{"id":3188,"date":"2022-08-27T12:10:57","date_gmt":"2022-08-27T11:10:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/?p=3188"},"modified":"2022-09-19T01:41:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-19T00:41:07","slug":"reflection-kcl-pgr-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2022\/08\/27\/reflection-kcl-pgr-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"A Reflection on the KCL PGR 2022 Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0<\/strong>Samantha Seto (editor)<\/b><\/p>\n

In June 2022, the English Department\u2019s PGR community circulated the brilliant news about an annual conference. The event was a hybrid presentation as it took place in-person and online. It welcomed research presentations from postgraduate students at UK and international universities. This year\u2019s papers addressed the theme of \u201cTerms and Conditions: Methods and Disciplines of Knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The call for papers:<\/p>\n

The KCL English PG conference seeks to interrogate the state of the academy for both students and early-career researchers, investigating how disciplinary boundaries both help and hinder our academic work, and how contractual precarity, the demands of a research audit environment, and government policy that is hostile the arts and humanities, impact our careers. In a world where scholars are increasingly bound to terms and conditions that structure how we work, how can we continue to think independently and critically? Specifically, what can postgraduate students and early researchers do to change this system that we are inheriting?<\/em><\/p>\n

The programme of presentations honoured the postgraduate research projects that are centred on a diversity of research areas that had a wide range from the ancient historical period to modernity. The conference was spread over the days of Friday 24th June in the Safra Lecture Theatre at Strand and Saturday 25th June via the online platform. It was a beautiful summer day for this conference, and a nice gathering to enjoy an excellent programme that offered the wonderful opportunity to learn about fellow postgraduate students\u2019 research projects.<\/p>\n

On the first day, the conference began with a wonderful discussion of Felix Antelme<\/a>\u2019s research on handedness and its role in turn-of-the-century understandings of identity. Alex Giesen<\/a> presented on his study of aesthetics, classification, and the taxonomy of scientific terms in the modern work of the performance artist, Leigh Bowery. Then, Sammy Moriarty<\/a> delivered a fascinating paper centred on his analysis of Herman Melville\u2019s \u201cThe Apple Tree Table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In the third panel, \u201cPerforming Disciplines,\u201d Emma Bentley presented her research in classical myth and historical legends with a particular focus on the Greek hero, King Agamemnon. Emma joined us from the University of Oxford where she will graduate with a MPhil in Classics. Attendees listened to Beth Potter<\/a>\u2019s performance piece, \u201cThe Elephant in the Ring: Empire and the Conditions of Circus Studies.\u201d Beth presented brilliant research that explores the period between the \u201ctraditional\u201d and \u201ccontemporary\u201d circus. In this way, circus studies tends to overlook twentieth-century circus\u2019 homage to the infrastructure and culture of empire. Beth explains that circus studies in the present day does not account for circus\u2019 connexions with empire, and these interconnected links are the \u201cunacknowledged elephant in the ring.\u201d Then, Olufemi Abati presented his great work on \u201cBlind Music Production and Accessibility: The Role of Academic Communities in Ensuring Equitable Playing Field in the Music Industry.\u201d He discussed digital technology that prompted a revolution of modern music and addressed the role of the music industry in academia.<\/p>\n

The research presentations for the \u201cNovel Forms, Novel Selfhoods\u201d panel were given by George Kowalik<\/a> and I<\/a>. George introduced \u201cA Crisis of Novel Aesthetics,\u201d which addresses the dialectic of singularity and pluralism in Zadie Smith\u2019s novel, White Teeth<\/em>. George proposes that the novel\u2019s framework of narrative maps and characters emphasise twenty-first century post-postmodernism. Deleuze\u2019s and Guattari\u2019s concept of the \u201crhizome\u201d applies to the novel and illustrates the aesthetic terms of modern and postmodern structure, and the experimentalism places the rhizomatic structure and shape into effect. My own paper centred on Edith Wharton\u2019s novels, The Custom of the Country<\/em> and The Reef<\/em>, and analysed the transnational identity in the character portraits of the heroines through a transatlantic shift that bridges the nations of France and America at the fin-de-si\u00e8cle.<\/p>\n

The last panel of the day held a compelling paper from Karen Downs-Barton<\/a> on place and nomadism in contemporary Romani poetics. Karen\u2019s presentation reflected on the historical disciplines of knowledge through the emergence of a contemporary Gypsy, Romani, and Traveller (GRT) poetic expression. This diasporic heritage and multilingualism are politicised to form counter-narratives to outsider, or non-GRT, literary tropes. She concluded with an autoethnographic examination of the three expressions of Anglo-Romani poetic identity through place, language, and communication. Daniele Zurbr\u00fcgg presented a great paper on spaces of capital and neoliberal urbanism. Daniele\u2019s research provided insight to the developing neighbourhood of Nine Elms in London that represents a materialisation of the finance-dominated economy. It presents the tension in how the financialised attempts at placemaking materialise. Daniele states that economic value emerges in its form of a neighbourhood in the abstract, and symbolically has markers of liveable space whilst making these assets less tradable.<\/p>\n

On the second day, the conference shifted from in-person to virtual mode. There were research presentations in two panels and a keynote lecture from Professor Grace Lavery<\/a> (UC Berkley) who read an inspiring passage from her memoir, Please Miss<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the sixth panel, Avneet Sharma, a postgraduate student at McGill University, read his paper, \u201cSex and Citizenship in Nineteen Eighty-Four<\/em> (1984).\u201d In George Orwell\u2019s novel, the political concept of sex upholds the Party\u2019s values but makes the characters, Winston and Julia, risk the rejection of citizenship to Oceania. The paper examines the role of celibacy and misogyny in the dystopia and within the Party\u2019s ideology under Big Brother\u2019s reign. Afterwards, Amanda Caterina Leong<\/a>, a PhD candidate at the University of California Merced, spoke about patriarchal kingship and sovereignty in Gulbadan Begum\u2019s Humayun-Nama<\/em>, a Persian autobiography. Begum, a Mughal princess in the sixteenth century, offers a new understanding of how elite Mughal women used advice literature to broker imperial power with male co-sovereigns. To build upon Michel Foucault\u2019s theory of counter-memory, her paper argued that Begum creates a \u201cnew mirror for princesses\u201d autobiography that redefines the genre by using memory to instruct readers on how women embodied the term “javanmardi,” a Persianate masculine chivalry central to the Mughal definition of virtuous kingship, which led to the integrated matriarchy\u2019s contribution to the formation of the Mughal Empire.<\/p>\n

Lastly, the keynote speaker, Grace Lavery<\/a>, offered a reading from her memoir. It was a nice, captivating passage from her book, and there was a Q&A discussion that followed.<\/p>\n

In all, the conference was a brilliant success, and overflowing with the exciting research happening at King\u2019s, within the academic community across the UK, and other universities worldwide. The conference offered a kind, supportive environment that facilitated beneficial conversations amongst researchers and hosted an invaluable platform to present work. The diverse, engaging set of presentations through this educational platform shared promising research ideas.<\/p>\n

As a student representative on the King\u2019s English Postgraduate Research Committee, I designed the conference programme that listed the abstracts of research presentations and introduced the keynote speaker this year. I had the honour of being the chair of the \u201cIntimate Knowledges\u201d panel, which entailed introducing the presenters and moderating the discussion and questions. Beth Potter<\/a>, Sammy Moriarty<\/a>, Felix Antelme<\/a>, Alex Giesen<\/a>, and all the PGR representatives in the committee did their best to make the conference a success.<\/p>\n

With the upcoming 2022-23 academic year, I wish all faculty and students a great, meaningful term of research, workshops, and dissertation writing ahead. I hope the annual conference will be hosted by King\u2019s Department of English in many years to come.<\/p>\n

Congratulations to all the students and researchers who presented their research at the conference! Thanks to the King\u2019s English Postgraduate Research Committee for their beautiful work with organising the conference this year.<\/p>\n

\n

Samantha Seto is a PhD candidate in English Literature. Her research interest is centred on the heroines’ character portraits, transnational identity, and French aristocracy in twentieth century American and French novels. This past summer, Samantha was honoured to be an academic tutor for a course in a summer programme at the University of Cambridge.<\/p>\n

\n

Blog posts on King\u2019s English represent the views of the individual authors and neither those of the English Department, nor of King\u2019s College London.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

\n

You may also like to read:<\/strong><\/p>\n