Think Human Festival is proud to host this panel on Writing Working-Class Fiction.
Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal and Alex Wheatle are celebrated contemporary British novelists who have all written working-class experience into their fiction. At this event, the novelists are hosted by writer and critic Boyd Tonkin.

They will read from their work, and then discuss the problems they have encountered in being working-class writers, the creative responses they have formulated in their writing of working-class experience, and the wider issues of publishing and literary culture in relation to working-class writing and authorship. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes has a rich tradition of research into working-class life and culture, across literature, history and the social sciences.

In this talk at St Hilda’s Day, Oxford Literary Festival, Professor Daniel Wakelin and Hannah Bower introduce us to some of the most revolting remedies of medieval England. We will learn just how literally they were supposed to be taken, as well what we can discover from reading about them.

Dr Ann Thwaite’s 1990 biography, ‘A.A. Milne: His Life’ was awarded the Whitbread Prize for best biography. Subsequently, Ann acted as consultant for the major feature film, ‘Goodbye, Christopher Robin.’ For St Hilda’s Day at the Oxford Literary Festival, Ann will be interviewed by Nicolette Jones (The Sunday Times) about her biography and how it inspired the 2017 feature film.

For St Hilda’s Writers’ Day at the Oxford Literary Festival, Wendy Cope will be presenting her new poetry collection. The eagerly awaited Anecdotal Evidence is Wendy’s fifth collection of poems, the first since Family Values in 2011.

For St Hilda’s College Writers’ Day at the Oxford Literary Festival, actress and writer, Charlie Covell, discusses her runaway hit adaptation for Channel 4 of Charles S Forman’s comic series. She will be interviewed by Claire Armitstead (The Guardian and The Observer).

A public lecture by Peter Wilson (University of Sydney). Free, all welcome, no booking required.

Professor Li Ruru: The Cultural Revolution and Me
Tuesday, May 1, 5-7PM Lecture Theatre, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Open and free of charge for all

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society

2016 witnessed the 50th anniversary of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution. BBC Chinese invited Professor Li Ruru to write about her own life during that time. Having considered the invitation for a long time, Li finally wrote, from a point of view why she decided to teach a module at Leeds: ‘The Post-Cultural Revolution Literature.’ Based on the BBC article, the talk tells stories about her own experience and people’s lives around her. It also attempts to tease out what the Cultural Revolution meant to the young people at that time and what impact it has had on her generation, a large group of teenagers.

The English translation of the article is available at:
Why I teach ‘Post-Cultural Revolution Chinese Literature’ at a British university by Li Ruru, Translated by Thomas Markham

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on Chinese history, Chinese literature, politics, and education. Professor Li’s talk will last around 40 minutes and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.

About the speaker
Li Ruru is Professor of Chinese Theatre Studies in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of Leeds, UK. She has written extensively on Shakespeare performance in China (including a monograph Shashibiya: Staging Shakespeare in China (2003)) and on Chinese theatre (modern/traditional). Her recent work includes Staging China: New Theatres in the Twenty-First Century (ed. 2016), The Soul of Beijing Opera: Theatrical Creativity and Continuity in the Changing World (2010), Translucent Jade: Li Yuru on Stage and in Life ([in Chinese] 2nd edition 2015), and a photographic exhibition Cao Yu (1910-1996): Pioneer of Modern Chinese Drama (2011-16). Li runs traditional song-dance theatre workshops for both students and theatre professionals because she regards regular contact with the theatre as essential to her academic work.

https://www.facebook.com/events/367687450399248/?ti=icl

The 2017-18 Humanitas Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature will be held by Elif Shafak, an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. She is also a women’s rights activist and an inspirational public intellectual and speaker.

Wednesday 2 May: Strong Words in a Liquid World

Defending the Art of Fiction in the Age of Post-Truth

What is the role of literature in our increasingly fractured and fast-changing world? Is it possible to write a-politically or do writers have a responsibility to speak out – and, if so, how? Can fiction address political issues in a way that ordinary public discourse cannot? Elif Shafak will explore these questions in three lectures and an open discussion.

After each lecture there will be the opportunity to ask questions, and all are welcome to join in the closing discussion.

Book Launch with Author & Translator: Yan Ge (顏歌)’s The Chilli Bean Paste Clan, translated by Nicky Harman

https://www.facebook.com/events/605485149803274/

2018/May/07 Monday 5-7PM Ho Tim Seminar Room, China Centre, St Hugh’s College, Oxford

Open and free of charge for all

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society

To welcome everyone back to Oxford in this Trinity Term, we have invited one of the most important writers of China’s post-1980 generation, Yan Ge, to share with us her experiences as a young writer in China and abroad. She will bring her seminal work, The Chilli Bean Paste Clan (《我們家》in Chinese, published in 2013), and discuss issues of family, language, morality, capitalism and more, with the novel’s English translator Nicky Harman. The Chilli Bean Paste Clan the English translation will be published by Balestier Press and available on the market from the 1st of May, 2018, adding a fresh voice in the growing field of literature in translation.

Synopsis of The Chilli Bean Paste Clan:

Set in a fictional town in West China, this is the story of the Duan-Xue family, owners of the lucrative chilli bean paste factory, and their formidable matriarch. As Gran’s eightieth birthday approaches, her middle-aged children get together to make preparations. Family secrets are revealed and long-time sibling rivalries flare up with renewed vigour. As Shengqiang struggles unsuccessfully to juggle the demands of his mistress and his wife, the biggest surprises of all come from Gran herself……

Professor David Der-wei Wang 王德威 of Harvard University has commented on Yan Ge and her work and hinted that she might signal a generational shift in the Chinese literary scene:
“She writes about her hometown. The stories in a small Sichuanese town are greatly done. She has her own worldviews, and frankly speaking, she is of a very fortunate generation. What she may have encountered as she grew up is not as tumultuous or adventurous as the writers that came before her, and therefore the factor of imagination has gradually come to matter more than experiences in reality.
她写她的故乡，四川一个小城的故事，写得很好。她有她的世界观，但坦白地讲，他们都是有幸的一代，在她成长的过程里面，她所遭遇的不如过去那辈作家有那么多的坎坷或者冒险性，所以，想象的成分已经逐渐地凌驾了现实经验的体会。”

This event will be of interest to those of you who work on contemporary China, Chinese literature, translation studies, and publishing. The conversation between Yan Ge and Nicky Harman will last around 30 minutes and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.

Books available for purchase at a discounted rate.

Speaker biography:

Yan Ge was born in Sichuan Province, China in 1984. She is a writer as well as a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature. Publishing since 1994, she is the author of eleven books in Chinese. Her works have been translated into English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, and Hungarian. She was a visiting scholar at Duke University from 2011 to 2012 and a residency writer at the Cross Border Festival in Netherlands in November 2012. Named by People’s Literature magazine as one of twenty future literature masters in China, she is now the chairperson of China Young Writers’ Association and a contract writer of Sichuan Writers’ Association. She recently started writing in English. Her English stories could be seen on Irish Times and Stand Magazine. She lives in Dublin with her husband and son.

Nicky Harman is a British translator of Chinese literature, and one of the most influential figures in the field. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors) and co-founded Paper Republic 纸托邦, one of the most important online forums for Chinese literatures in translation. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time from Chinese. The authors she has translated include Jia Pingwa贾平凹，Yan Geling 严歌苓，Chan Koon-chung 陈冠中，Annibaobei 安妮宝贝，Chen Xiwo陈希我，Yan Ge颜歌，and Han Dong韩东, to name just a few. She has won several awards with her translations.

Professor Harriet Ritvo, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Gone but not Forgotten: Coming to Grips with Extinction
5.30—7.00, Seminar Room 3, St Anne’s College

Extinction is a timely and controversial topic now, as it has been for centuries. That is not, of course, to say that the focus of contention has remained constant. At first the main question, couched at least as much in theological as in scientific terms (that is, in terms resonant with later debates about evolution), was whether it could happen. Localized anthropogenic extinctions, most famously that of the dodo, were noticed by European travelers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (the intentional extermination of undesirable animals like wolves at home did not figure in such debates). The dwindling and disappearance of more populous and widespread species, including the passenger pigeon, the quagga, and (nearly) the American bison, in the nineteenth century sparked a different kind of concern among the overlapping communities of hunters, naturalists, and conservationists, which helped to inspire the earliest national parks and wildlife reserves.

As part of our Every Woman series, Blackwell’s presents an evening with Lyndall Gordon, who will be exploring her book ‘Outsiders’, an exciting and provocative look at the women who wrote the novels that changed the literary world.

Outsiders tells the stories of five novelists – Mary Shelley, Emily Brontë, George Eliot, Olive Schreiner, Virginia Woolf – and their famous novels. We have long known their individual greatness but in linking their creativity to their lives as outsiders, this group biography throws new light on the genius they share. ‘Outsider’, ‘outlaw’, ‘outcast’: a woman’s reputation was her security and each of these five lost it. As writers, they made these identities their own, taking advantage of their separation from the dominant order to write their novels.

Lyndall Gordon is the prize-winning author of seven biographies, including ‘The Imperfect Life of T. S. Eliot’; ‘Virginia Woolf: A Writer’s Life’; ‘Vindication: A Life of Mary Wollstonecraft’; and ‘Lives Like Loaded Guns: Emily Dickinson and Her Family’s Feuds’ and her memoir ‘Divided Lives: Dreams of a Mother and Daughter’. She is a Fellow of St Hilda’s College, Oxford and the Royal Society of Literature.

The Blackwell’s Every Woman Series

From February 2018, Blackwell’s Broad Street will launch a year-long series of events in conjunction with the Centenary of Women’s Suffrage in the UK.

The 1918 Representation of the People Act gave women of property over the age of 30 the right to vote – not all women, therefore, could vote. It was a step, but it was not the whole journey. And many would argue that we are still a long way from stepping the journey’s full distance towards gender equality in this country and worldwide. Blackwell’s Centenary events programme will focus around the following questions:

1) How much does the vote mean today?

2) How far are we still from achieving gender equality?

3) How can we recognise intersectional privilege and oppression, and platform those demographics of people who weren’t acknowledged by this achievement 100 years ago, and are still under-represented and undervalued today?

For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk

How do we define a sound or a taste for which our language does not have a dedicated word?

Typically, we borrow words from another sensory modality. Wines, for example, are often described by words that belong to other sensory perceptions: a “soft flavour” borrows the adjective soft from the domain of touch, and a “round taste” borrows the adjective round from the domain of sight.

It remains an interesting open issue to what extent these cross-sensory metaphors are universal across languages, and to what extent they are language-specific.

Dr Francesca Strik Lievers will address these questions and provide an overview of the latest scientific discoveries in the field, using examples taken from different languages. Her talk will be followed by an opportunity for questions.

The event is organised and hosted by Creative Multilingualism in collaboration with TORCH. Creative Multilingualism is a research programme led by the University of Oxford and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council as part of the Open World Research Initiative.

Participation is free and open to the public. We provide FREE LUNCH to all participants.

12.30-13.00 – lunch and mingling

13.00-14.00 – talk and discussion

This paper aims to provide a close reading of passages from Maurice Blanchot’s early fictional writing in the light of phenomenology. This will involve following various threads. For instance, is greater emphasis placed upon the protagonist Thomas thinking the world abstractly, or perceiving it visually? Does this situate him as a consciousness able to negate the world from afar, or as one always already situated within it? Second, what is the role of the imperfect or impossible perception that is repeatedly invoked? Should this be aligned with the critique of vision shared by much French twentieth-century thought? And third, how far do the novels repeat the phenomenological claim to scientificity? Does Thomas represent anything more than an individual subjectivity – if so, in what ways is the claim to the general made?

Speaker: Dr John McKeane (University of Reading)

The 2017-18 Humanitas Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature will be held by Elif Shafak, an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. She is also a women’s rights activist and an inspirational public intellectual and speaker.

Thursday 10 May: Voicelessness and Taboos

Defending the Art of Fiction in the Age of Post-Truth

What is the role of literature in our increasingly fractured and fast-changing world? Is it possible to write a-politically or do writers have a responsibility to speak out – and, if so, how? Can fiction address political issues in a way that ordinary public discourse cannot? Elif Shafak will explore these questions in three lectures and an open discussion.

After each lecture there will be the opportunity to ask questions, and all are welcome to join in the closing discussion.

American Cool Modernism Series: ‘State of the Nation’ with Bonnie Greer and Sarah Churchwell

What does America stand for in the twenty-first century? What is the true story behind the ‘American dream’? What does ‘America First’ really mean? What are the implications of the recent US political upheavals, not only for the USA but for the rest of the world as well? Bonnie Greer and Sarah Churchwell will discuss these and other crucial questions about the ‘world’s only remaining superpower’.

For all enquiries please email events.oxford@blackwell.co.uk or call our Customer Service Department on 01865 333623.

Film Screening with Director: Kit Hung’s Soundless Wind Chime (無聲風鈴)

The Shulman Auditorium, The Queen’s College, Oxford
*Multilingual dialogue with English subtitles
Open and free of charge for all, please register on Eventbrite

Supported by: Oxford Chinese Studies Society (OCSS)

OCSS is proud to present our big film screening event of the term: Kit Hung’s Soundless Wind Chime! The film has a unique place in queer Asian cinema as it interweaves multiple journeys of identity and love together. The central figure of the young handsome migrant from mainland China, his intricate relationship with a Swiss expat, as well as Hong Kong as a kaleidoscopic space where all these take place, form the elements that guarantee the critical reflections this film provokes in the audiences. This event will be of interest to those of you in queer culture, translation studies, migration, Hong Kong, and film studies in general. The film is 110 minutes long and will be followed by a conversation between Director Kit Hung and Dr. Victor Fan from King’s College London, and we will leave plenty of time for critical dialogues, Q & A and discussions.

Synopsis of Soundless Wind Chime:

Soundless Wind Chime is the poetic journey of Ricky, searching for the lost soul and the past of his deceased Swiss lover – Pascal. The film shows a battle of love, lust, reality, memory and illusions and the grief everybody bears every day. The two young men Pascal and Ricky are both foreigners living in Hong Kong. While Pascal, a Swiss, ekes out a living from street theatre and petty crime, Ricky, who comes from Beijing, is a dependable helper in a humble restaurant. One fateful day their paths cross and they fall head over heels in love with each other and boldly decide to move in together. But their love is soon put to the test – the fickle Pascal makes high demands on gentle Ricky. Years later, long after their relationship comes to a sudden end, Ricky sets off in search of his former lover, and not far from Lucerne he meets a young man who looks just like Pascal. Like the broken melody of a wind chime, the secret of this poetic love story is gradually revealed in brief flashbacks. Archaic images of an austere Switzerland with its rugged mountains and rustic restaurant culture reflect not only the loneliness and pain of the lovelorn protagonist Ricky, they also stand in stark contrast to the vitality and colourfulness of life in Hong Kong where, transcending all cultural barriers, the couple experienced moments of profound happiness. (from the Chinese Visual Festival)

Speaker biography:

Kit Hung (洪榮傑) graduated with an M.F.A. from the Department of Film, Video and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Lecturer of the Academy of film, Hong Kong Baptist University, his films have won numerous international awards and were screened at over 120 international film festivals. His debut feature Soundless Wind Chime was nominated for the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival, released in more than 16 countries in 6 languages. He is currently a research student in the department of Media and Communication in the Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK.
Dr. Victor Fan (范可樂) graduated with a Ph.D. from the Film Studies Program and the Comparative Literature Department of Yale University, and an MFA in Film and Television Productions at the University of Southern California. He was Assistant Professor at McGill University, Department of East Asian Studies between 2010 and 2012, where he was also Chair of the Equity Subcommittee on Queer People. Fan has publications in peer-reviewed journals and anthology including The World Picture Journal, Camera Obscura, A Companion to Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Screen, Film History and CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture. Further, his monograph Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory was published by University Of Minnesota Press in 2015. In addition, his thesis film from USC, The Well (2000), was screened in the Anthology Film Archives, São Paolo International Film Festival, the Japan Society (NYC) and the George Eastman House. It also won the third prize in the Long Narrative category in the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival.

As part of Think Human Festival, this one-off pop-up event is a unique opportunity for visitors of all ages to interact with leading academics from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes University. The academics will act as ‘human books’ from a range of perspectives; historic, literary, political, legal and educational for 15 minutes per ‘book loan’ against the back drop of revolution. ‘RESIST! REMAIN!’ will provide the chance to engage with and access humanities and social science disciplines in a fun, original and inspiring way, and aims to create a lasting impression of how these subjects can help to understand what it is to be human.

Please note that this event is free, open to all ages and there is no need to book ahead. Please come to Bonn Square and start a interesting conversation around revolution!

The 2017-18 Humanitas Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature will be held by Elif Shafak, an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. She is also a women’s rights activist and an inspirational public intellectual and speaker.

Thursday 17 May: Collective Amnesia and Collective Remembrance

Defending the Art of Fiction in the Age of Post-Truth

What is the role of literature in our increasingly fractured and fast-changing world? Is it possible to write a-politically or do writers have a responsibility to speak out – and, if so, how? Can fiction address political issues in a way that ordinary public discourse cannot? Elif Shafak will explore these questions in three lectures and an open discussion.

After each lecture there will be the opportunity to ask questions, and all are welcome to join in the closing discussion.

Edmund Weiner: They Grew out of Their Name

“Numerous words and names in Tolkien’s works seem to have a complex inner history in his own mind. In this talk, Edmund Weiner will take another look at the way Tolkien’s creative philological imagination worked. This talk aims to be an unhasty ramble around Ent country, looking at names and topics of language construction and language theory, with perhaps a quick glance at Humpty Dumpty…”

Edmund Weiner was co-editor of the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and has become the dictionary’s Chief Philologist. It was his initial analysis of the structure of the dictionary text which enabled the Oxford English Dictionary to be first handled and searched by computer in 1987. He co-authored a book on Tolkien: The Ring of Words: Tolkien and the Oxford English Dictionary analysing the relationship between J.R.R. Tolkien and the OED. He also contributed a chapter on Tolkien’s invented languages to From Elvish to Klingon.

Free entry, refreshments will be served after the talk

Kei Miller is a poet, novelist, essayist, short story writer, broadcaster and blogger. His many books include the novel Augustown (2016) and poetry collection The Cartographer Tries to Map a Way to Zion, which won the Forward Prize (Best Poetry Collection of 2014). In 2010, the Institute of Jamaica awarded him the Silver Musgrave medal for his contributions to Literature. He is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Exeter.

Kei’s work challenges the way we think about and perceive the world and its history through vibrant, compelling language and imagery. Come and hear one of the country’s most sought-after readers in an event organized by Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre for Think Human Festival.

Kerry Hudson, Kit de Waal and Alex Wheatle are celebrated contemporary British novelists who have all written working-class experience into their fiction. At this event, the novelists are hosted by writer and critic Boyd Tonkin.

They will read from their work, and then discuss the problems they have encountered in being working-class writers, the creative responses they have formulated in their writing of working-class experience, and the wider issues of publishing and literary culture in relation to working-class writing and authorship. The Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Oxford Brookes has a rich tradition of research into working-class life and culture, across literature, history and the social sciences.

Sinéad Morrissey is the author of six poetry collections, including Parallax (2013), winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize. In 2017 she was awarded the Forward Prize for her most recent collection, On Balance, and is currently Director of the Newcastle Centre for the Literary Arts at Newcastle University.

Sinéad often writes of her native Northern Ireland, but her poetic gaze ranges much more widely and frequently interrogates the act of looking itself. Her poems are resonant with meaning and beautifully crafted, provoking the reader or listener into further thought. Join Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre at Think Human Festival to hear one of the most critically-acclaimed poets in the UK read from a selection of her most recent as well as older work.

The 2017-18 Humanitas Weidenfeld Visiting Professorship in Comparative European Literature will be held by Elif Shafak, an award-winning novelist and the most widely read woman writer in Turkey. She is also a women’s rights activist and an inspirational public intellectual and speaker.

Thursday 24 May: Open Discussion

Defending the Art of Fiction in the Age of Post-Truth

What is the role of literature in our increasingly fractured and fast-changing world? Is it possible to write a-politically or do writers have a responsibility to speak out – and, if so, how? Can fiction address political issues in a way that ordinary public discourse cannot? Elif Shafak will explore these questions in three lectures and an open discussion.

After each lecture there will be the opportunity to ask questions, and all are welcome to join in the closing discussion.

In this exciting event organized by Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre for Think Human Festival, the celebrated poet, editor and translator Clare Pollard will join us to read from her work and talk about the ‘thrill of entering a new way of thinking’ when we read and translate poetry from another language. How does translation break down boundaries between cultures? Can the translation of poetry help to make us more empathetic or even more human?

Clare has published five collections of poetry with Bloodaxe, the latest of which is Incarnation (2017). Her translation projects include a version of Ovid’s Heroines (2013), which she toured as a one-woman show, and a co-translation of Asha Lul Mohamud Yusuf’s The Sea-Migrations (2017) which was The Sunday Times Poetry Book of the Year. She is the new editor of Modern Poetry in Translation.

Professor Andy Orchard is the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, Fellow of Pembroke College and Emeritus Fellow of Trinity College, University of Toronto. Author of “The Critical Companion to Beowulf , Pride and Prodigies: Studies in the Monsters of the Beowulf – Manuscript” and “The Poetic Edda: a Book of Viking Lore”

Discover how propaganda images and literature during the First World War marked a change in women and their roles in society.

Our panel of acclaimed writers will explore the power of food literature to enhance our lives. Whether cookery writing that reveals the nature of cultural heritage, works of food history that highlight changing social conditions, or campaigning journalism that tackles corruption in the food industry, different forms of food literature play vital roles.

Claudia Roden is one of the world’s most respected food writers. Her work, known for being meticulously researched, is focused on the historical and cultural dimensions of national and regional cuisines. A Book of Middle Eastern Food, first published in 1968, was followed by around 20 more books including Mediterranean Cookery, The Food of Italy and The Book of Jewish Food. She has won many awards including six Glenfiddich Awards, two Andre Simon Awards and a James Beard Award in the US.

Bee Wilson is a food writer, historian and journalist. She began her professional writing career as food critic for the New Statesman, and went on to write for The Guardian, The Sunday Times, The Times Literary Supplement and The New Yorker, amongst other publications. She has written five books and her latest, First Bite: How We Learn to Eat, won a special commendation at the 2017 Andre Simon Awards.

Jeremy Lee is Chef Proprietor of Quo Vadis, in London’s Soho. Before taking up his position at this venerable restaurant he spent many years at the Blueprint Café, owned by Sir Terrence Conran. His articles have appeared in numerous publications, most recently The Guardian.

Donald Sloan is the Chair of the Oxford Cultural Collective, an educational and cultural institute that promotes better understanding of food and drink.

Two of the best-known writers from the Spanish-speaking world will be discussing the state of the modern novel. In a discussion chaired by Matthew Reynolds and Adriana X. Jacobs, Javier Cercas and Juan Gabriel Vásquez will be talking about their work, auto-fiction and the development of the novel over the course of the last century.

Ed Clarke discusses his poetic versions of the Psalms.