of music, dance, and poetry performances inspired by, or seeking to evoke, the character of the era. This it did, calling to mind a watchword of modernist studies that is constantly being reanimated and reinterpreted: fragmentation.

Tags Amit Chaudhuri, British Association for Modernist Studies, collage, Debussy, fragmentation, Hope Mirrlees, Modernism, Modernist Revue, Omega Workshops, performance, review, rhythm, Virginia Woolf and Music Project

Culture, Text and History Early Modern and Shakespeare Gender and Sexuality Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Engendering the Stage in London

Post author By Harriet Thompson
Post date 17 July 2019

Shakespeare's Globe, London

by Hailey Bachrach and Dr Romola Nuttall, King’s College London

An Apology for Actors: Early Modern Playing Then and Now, King’s College London, Friday 10 May 2019

Research in Action: Engendering the Stage, Shakespeare’s Globe, Monday 13 May 2019.

“Engendering the Stage in the Age of Shakespeare and Beyond” brings together scholars, actors and theatre practitioners to analyse the performance of gender in early modern drama and investigate the effects of women’s performance on the skills, techniques and technologies of the performance of femininity in the drama of Shakespeare and his English and European contemporaries. In May, the project held two events in London at King’s and Shakespeare’s Globe.

The workshop at King’s considered children’s companies and female performers at court as well as professional, more typical, “actors”. The Research in Action event at Shakespeare’s Globe used scenes which include gendered expressions of rage for public performance and audience discussion.

Tags actors, audience, Ben Jonson, early modern drama, Engendering the Stage, femininity, Gender, John Fletcher, King's Men, Nathan Field, performance, performance techniques, Philip Massinger, Research, research in action, Richard Burbage, Shakespeare, Shakespeare's Globe

20th - 21st Centuries Modernism

Gabriella Hirst on the Ivan Juritz Prize

Post author By Katie Arthur
Post date 24 June 2019

Still from Gabriella Hirst's Force Majeure shortlisted for the 2018 Ivan Juritz Prize

Gabriella Hirst is an artist exploring the place of intimacy and the personal within the institutional. She is interested in the labour involved in the upkeep of illusions of permanence, with specific reference to gardening, art conservation and archive maintenance. Working across video, performance, ceramics, sound and poetry, she is inspired by cinematic tropes, slapstick routines and romantic clichés. She was shortlisted for the Ivan Juritz Prize in 2018.

Still from Gabriella Hirst’s Force Majeure shortlisted for the 2018 Ivan Juritz Prize

Tags artistic practice, Centre for Modern Literature and Culture, Cove Park, Gabriella Hirst, Ivan Juritz Prize, modern, Modernism, modernity, residency