Readings for Shandy Hall trip (18th May)

We've chosen some short readings to accompany the final Spaces in Theory meeting at Shandy Hall this Friday:

• Paul Munden, "Obsession", "Grass", and "DIY" in Asterisk*, illus. by Marion Frith (Sheffield: Smith/Doorstop, 2011), pp.14-17; 42-43.
• Laurence Sterne, Journal to Eliza, ed. by Wilbur Cross (New York: Taylor, 1904).
• Laurajane Smith, Uses of Heritage (London, Routledge, 2006). Subsection from Chapter 2 ("Heritage as a Cultural Process") entitled "Place", pp.74-80.

For those joining us, here's a brief itinerary:

We'll depart from outside Londis at 1pm, to arrive around 2.30 pm. We'll look around the exhibition in the gallery space then view the installation in Eliza's room in Shandy Hall. After that, we'll have a discussion in the gardens if it's sunny, or perhaps the Old Kitchen, followed by a walk around into the village to see the church, village pub and/or tea rooms. We'll leave around 4.30 pm and return to campus at around 6pm. And a gentle reminder: transport is free but entry to Shandy Hall costs £4.50.

If anybody is not on the mailing list and would like copies of the texts just email us, as usual, at spacestheory@hotmail.co.uk.

See you on Friday!

Summary of May's Meeting

On Wednesday Anna Hope guided us through the strange world of 'Bizarro' fiction and Foucault's essay 'Of Other Spaces'. The texts provoked plenty of questions, including: how 'bizarre' really is Bizarro? What kinds of conservative assumptions and messages might actually lurk within the genre? How does the genre- and Carlton Mellick in particular - treat the female body? Do these authors encourage particular reading practices? Can any kind of dialogue be opened up between these authors and theorists or academics?

Foucault's text allowed us to think about the female body in Mellick's The Haunted Vagina as a type of 'heterotopia', which in turn made us ask whether the text positions the female body as a 'deviant' space. It also led us to discuss Foucault's notions of 'real' and 'unreal' spaces, and to ask to what extent the virtual worlds evident in texts such as Mellick's challenge or complement Foucault's thesis.

Thanks to all who attended our penultimate session. On the 18th we will bring 'Spaces in Theory' to a close with our trip to Shandy Hall.

Readings for Tuesday 28th February

As mentioned below our next meeting will take place on this coming Tuesday, led by Laurie Mckee. We'll be talking about Robin Hood and theories of hospitality (especially Derridean), and our texts are:

• Anon., "A Gest of Robin Hood" (c.1450) [circulated to mailing list]
• Mark W. Westmoreland, "Interruptions: Derrida and Hospitality", Kritike 2, 1 (2008): 1-10.  [available at: www.kritike.org/journal/issue_3/westmoreland_june2008.pdf]

As usual, all are warmly and hospitably welcomed to join and discounted wine will flow. If you're not on the mailing list and would like to join in, just email us at spacestheory@hotmail.co.uk.

A Journey Around my Life

We are very excited to announce that Penny Grennan's short film, A Journey Around my Life, will be shown as part of the reading group on Friday. The film neatly brings us from the theme of the last academic year, 'Objects', to that of this year, 'Spaces', via Xavier de Maistre. Unfortunately Penny can't attend this month's meeting, but we look forward to viewing and discussing her work. Image courtesey of Penny Grennan.

New Reading Group for the New Academic Year

Following the success of last year's reading group 'Objects in Theory' we welcome readers to 'Spaces in Theory'. The new theme for 2011/12 reflects Northumbria's interest in issues of space, illustrated by the taught MA course Literature and Place and the AHRC-funded research project Locating the Hidden Diaspora.

In these sessions we engage with familiar and lesser known theorists alongside a range of literary and nonliterary primary sources. Last year, for example, we read Don DeLillo through Heidegger and Walter Benjamin through Jean Baudrillard, and this year we'd like to cover a similar breadth of periods and disciplines. We hope, above all, to bring people together from across the arts and social sciences in a friendly and informal setting.

Helen Williams will lead October's session, introducing Xavier de Maistre's Journey Round my Room and accompanying theory text, Jenny Mezciems's '"'Tis Not to Divert the Reader": Moral and Literary Determinants in Some Early Travel Narratives'. The November meeting, led by Laurie McKee, will consider some Robin Hood texts with reference to Derrida's Of Hospitality. Extracts will be circulated in advance. The sessions are not confined to the advertised texts; we merely use them as starting points for discussion.

Please get in touch if you have any ideas for December's session. You would simply give a very brief introduction to your chosen theory text (perhaps from the list below) and primary text, image or clip.

Possible themes include but are not limited to: adventure, the vagrant and the picaro; migration, exile and exile narratives; utopia; domesticity and country house poetry; travel and travel writing; borders and liminality; transnationalism and postcolonialism; the exotic; cartography; nationhood and regionalism; the theatre and the stage; nature and the pastoral; exhibiting and exhibition space; botany and landscaping; mobility and stasis; homelessness.

Readers are welcome to attend just one or all sessions. Refreshments (alcoholic and nonalcoholic) will be provided, followed by the customary trip to the Carriage. Do check this page for updates.

Possible Theory Texts

Extracts of theory should be 2000 words or less.

Bakhtin, Mikhail, ‘Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the novel’, in The Dialogic Imagination (Austin: U of Texas P, 1981) pp. 84-258. Available here: http://books.google.com/books?id=JKZztxqdIpgC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=chronotope&f=false.

Barney, Darin David, The Network Society (Cambridge: Polity, 2004), esp. ‘Network Society’, pp.1-33. Available in Northumbria library: 303.4833/BAR.

Bourdieu, Pierre, Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), esp. chap. 3 ‘Structures, Habitus, Practices’, pp. 52-26. Available in Northumbria library: 301/BOU.

Buell, Lawrence, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge: Harvard U P, 1995), esp. ‘Pastoral Ideology’, pp. 31-52.

Davidson, Ian, Radical Spaces of Poetry (Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), available in Northumbria library: 821.914/DAV.

Felski, Rita, and Susan Stanford Friedman, Comparison, special ed. of New Literary History, 40 (2009), available at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/new_literary_history/toc/nlh.40.3.html.

Foucault , Michel, ‘Of Other Spaces’, esp. section entitled ‘Heterotopias’.

Frank, Joseph, ‘Spatial Form in Modern Literature: An Essay in Two Parts’, The Sewanee Review, 53 (1945), pp. 221-240.

Lefebvre, Henri, The Production of Space, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), esp. ‘Social Space’, pp. 73-79. Available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=SIXcnIoa4MwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.

McDowell, Linda, Gender Identity and Place (Cambridge: Polity, 1999). Available in Northumbria library: 301.412/MACD.

National Trust Historic Houses and Collections Annual (National Trust, 2011) http://www.spectator.co.uk/supplements/National-Trust-Historic-Houses-Collections-2011/#/0/.

Thoreau, Henry David, Walden (1854). Available online: http://thoreau.eserver.org/walden00.html.