During lockdown this summer, a few linguists (including Billy Clark from Northumbria) launched a twitter feed which we use to watch movies together and to comment on them during or after screening.
Continue reading “Linguists at the Movies”English Graduate Success Stories
Several of us are excited to be up early to talk to potential students in Clearing this morning.
While waiting for the calls to begin, we’re enjoying reading English graduate stories which are being shared with our colleague @ProfKatyShaw on twitter:
If you’re interested in talking to us about a possible place our Clearing Hotline number is 0800 085 1085
Fiona Shaw: ‘Outwalkers’, ‘Tell It To The Bees’ and Yaddo
We are delighted that our colleague Fiona Shaw has been nominated for 2019 CILIP Carnegie Medal for her novel Outwalkers You can find the full list of nominations here
To add to this, Fiona has also been awarded a month’s residency at the prestigious Yaddo artists’ retreat, whose prior residents have included James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Katherine Anne Porter and Jeffrey Eugenides: https://www.yaddo.org/about/history/
Meanwhile, the film version of Fiona’s novel Tell It To The Bees has been appearing at festivals, including at Cannes and the Toronto film festival
We are very happy about this well-deserved recognition of Fiona’s work
Induction, quizzing and the new year
We’ve had a great start to the new academic year. Lots of lovely and lively students joined us during induction week. Here are some photos from the Humanities Induction Quiz which was great fun.
We were impressed by the general and specific knowledge of the students, and especially by the incredibly high scoring winning team. Here they are already enjoying their weetabix (other cereals and food groups are available):
We’re looking forward to working with our new and returning students this year!
From Private to Public Exposure: Portraits, Prints and the Royal Mistress
Dr. Claudine van Hensbergen will be giving a public lecture at Newcastle’s Laing Art Gallery on Wednesday 7th November.
This talk is inspired by Exposed: The Naked Portrait exhibition.
Simon Verelst’s portrait of Nell Gwyn (c. 1670) is one of a number the artist produced of Charles II’s most famous mistress. Nell looks out at us from the canvas, meeting the viewer’s eye with a seductive gaze. The tone of the milky pearls strewn in her loosely-flowing locks echoes the creamy skin of her exposed torso. Nell turns slightly from us, in a teasing gesture that suggests she has just wriggled free of her nightshirt for the viewer’s benefit. Yet how daring, or unique, was this portrait? And how widespread was its influence? This talk answers these questions by exploring portraiture of the mistresses of Charles II, tracing how many of these images became products for public consumption through the new technology of mezzotint engraving. England’s developing print culture, which also made numerous literary treatments of the mistress available to a growing readership, fed a cultural fascination with these women and gave them the status of early celebrities.
Claudine van Hensbergen is Senior Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century English Literature at Northumbria University. She is close to completing a new book, Reading the Royal Mistress: Women in Print, 1660-1735, and specialises in the literary and visual culture of Britain at the turn of the eighteenth century.
For more details and booking information please visit the Laing’s website here.
Northumbria Englishes 