Learning Community Newsletter Week 8

Posted on 16 November 2021

All the latest from the department

This week there are opportunities to give feedback on the teaching and the modules that are offered in our Department.

For the modules that you are already on, module audits open this week. These are a fantastic opportunity to provide feedback to positively shape the development of the modules in the future.

The other opportunity to provide feedback is based on the move to semesterisation that is currently underway at the University. This week and next the Politics Representatives are collecting information on what you think may be missing or overlaps in the modules and content provided to Undergraduate students. If you think there is a topic that should have been covered in your modules or could be included in a new module, or there is an area that you believe was repeated or less valuable to your learning, please fill out this form so that we can make the changes you want to see! There are only two main questions on the form - so it shouldn’t take too long to complete.

I hope you all have a fantastic week,

Jeremy Moulton (Learning Community Officer)

Events

Making Melancholia: Remembering the Empire and unsettling the nation during the First World War centenary

Wednesday 17th November 4-5:30pm, LMB/036X

Between 2014 and 2018, the British state engaged in a large-scale project of memory-making. A budget of £50 million, 2,500 hours of BBC programming, and a wave of new museum exhibitions and monuments accompanied the centenary of the First World War. The goal of revisiting a century-old war was, in David Cameron words, 'to say something about who we are as a people'. As such, the centenary highlighted some stories, erased others, and created new insiders and outsiders. In this talk, Dr Meghan Tinsley (University of Manchester) will trace the dominant narrative of national memory that emerged during the centenary, arguing that it re-centred metropolitan Britain and rewrote empire as multiculturalism.

Reviewing ‘White Fragility’: Psychoanalysis with racism - Adam Phillips Autumn Term Lecture

Wednesday 17th November 5pm, BS/005

Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst as well as one of the most influential essayists and thinkers writing today. The Irish novelist John Banville has him as 'one of the finest prose stylists in the language, an Emerson of our time'. Adam has been Visiting Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature since 2006. He is the General Editor of the Penguin Freud, and author of more than 16 books of essays and studies from On Kissing, Tickling and Being Bored (1993) to Becoming Freud: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (2014). His most recent books are Unforbidden Pleasures (Penguin, 2015), In Writing (Penguin 2017), Attention Seeking (Penguin, 2019) and On Wanting to Change (Penguin, 2021).

Voice from the Global South - post-COP26 session

Friday 19th November 9-10:30am, online

With the international climate change conference, COP26, having wrapped up now - this session will turn to consider the impact and significance of the meeting for the Global South. It will bring together eminent scholars from the Global South who are also involved in the COP and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who will present their perspectives on what COP means for future research agendas and research priorities. Book via Eventbrite.

Tourism and mobilisation

Friday 19th November 6pm, B/S/006

Starting this Friday there will be a seminar series run by Shibo Chen of UCL and the University of Cambridge and Sam Collins of the Institute for Economic Affairs. This week's seminar will focus on Tourism and mobilisation, acting as a teaser for future seminars on Populism and the recent Gamestop crisis. The seminars will also include discussions on how research papers are formed and experiences of working in a think tank.