Category Archives: Blog

Blog

Forthcoming talks, part 2

I’ll be speaking at Who’s afraid of…? Facets of Fear in Anglophone Literature and Media at Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, which runs on the 24-5 September. The talk is provisionally titled “A Formula of Fear: Hollywood’s Return to Romanticism”.

On the 4-6th November, I’ll be talking about “Skeuomorphology and the Evolution of Literary Quotation”, here at the Universität zu Köln, at the Morphomata Kolleg event provisionally called ‘Creativity of Finding: Figurations of the Quotation’ [no programme yet].

Blog

Forthcoming talks, part 1

A proleptic roundup of some conference talks & guest lectures:

On the 24th of April I’m speaking at Modernism and Utopia: Convergences in the Arts about “The Machinery Underground: Subterranean Space and Modernist Utopias”. This is a 2-day conference on the 23rd and 24th at the University of Birmingham, UK.

On the 11th of June I’m talking with Alex Burghart at l’Université Paris IV-Sorbonne on “Ruins of statues and the dystopian landscape”. This presentation is part of a book we’ve been writing on the apocalyptic imaginary in English and American history; the event is a symposium organized by Prof. Jacques Carré on «Utopie, ville et paysage dans le monde anglophone». It runs on the 11th and the 12th.

On the 17th & 18th of September at Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, I’ll give a paper at the conference Contemporary British Fiction: Narrating Violence, Trauma and Loss, on “Traumatic Irony: A Model of Unintentional Disclosure”.

Blog

O. Henry

On the 5th of June it’s the 100th anniversary of O. Henry’s death. I’ll be on Zeitzeichen on WDR, talking about his life and literary works.

Blog

Deleuze&Guattari Concordance: A Thousand Plateaus

A more permanent home for the DeleuzeGuattari Concordance: follow the menu at the top of this page.

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Deleuze&Guattari Concordance: A Thousand Plateaus

For the duration of the Deleuze conference at Cologne, I’ve placed a concordance to A Thousand Plateaus on this site.

This is part of a project to produce a complete concordance to Deleuze & Guattari, incorporating all of their works published in English. There are occasional errors in the ATP concordance here – it’s a work-in-progress – but it gives a good idea of what concordances can do, and what the final version could look like.

Blog

Round Table on Elitism

Elitism round table, Cologne

On the 9th of June there’ll be a round table discussion about the concept of elitism in education in Germany. With Prof. Dr. Tassilo Küpper, the Rektor of Cologne Uni from 2001 to 2005, Prof. Dr. Sylvia Heuchemer, the Vice-Rektor of Cologne Fachhochschule, Dr. Kerstin Dell of the Cusanuswerk (a foundation which provides doctoral funding and support for Catholics in Germany), and Julia Mölders, student at the private Fresenius University of Applied Sciences, I’ll be debating the advantages and disadvantages of meritocratic educational systems. More details here.

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J. G. Ballard, 1930 – 2009

Obituaries and tributes at Ballardian.

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Le monde ballardien

Another translation-article from Magazine Littéraire on Ballardian. This one was first published in 1985, after the publication of the French edition of Empire of the Sun. Lots of interesting details here, especially in Ballard’s comments on the role mediatized perception plays in the novel, often regarded as his most im-mediate, Realist work: ‘Le passé composé de J. G. Ballard’: JGB on Empire of the Sun.

Blog

New series of French Ballard interviews

A new series of articles starts today on Ballardian; I’ve been back-translating the various French interviews to have appeared over the past 40 or so years. The first up is a brief but intriguing interview from Magazine Littéraire in 1975, when Ballard was writing High Rise: ‘Content in their little prisons’: J.G. Ballard on ‘The Towers’.

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Violence without end

One further back-translation of an interview with J. G. Ballard at Ballardian, this one from the German broadsheet Die Zeit in 2005: ‘Violence without end.’. Here, Ballard reiterates his concern that meaningless violence may become a consquence of modern middle-class ennui, and discusses the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

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