Deconstruction as Old Testament midrash, with New Testament implications.

Valentine Cunningham is a University Lecturer (CUF) in English, Professor of English Language and Literature and Vice-President of Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford. He has previously served as Dean of Corpus as well as Chair of the Oxford English Faculty, and was made a titular Professor of English Language and Literature in 1996. He works widely across literary-historical-cultural periods, areas and genres, as well as in literary theory. Originally and still a Victorianist, he has edited the Blackwells Anthology of Victorian Poetry and Poetics, Adam Bede (Oxford World Classics) and Reading Victorian Poetry Now (forthcoming, 2011). He maintains a strong interest in fiction, especially more recent fiction including Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch. A main research interest has been and remains the literature of the 1930s, not least the writing of the Spanish Civil War. In more recent times, he has published extensively on musico-literary topics, on Theology- and Bible-and-Literature, as well as in literary theory.

Upstairs, in the function room, at the Mitre. 7:30pm with drinks and nibbles served from 7pm.

Please share the event with anyone who might be interested.

Professor of Caribbean Literature and Culture at Goldsmiths University, Joan Anim-Addo brings us her voice on Black Women’s Writing and the place of the Black figure in the Humanities. This event will be hosted in connection with Oxford ACS.

In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, a persistent interest in technology emerged in both avant-garde and mainstream literature, and this multimedia presentation by Dr Eric White (Oxford Brookes University) and collaborators examines how radical reading and writing pushed the boundaries of technology into fascinating, and sometimes disturbing, new spaces (ages 12+).
Part of the Oxford Brookes University OutBurst festival at Pegasus, 6-10 May 2014. #OutBurst2014

We are delighted to welcome Anushka Asthana to Oxford on the 6th of May!

She is the Political Correspondent for Sky News, the Policy Editor at The Observer and was formerly the Chief Political Correspondent at The Times. In 2006 she won the Lawrence Stern fellowship for journalism.

This will be an incredibly interesting event for anyone interested in journalism, politics or media.

Writer of autobiography, poetry, fiction and journalism and Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths University Blake Morrison brings some of his latest work and interesting discussion to St. Anne’s.

Professor Roger Griffin (Oxford Brookes University), author of ‘Terrorist’s Creed’, will draw upon actual examples of terrorist attacks and a number of films in this talk to help explain why ‘ordinary’ individuals carry out violent attacks, and what possibilities might exist for deradicalization (for years 14+).
As part of the Oxford Brookes University Festival, Outburst, at Pegasus, 6-10 May 2014. #OutBurst2014

Professor Sally Shuttleworth, Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and Dr Sally Frampton, Postdoctoral Research Assistant at the University of Oxford, will both talk about the role of Citizen Science in their AHRC Constructing Scientific Communities: Citizen Science in the 19th and 21st Centuries project.

The project uses the framing of ‘Citizen Science’ to consider how ‘public’ participation in science was understood in the nineteenth century. The project brings together historical and literary research in the nineteenth century with contemporary scientific practice, looking at the ways in which patterns of popular communication and engagement in nineteenth-century science can offer models for current practice.

Join English PEN (the literary network which works to defend and promote free expression) for an evening of poetry and debate, with discussion about how publishing and human rights campaigns can join forces to help writers from across the world (ages 15+).
As part of the Oxford Brookes University Festival, Outburst, at Pegasus, 6-10 May 2014. #OutBurst2014

Novelist Ali Smith, author of Artful, Hotel World, and The Accidental, returns to St. Anne’s after holding the Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in European Comparative Literature in 2012.

William Kelly: Artist of Conscience
Thursday 8 May 2014, 6.30-7.30pm (drinks from 6.15pm)

Ashmolean Museum Education Centre
(Evening entrance via St Giles)

Internationally acclaimed US artist William Kelly talks about his life and work. Kelly’s varied career has seen him work as a taxi driver and a welder, before he went on to become a Fulbright Scholar and Dean at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne. Today Kelly is known as a painter and printmaker and an artist of conscience, committed to a humanist approach in his creative practice. Part of the Why Art Matters series.

Booking essential – £8/£7
http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#search=Conscience

The spiritual and second-order sense of scripture, according to which, for example, the crossing of the Red Sea denotes Baptism, and Jacob’s ladder denotes the cross, presents at least two epistemological challenges. First, the history of interpretation suggests that some kind of collective judgment has been made between acceptable and unacceptable interpretations, but the rules for making these judgments are unclear. Second, for a variety of reasons, spiritual interpretations of specific persons, objects or events in scripture cannot add to theological knowledge through argumentation. A further challenge, that the spiritual sense depends on belief in providential special divine action (SDA), ought not to exclude the study of this interpretation according to its own principles but may have contributed to a comparative neglect of this topic. Despite its historical popularity and influence, recent academic work on the spiritual sense has therefore been limited.

In this seminar, I examine the spiritual sense in the light of recent work in neuroscience. I argue that although particular spiritual interpretations are dependent on a body of pre-existing theological propositions, and cannot add to these propositions directly, this does not mean that these interpretations lack cognitive value. On the contrary, the spiritual sense is the fruit of a kind of insight most commonly associated with the right hemisphere of the brain, associating embodied experiences with otherwise abstract theological statements and integrating such statements within shared narratives. I further examine work on partial brain dysfunction to underline the risks involved from a neglect of the spiritual sense, and consider practical implications for religious life.

Dr Pinsent is Research Director of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, a member of the Theology and Religion Faculty at Oxford University and a research fellow of Harris Manchester College. He was formerly a physicist at CERN, has degrees in philosophy and theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University and a second doctorate, in philosophy, from St Louis University. He is the author of The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas’s Ethics: Virtues and Gifts, and a wide range of other publications on virtue ethics, neurotheology, science and religion, the philosophy of the person, divine action, and the nature of evil.

THIS SEMINAR WILL BE HELD AT THE SUTRO ROOM, TRINITY COLLEGE AT 8:30PM, PRECEDED BY DRINKS AT 8:15PM.

Between the artist and the museum

Friday 9 May 2014, 5-6.30pm (doors will open at 4.45pm)

Ashmolean Museum Headley Lecture Theatre

A symposium with Michael Govan (Humanitas Visiting Professor in Museums, Galleries & Libraries at Oxford University) and Vik Muniz (Artist). Chaired by Paul Hobson (Director, Modern Art Oxford).

Free admission but booking is essential.
http://www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/humanitas/museums-galleries-libraries

St. Anne’s hosts an evening with Welsh poet, author and scriptwriter Owen Sheers, in the beautiful setting of Oxford’s finest bookseller.

Step inside the parlour and drawing room of an eighteenth-century home, and together with Dr Nicole Pohl (Oxford Brookes University) and musicians, enjoy readings, music, and the authentic sewing session of a ‘huswif’!
Part of the Oxford Brookes University OutBurst festival at Pegasus, 6-10 May 2014. #OutBurst2014

India: A Short History
With Andrew Robinson, author

Saturday 10 May, 2-3pm, Headley Lecture Theatre

India is the world’s largest democracy and a fast-growing economy. It is also a civilization with roots more than four thousand years old, including the technically advanced cities of the Indus Valley, the Buddha, Hindu dynasties, the Mughal Empire, and the British Raj. This lecture looks at individuals, ideas, and cultures, as well as the rise and fall of kingdoms, political parties, and economies.

Tickets £5/£4
http://www.ashmolean.org/events/Lectures/?id=132

Led by David Aldridge, an academic philosopher, educationalist and experienced role-playing enthusiast, this evening is intended for curious or experienced gamers alike to sample Dungeons and Dragons, celebrating collaborative storytelling and raising serious questions about ethics, metaphysics, and our own potential as human beings (ages 16+).
Part of the Oxford Brookes University festival, Outburst, at Pegasus, 6-10 may 2014. #OutBurst2014

A collaboration between the Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre and the Archway Foundation (an Oxford-based mental health charity), this event will feature writing produced by the Archway Foundation’s services during workshops with Brookes’ creative writing students.

In this lecture series, Naomi Richman explores the evolution of the ideas central to major global belief-systems such as Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Marxism, and their status in the modern world from a social-scientific and secular perspective.

6 Lectures run on Mondays starting the 12th May.
6-7pm, Roy Griffiths Room. ARCO Building, Keble College.
Free, open to all, and followed by discussion.

Weeks 1 and 2: Christianity and Secularisation. Week 3: Buddhism. Week 4: Judaism. Week 5: Islam. Week 6: Marxism, Nationalism and Scientific Humanism

For more information, contact Dr Bea Prentiss,

A view from the Pacific: re-envisioning the art museum

Tuesday 13 May 2014, 5-6.30pm (doors will open at 4.45pm)

Ashmolean Museum Headley Lecture Theatre

A lecture by Michael Govan (Humanitas Visiting Professor in Museums, Galleries & Libraries at Oxford University). Chaired by Professor Christopher Brown (Director, Ashmolean Museum). The event will be followed by a drinks reception to which members of the audience are warmly invited.

Free admission but booking is essential.
http://www.humanities.ox.ac.uk/humanitas/museums-galleries-libraries

Tour: Joseph Beuys & Jörg Immendorff
With Colin Harrison, Senior Curator of European Art

3–3.45pm on Wednesday 14 May and Wednesday 11 June

Tours are free, no booking is required. Please meet in Gallery 2.

http://www.ashmolean.org/exhibitions/details/?exh=92

Martin Sixsmith will speak at St Peter’s College on Russia and the acclaimed film ‘Philomena’, based on his book ‘The Lost Child of Philomena Lee’ on Wednesday 14 May at 6pm. All are welcome – please register at www.bookwhen.com/stpeters

After joining the BBC in 1980, Martin Sixsmith worked as Foreign Correspondent to Washington, Moscow and Warsaw, notably documenting the collapse of the Soviet Union. From 1997 to 2002 he worked as Director of Communications for the newly elected Labour government, and he has published a range of works about Russia including ‘Russia: A 1,000 Year Chronicle of the Wild East’ and ‘The Litvinenko File’. His book ‘The Lost Child of Philomena Lee’ was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated film ‘Philomena’, starring Steve Coogan and Judi Dench.

All are welcome to listen to Michael Ondaatje, the Sri Lankan/Canadian novelist, winner of the Booker prize for his novel ‘The English Patient’, and Wolfson College President, and esteemed literary biographer, Professor Dame Hermione Lee, in discussion.

This is the second event in the Wolfson lecture series – this year entitled ‘New Challenges for South Asian Literature’. All are welcome, but free tickets must be reserved at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wolfson-lecture-series-tickets-11004640175

Short talk followed by questions and discussion. All welcome.

Magnificence, Love and Scaffolds: Politics at the Court of Henry VIII, With Dr Suzannah Lipscomb
Saturday 17 May, 11am–12pm, Ioannou Centre

Historian, author, and broadcaster Dr Suzannah Lipscomb will speak on the politics of spectacle, persuasion, magnificence, and the politics of love at the court of Henry VIII. The court revolved around the splendid person of the king himself. And although politics was the only game worth playing, it was a dangerous game, ‘for the most part’, Sir Thomas More observed, ‘played on scaffolds’.

Tickets £8/£7
http://www.oxfordplayhouse.com/ticketsoxford/#search=Magnificence

Internationally renowned historian Barbara Taylor will speak about her new book “The Last Asylum” with Ruth Harris (New College, Oxford) and Daniel Pick (Birkbeck College).

The book charts her years of psychoanalysis and her experiences as a patient in Friern Barnet, the mental hospital in North London.

Sandwiches will be available from 12:45 pm. Free and open to all.

This year’s Wolfson Public Lecture Series, themed around South Asian writing, articulates a clear interest in family memoir. This OCLW seminar, featuring the biographer Lyndall Gordon (biographer of Emily Dickinson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Henry James, T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf), will build on the theme of family memoir.

Australian novelist and short story writer Tim Winton will be discussing his new book “Eyrie” at Blackwell’s. Tim is the author of 25 novels for children and adults, has won the prestigious Miles Franklin award four times (for Shallows, Cloudstreet, Dirt Music and Breathe) and has twice been shortlisted for the Booker prize (for The Riders and Dirt Music) He lives in Western Australia. Eyrie has been described as a heart-stopping, groundbreaking novel for our times – funny, confronting, exhilarating and haunting. Inhabited by unforgettable characters, Eyrie asks how, in an impossibly compromised world, we can ever hope to do the right thing.

In “The Soul of the World”, renowned philosopher Roger Scruton defends the experience of the sacred against today’s fashionable forms of atheism. He argues that our personal relationships, moral intuitions, and aesthetic judgments hint at a transcendent dimension that cannot be understood through the lens of science alone. Join us for what is sure to be a fascinating, thought provoking evening with one of our most high profile philosophers.

Join us for lunch from 12:45, with discussion from 13:00 to 13:45.

Professor Averil Cameron will be in discussion with:

– Dr Jas Elsner (Humfrey Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art)
– Dr Peter Frankopan (Director of the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research)
– Dame Jinty Nelson (Emeritus Professor, King’s College London)

About the book:

For many of us, Byzantium remains “byzantine”–obscure, marginal, difficult. Despite the efforts of some recent historians, prejudices still deform popular and scholarly understanding of the Byzantine civilization, often reducing it to a poor relation of Rome and the rest of the classical world. In this book, renowned historian Averil Cameron presents an original and personal view of the challenges and questions facing historians of Byzantium today.

The book explores five major themes, all subjects of controversy. “Absence” asks why Byzantium is routinely passed over, ignored, or relegated to a sphere of its own. “Empire” reinserts Byzantium into modern debates about empire, and discusses the nature of its system and its remarkable longevity. “Hellenism” confronts the question of the “Greekness” of Byzantium, and of the place of Byzantium in modern Greek consciousness. “The Realms of Gold” asks what lessons can be drawn from Byzantine visual art, and “The Very Model of Orthodoxy” challenges existing views of Byzantine Christianity.

Throughout, the book addresses misconceptions about Byzantium, suggests why it is so important to integrate the civilization into wider histories, and lays out why Byzantium should be central to ongoing debates about the relationships between West and East, Christianity and Islam, Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and the ancient and medieval periods. The result is a forthright and compelling call to reconsider the place of Byzantium in Western history and imagination.

Averil Cameron is professor emeritus of late antique and Byzantine history at the University of Oxford and former warden of Keble College, Oxford. Her books include The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity, The Byzantines, and The Later Roman Empire.

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