Schools of Arts, Languages and Cultures magazine

School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Magazine

Issue 01 | 2017/18 Culture on campus | Expert opinion | Research in brief Michael Wood, Professor of Public History

Literature in the city

Silvanos Mudvzova: ‘Acting up in Zimbabwe’

A look at his time in Manchester

Shaping Manchester as a City of Literature

Silvanos’ journey and the Artist Protection Fund

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Contents

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The Creative Campus and beyond

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Why Manchester?

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Go abroad

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SALC in the city

SALC in a minute

Michael Wood: My Manchester

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Research in brief

Acting up in Zimbabwe

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Manchester talks many languages

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Literature in the city

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SALC making a difference

Where Manchester and Melbourne meet

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Culture on campus

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What and who makes Manchester creative?

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Bookshelf

Welcome

The Creative Campus and beyond

The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures at Manchester boasts an impressive breadth and depth of subjects. We teach and research in almost 20 different disciplines, and we are at the forefront of international research in many of them.

We foster creativity across the School, promote interdisciplinary projects and encourage new ways of connecting and collaborating between the University and the creative and cultural sector.

The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) has an impressive track-record as an anchor-institution in this area, thanks to the Centre for New Writing, the Institute for Cultural Practices, the John Rylands Research Institute, Multilingual Manchester, the Whitworth, Manchester Museums and numerous collaborations in the Heritage sector. Many of our academics are

involved in developing public policy and research exchange networks exploring the implications of Devo-Manc for the arts, the heritage sector and the creative economy.

Our new Creative Campus masterplan represents a unique opportunity for expanding the School’s role as a leading actor in the growth of the creative economy in the Manchester area, across the UK and internationally.

In this first issue of the new School magazine, we aim to give you an insight into the Creative Campus at The University of Manchester. We invite you to explore the breadth of our teaching, our world leading, practice-based research in the arts, and our wider engagement in the cultural sector.

We are keen to celebrate what we have been able to achieve so far, and we look forward to the many opportunities that our Creative Campus will offer.

Professor Alessandro Schiesaro Head of the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester

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SALC in a minute

active researchers in the school

Our diverse subject offering spans the past, present and future

Notable alumni include: Anthony Burgess Benedict Cumberbatch Meera Syal Sophie Raworth Toby Jones

in the UK

(Academic Ranking of World Universities 2016)

in Europe

in the world

The University of Manchester ranks:

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Samuel Alexander Members of staff

The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures is housed in the Samuel Alexander building – named after the celebrated Professor of Philosophy

Teaching is in more than

different languages

Number of students: (undergraduate, master’s, PhD)

UG – 4360

PGR – 285

Our students and staff come from 89 different countries

We’re one of the largest groupings of students, teachers and researchers in the arts and languages anywhere in the world

PGT – 650

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Michael Wood

Michael Wood: My Manchester story

Feature

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From exploring the work of Marx and Engels with undergraduates, to being a patron on the Manchester Histories Festival and inspiring the next generation of students through school visits, broadcaster Michael Wood reflects on his time since becoming Professor of Public History at the University.

Image: Michael Wood with Korean scholars at the Confucian cemetery in Qufu

I am a filmmaker by profession, and my generation of TV-watchers grew up on public service broadcasting: from John Berger’s Ways of Seeing, to Bronowski’s Ascent of Man and Ken Loach’s Cathy Come Home. So it goes without saying that cultural engagement, social responsibility and internationalism are part of our idea of what broadcasting should offer.

It is my belief that we ‘popularisers’ are intermediaries between the academic world and the general public, and I suppose I have tried to bring some of those ideas to what I do at the University.

I became Professor of Public History in late 2013 just as I was starting a series of films for the BBC on The Story of China.

There are memorable moments from that time, like excursions to Chetham’s Library with groups of first year students,

gathering around the table where Marx and Engels sat, handling the books they used – the statistical surveys and documents that shaped the Communist Manifesto – for me there is nothing like engaging with the sources, hearing the voices come alive.

So too with the MA students who have done the History and Film unit, with some really exciting results. This year’s course has been in co-operation with Manchester Museum, and the theme was migration – a vital subject right now of course, and a particularly big theme in the city’s history. We looked at an Italian barber in Levenshulme, whose father was a POW; Bosnian sisters who fled the siege of Sarajevo; a 93-yearold Jewish lady who came here on the kindertransports in 1938; a Bangladeshi restaurateur who lived through

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Article

Partition and made a new life in Trafford; four films on intensely human tales of history and memory, the very texture of identity. All of us sat rapt in the Manchester Museum as the stories unfolded.

The Manchester Histories Festival has been another highlight, especially for a Mancunian. I got involved some years ago when John Pickford, who we all miss so much, was running it. Now it is a massive event every two years when the Town Hall is taken over by scores of local groups.

Another great pleasure has been giving public history talks, often about Manchester identity; whether at the People’s History Museum, or John Rylands Library; to Alumni events, or the Fulbright Scholars. Just now, of course, there is a lot of discussion about Manchester history and identity, especially after the city’s inspiring reaction to the attack on the Ariana Grande concert. What is at the heart of that identity, we ask ourselves?

Manchester, after all, was a small place in the 1750s – less than 20,000 people; but with immigration it increased over 20 times in 90 years, and became a centre of social reform and liberal politics, intellectual freedoms and scientific advances. This city of the Chartists and the Suffragettes is a common history that we all share, whatever our origin.

That is a story I have often told at schools and Sixth Form and Further Education Colleges: in Rochdale, Bury, Bolton and Ashton-Under-Lyne, in Stockport and Sale, in Moss Side (where

I was born and spent my first years) and in Wythenshawe (our family home for over 30 years.) Schools have asked me to go and talk about the excitement and importance of history to young people who might never have thought university could be an option for them, and the response has been terrific. Pupils ask incredibly thoughtful questions on a whole range of subjects, and the feedback from their teachers has been gratitude to the University for ‘bothering’ to come out and talk to the pupils, and for giving them an insight into the kind of educational opportunities that are there for them too.

That in turn connects with another

“We ‘popularisers’ are intermediaries between the academic world and the general public, and I suppose I have tried to bring some of those ideas to what I do at the University.” great local project – the Museum’s plan to build a South Asian gallery in partnership with the British Museum.

Scheduled to open in 2020, the gallery will be for permanent exhibitions, but with space for the first time for important

travelling shows. I have filmed in the Indian subcontinent many times – we did a big series the Story of India in 2007, and I have written books on India and on Tamil culture – so I am very excited about this. We had the London launch in June and it is hoped the project will connect to the South Asian diaspora all over Greater Manchester and beyond. The University already has very strong links with China – we have the biggest Chinese student body in the UK – but India with its huge population, growing economy, and fabulously rich and diverse culture, is another area where the University’s outreach will grow in the next few years. The South Asian Gallery, the first in the north, will be a powerful and very visible symbol.

And future aspirations? Well I am still a full-time filmmaker; so my ambitions always have to be realistic. More outreach I hope, with school events next year and plans to link up with Oldham Coliseum and its forthcoming cultural projects.

But most importantly, to carry on talking to schoolchildren – they are the future and seeing that they will get access to a creative education is our hope for a fairer society.

And lastly the University itself – a great institution, regionally and nationally – it is coming up to its 200th anniversary in 2024. That is not far off now! Its role in the community over that time, from the days of the Mechanics’ Institute and Owens College, goes far beyond what is actually taught in the lecture room. It has been, and is, one of the pillars of a humane society.

I am looking forward to the celebrations.

Michael Wood, Professor of Public History

Article

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combination of celebrating the city’s diversity and heritage translates into skills which become beneficial for the rest of the population.”

Indeed, MIDAS, Manchester’s inward investment agency, cites MLM in a report on the city’s workforce; stating the multilingual population is a magnet for attracting global businesses to the region. Language skills are a key factor that motivate investors to the city, and are instrumental to its growth and development, it says.

“At MLM we bring our research and our vision, take the reality of the everyday linguistic situation, and translate it to make it clear.

“At the same time we give a message in how important the University is in both attracting people from international backgrounds, but

also in supporting and developing the language skills of the population,” explains Professor Matras.

Thanks to the work of researchers and linguistics students, MLM has a rich database it can draw on to gain an accurate picture of language diversity in the region. The website has become the biggest online archive on research into multilingualism in any community, and its impact is powerful.

“It has a hand in shaping key policies. We work with numerous partners, including healthcare providers, police and emergency ser vices, schools and community groups,” the Professor says.

There are several activities running at any one time; a school support platform encouraging speakers of more than one language to explore themes in their native tongue, as well as English; conversation classes for asylum seekers and refugees; recording patient experience in hospitals; and the Open World Research Initiative consortium funded project on linguistic communities around the globe.

Professor Matras says: “What started as a teaching and learning tool, has very quickly had an impact. Multilingual Manchester breaks the traditional linear arrangement of: we do research, our research informs our teaching, and from our research we derive impact.” mlm.humanities.manchester.ac.uk

Manchester talks many languages Yoruba and Igbo from Nigeria, Konkani from western India, Pashto from Iran, and Uyghur from north-western China – these are just a handful of the many tongues spoken in Manchester.

We s t e r n E u ro p e’ s m o s t multilingual city is home to around 150 languages. It is estimated half of the city’s adults communicate in more than one, and their rich linguistic tapestry fills the streets all around; with roughly 70 languages spoken at any one time.

Multilingual Manchester (MLM), a research project based in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures, works to promote awareness of this language diversity, and how it can be harnessed to boost growth in the city and beyond.

Lead Researcher and Linguist, Professor Yaron Matras, says: “The

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Literature in the city

The Centre for New Writing brings together writers who excel in a range of different kinds of fiction, poetry and screenwriting, bringing their individual talents to bear on the work of all our students.

Jeanette Winterson Professor of New Writing, Centre for New Writing

Feature

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As our Centre for New Writing reaches its 10th year, we look at the impact it has had in shaping Manchester, a city of literature.

Literature in the city Culturally and creatively, Manchester is an especially stimulating place to be at the moment. Something we have seen firsthand during our bid to make Manchester a UNESCO City of Literature.

Research for the proposal reveals the sheer extent of literary activity across the city – from open mic nights like Bad Language, to experimental poetry performances like The Other Room; from intimate community reading groups, to large-scale author events pulling in huge crowds; from creative writing programmes in the city’s universities, to successful, independent small presses like Comma and Carcanet, and innovative writer development organisations like Commonword or The Real Story.

At the Centre for New Writing (CNW), staff and students participate in and contribute to much of this literary activity, refining our own creative practice and making our mark on the city. Our online journal, The Manchester Review, remains the leading city source for quality reviews of new theatre, music and literature.

We like to think – with good reason, and not a little pride – that the CNW is one of the best places to study and practise creative writing in the UK.

Our expanding team of award-winning novelists, poets and screenwriters teach dynamic programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate level, but we also engage with our students and the city in other ways, and in the tenth year of our existence, our activities and opportunities are brighter and more varied than ever.

The events we run as part of our ‘Literature Live’ series attract audiences from across – and beyond – Manchester, and we are increasing and diversifying those audiences now via exciting collaborations with HOME and the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.

We are also now the official higher education partner and sponsor of the Manchester Literature Festival (MLF) – which runs upwards of 80 events every year and brings a host of international literary stars to the city. Arundhati Roy, Rebecca Solnit and Shami Chakrabarti are just three of the authors making an appearance in 2017.

We have worked very happily and productively with the MLF for years, but in this new partnership we will be taking an even more active role in organising, chairing, hosting and promoting festival events.

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Literature in the city Ian McGuire Novelist and Honorary Lecturer at the Centre for New Writing pictured at the book launch of The North Water, February 2017, at the Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama.

We are making our mark in other ways, however; notably, through the involvement of our students and staff in various vital schools projects across Manchester: for The Whitworth Project, CNW students worked with puppet troupe The Whalley Range All-Stars to devise imagined worlds and stories with year 5 students; the Writing with Rylands Project sent our undergraduate students to primary schools to teach storytelling skills; and our collaboration with Alliance Manchester Business School’s ‘Business in the Community’ scheme led to workshops with high school students and a popular poetry competition.

The schools involved and the students running the workshops and events learn a huge amount from these projects, and we consider them a crucial part of our commitment to a social responsibility agenda – benefiting communities who might otherwise seem to have little access to the educational opportunities and rich resources of The University of Manchester.

Our Burgess Writer Fellows likewise contribute to the city via their residencies, which means that next year’s fellows, poet Kayo Chingonyi and fiction writer Joanna Walsh, will give tutorials at CNW, but also in Manchester Museum and at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.

Despite these many projects and collaborations with cultural partners, we remain, at the CNW, committed to our writing, research and teaching.

Vona Groarke’s Selected Poems won the 2017 Pigott Prize for Poetry – for the best collection of poetry by an Irish poet – while Vona herself was recently inducted into the Hennessy Literary Awards Hall of Fame; in April, Geoff Ryman’s series of articles on African writers won a British Science Fiction Association Award for best non-fiction; graduate Alys Conran was shortlisted for the 2017 Dylan Thomas Prize; Beth Underdown was selected as one of The Observer’s new faces of fiction for 2017, thanks to the publication of her debut novel, The Witchfinder’s Sister; Tim Price began work on the imminent new series of Dr Who, and Jeanette Winterson will this year be honoured by the Lambda Literary Trust.

And in Autumn 2017, coincident with our ten year anniversary, we welcome two new writers to our team. Kamila Shamsie is the internationally-renowned author of six novels, including Kartography (2002), Burnt Shadows (2009), which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, and A God in Every Stone (2014), which was shortlisted for numerous prizes including the Baileys Prize. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Patron of the MLF, and in 2013 was named one of

Granta’s ‘Best Young British Novelists’.

Honor Gavin, our other new appointment, takes a multi-platform approach to the creative and the critical, involving music, performance and collaborations with groups such as Theatrum Mundi; she is the author of a monograph on modernism literature and film, and of an exuberant, experimental novel, Midland (2014), which was shortlisted for the prestigious Gordon Burn Prize.

Both appointments embody the commitments to cultural and creative collaboration, and to social responsibility that we have long sought to encourage; and both will offer inspirational teaching to our students.

As Jeanette Winterson says: “CNW brings together writers who excel in a range of different kinds of fiction, poetry and screenwriting, bringing their individual talents to bear on the work of all our students.”

We heartily agree, and we are also delighted that in 2017 we have been able to confirm the permanent appointment of Jeanette, whose work has done so much to energise the students and shape the character of the Centre in recent years, as Professor of New Writing.

Here’s to the next ten years!

Autumn/ Winter 2017

Memories of Partition Opens 15 Aug

Living Worlds Permanent exhibition

Reena Saini Kallat Opens 30 Sept

Open Daily: 10am – 5pm Free entry

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Spotlight

Why Manchester?

We asked staff and students this simple question:

“It’s not only activities and events that matter to me – it‘s also the people I work with; excellent colleagues, great students, undergraduates and postgraduates. Those encounters really do matter.”

Jérôme Brillaud, France

Head of the Graduate School and Lecturer in 17th and 18th Century French Culture.

“The reputation of the University and also I’m quite an adventurous person, I thought two years in China and two years in the UK… why not? It’s so exciting!”

“Manchester’s a vibrant scene that anyone can get involved with. We put on the most concerts of any music society in the UK and there are events going on every week.”

Wenling Ding, China

Siobhan Shay, UK

2+2 student in Linguistics and Sociology, Making a Difference Awards 2017 nominee.

“Manchester’s well-known for its great libraries and for theology students there are lots of old scriptures; it’s really cool to be able to see and study them in person.”

Anna Kovar, UK

BA Religions and Theology.

Music, involved in outreach projects with schools across the north west.

“This is where you can learn something completely different about the world around you... and about yourself too.”

Ben Tither, UK

BA German Studies and Business & Management, IBM intern in Germany.

“I really like making friends with people from all over the world.

You don’t really have that opportunity if you just study at home. I did the pub quiz, which was super fun. It was sort of an authentic British experience.”

Rachel Walther, USA

Manchester International Summer School 2016 alumna.

Spotlight

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“There’s a certain kind of music, art and political culture that Manchester has but nowhere else does. When I first started, it was like walking into my record collection.”

Guyda Armstrong, UK

Faculty Academic Lead for Digital Humanities and Senior Lecturer in Italian.

“I‘m in awe that students from so far away in the world live and work here in such a different culture. I’m also very pleased that we, as a School, offer that opportunity because it enriches our classrooms and our students’ lives as well.”

“I worked in Paris as an editor and in Italy as a journalist, now I’m working because the University gives me good connections with the sector.”

Hannah Garrett, UK Event and Partner Support Officer.

Gabriele Naddeo, Italy MA Art Gallery and Museum Studies.

“There’s a real sense of community, I recognise people and really like the idea of coming to a university where I don’t feel anonymous.”

“There’s this thing about Manchester where you can just make networks with people. Meeting for a coffee can lead to collaborating on projects later.

Sabine Sharp, UK

PhD student Assistant Organiser for the Sexuality Summer School.

Miriam Dafydd, UK

BA Art History student, Peggy Guggenheim intern in Italy.

“I’m a different person to the me of two years ago, thanks to my year abroad. Now I’ve the confidence to pursue things that interest me and use them to make a career.”

Stuart Dunlop, UK

BA German and Portuguese Studies.

“You get a very pleasant feeling that you’re often out of your depth – you can interact with so many subjects besides your own.”

Francesca Billiani, Italy

Director of Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Arts and Languages (CIDRAL) and Senior Lecturer in Italian.

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Silvanos Mudzvova

Acting up in Zimbabwe

Feature

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Zimbabwean playwright and anti-Mugabe activist Silvanos Mudzvova, here at The University of Manchester on an Artist Protection Fund fellowship, talks about his terrifying struggle for freedom.

Words: Mikaela Sitford Image: Mark Epstein

Silvanos Mudzvova smiles and warmly shakes my hand. His joy immediately fills the room; he seems genuinely pleased to be here in Manchester.

Only when he walks do I notice he is limping. Later he shows me a dent in his skull. These are the scars of his abduction and torture by security forces back home in Zimbabwe; the physical evidence of a frightening struggle for freedom that he refuses to abandon.

The 39-year-old dramatist has spent years writing and performing plays to draw attention to the injustices of Robert Mugabe’s regime. He has lost count of the number of times he has been arrested as a result.

But his abduction from his home in September 2016 was different. It occurred after a performance of his play Missing Diamonds I Need My Share outside the Zimbabwean Parliament; a piece calling for arrests over the misuse of $15 billion of the country’s diamond revenue.

“They beat down the door. I got my wife and children into a bedroom and went out with my hands up. They put a sack over me and drove me to a remote lake notorious for disappearances,” he recounts.

He was beaten continuously, subjected to electric shocks all over his

body, and interrogated by his captors.

The ordeal went on for three long hours, but luckily Silvanos was saved.

“They started getting phone calls telling them to stop – it was breaking news on the BBC, CNN and social media. Then I knew they weren’t going to kill me.”

“Before they left, they injected me with something,” he says. “I still don’t know what it was or what it will do. I could hear but I couldn’t see or move. A group of fishermen got to me and took me to hospital.”

Silvanos had several operations – including one to repair his stomach, which had been stamped on – and remained in hospital for four weeks, part-paralysed and unsure whether he would ever walk again.

But this is not the only time he has bravely suffered for his art and been motivated to use theatre to bring to the forefront corruption within the Mugabe regime.

The playwright’s first arrest, in 2007, was when riot police stormed a theatre during a performance and arrested him on stage. The play was about Mugabe being stuck in a lift with the opposition leader, the two forced together to resolve Zimbabwe’s challenges.

“I was put in leg irons and handcuffs and charged with treason, which has a

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Silvanos Mudzvova

minimum of 20 years in prison. I was so full of fear,” Silvanos recalls.

Terror turned to farce as he was then forced to perform the play 12 times in 72 hours, for higher and higher ranking officers, none of whom could understand it.

When it went to court, the judge concluded treason meant overthrowing the government, rather than performing a play, and Silvanos was released. “I went to the theatre that night and we did a three-week run – everyone wanted to see it,” he smiles.

Silvanos was awarded an Artist Protection Fund (APF) fellowship in 2016, which placed him at The University of Manchester – after seeing our Martin Harris Centre theatre spaces online, he was thrilled with the opportunity.

Sponsored by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the APF awards grants to threatened artists and places them at host universities and arts centres in safe countries where they can continue their work.

He is working closely with our students – speaking at their lectures, producing a play with them, having them take part in ‘read throughs’ of his new work, and even judging the Drama Society’s Manchester In-Fringe Theatre Awards.

He is also producing other plays, giving talks and working with communitybased theatre groups and artists around the city.

Stephen Bottoms, Professor of Contemporary Theatre and Performance at the University, says: “Silvanos embodies the historical role of drama at the University – it has led on this agenda of applied, social theatre. His fellowship perfectly reflects our goal of social responsibility.

“Art is very powerful and Silvanos is driven to write and perform. He is also a very gentle, funny and utterly charming man. We could all learn a lot from him.”

In return, Silvanos will further hone his craft: “What I am learning at the University will increase my understanding of theatre and its different forms. The School is so advanced in terms of the technical side, so I will spend a lot of time learning how to include this in my future performances.”

Theatre has always made Silvanos happy. As a child he would sneak into performances and sit on the floor in his school uniform. At 17 he took a lead role at the same theatre.

In 2002, he travelled to England on a scholarship at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, but his stay in London

was cut short when his mother, a vegetable vendor, was the target of extortion.

Silvanos returned home to form an organisation to express the pain and outrage felt on the streets. He remains defiant: “Art is not a luxury when you are living in a community where these things are happening.”

He is also motivated by his three children. Since the abduction, he has seen them twice, and then only for a few minutes for their own safety.

“I left my family without saying goodbye. That is one of the most painful things,” he reflects.

“I have not had the good life I wanted, but I can do this for my children. They don’t have a bright future in front of them if we keep quiet.”

Find out more about the Artist Protection Fund fellowship, visit the Institute of International Education website: www.iie.org/Programs/Artist-Protection-Fund

Article

Where Manchester and Melbourne meet The School of Arts, Languages and Culture’s reach extends across the globe, with new partnerships being created all the time.

O n e su ch i nte r n at i o n a l collaboration is with The University of Melbourne, where we have been working with academics and special collections staff on a series of projects exploring historical objects and their associated emotions.

Made possible by the ManchesterMelbourne Humanities Consortium Fund, which launched in 2016, the two universities are working together on Objects and Emotions: Rituals, Routines, Collections and Communities.

Spanning the Anglo-Saxon period right up to the 19th century – when both Manchester and Melbourne took dynamic civic developments and instituted museums and collections – it examines physical objects and artefacts, and the roles they play in expressing emotions, in forging them and in connecting people’s bodies to the natural world around them.

So what are objects of emotions?

“We cross a whole range of content,” says Dr Sasha Handley, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at The University of Manchester and a lead on the project, “from love objects like lockets or mourning rings, to things like holy relics, and other devotional objects that once inspired religious sensibilities”.

Another object, one that is part of the collections at the Manchester Art Gallery, is a posset pot from the 17th century. Typically supped from at the end

of a wedding feast, it would seal the day’s events as a way of symbolically connecting the newly formed household to the state.

“I’m thinking about the ways in which political love, or love for the sovereign, was linked to spousal formation and sexual relations. Usually the ingredients of the posset itself were thought to provoke a man’s seed and to heat up a woman’s reproductive blood. There are all kinds of bodily ways in which these physical objects were thought to connect or tie together subjects and sovereigns and help to maintain the reproduction of the household and population over time,” explains Dr Handley.

Members of the project have already curated one exhibition, Love: Art of Emotion, 1400–1800 at the National Gallery of Victoria and a workshop was held recently in Manchester, where further collaborative projects were explored. The workshop has also allowed researchers to get special access to artefacts that are held in the city, and to plan towards an online exhibition linked to the project.

Dr Handley says: “We think we are original in putting two dynamic fields of research into conversation with each other; the field of material culture studies and that of histories of emotion. Histories of emotion scholarship has exploded in the last 20 years and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, which has been the leading pioneer in the field, has mainly been working with textual and visual sources, not with material artefacts”.

“One of the strongest draws of working in Manchester are the fantastic

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Image: Posset Pot © Manchester Art Gallery.

Bridgeman Images.

collections”, says Dr Handley, “few universities have the kind of natural resources that we enjoy on our doorstep.

The historical objects and artefacts in our collections have a capacity to collapse time, they bring the present into the past in a really tangible way, in a way that text doesn’t, or a history book can’t.

We want that to be part of the experience, especially when we get to thinking about public-facing activities that extend out of this project.”

The Manchester-Melbourne Humanities Consortium Fund enables a range of research collaborations; the fund’s ambition is to enhance international opportunities for profound and complex projects of cultural value between the two universities and is entering its second year.

Visit: www.historyofemotions.org.au/research/ research-clusters/objects-and-emotions

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Culture on campus

The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures offers some of the best cultural attractions in the city for students and the public: The John Rylands Library

Manchester Museum

The striking neo-gothic building took 10 years to build and opened in 1900.

One of only five National Research Libraries, it’s home to more than 4m books and manuscripts, over 41,000 electronic journals and 500,000 electronic books – making it one of the best-resourced academic libraries in the country.

The UK’s leading university museum has over 4m objects spanning millennia, including one of the largest collections of ancient Egyptian artefacts in the UK and roughly 1m preserved animals – from aardvarks to zebras. It has supported excavations in the eastern Mediterranean, western Asia, and Mesopotamia

Did you know – the library was one of the first buildings in Manchester to be lit by electricity?

Did you know – the Museum is home to a life size reproduction of a Tyrannosaurus rex fossil known affectionately as ‘Stan’?

150 Deansgate Open 7 days a week, free www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands

Oxford Road Open 7 days a week, free www.museum.manchester.ac.uk

The Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama (MHC) The MHC offers students a fantastic space to study and perform, as well as hosting professional musicians, performers and prize-winning authors.

It stages contemporary and classic theatre, music and comedy events, and holds a regular reading series with literary figures.

Did you know – the MHC holds 100+ performances each year?

Bridgeford Street www.martinharriscentre.manchester.ac.uk

The Whitworth Founded in 1889 as the first English gallery in a park, the Whitworth has been transformed by a £15m development and won 17 awards since 2015, including Building of the Year (RIBA North West) and Visit England’s Large Visitor Attraction of the Year.

Did you know – The Whitworth holds Thursday Lates - a weekly series of after work talks, performances, film screenings, live music and artist interventions.

Oxford Road Open 7 days a week, free www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk

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Expert opinion

What and who makes Manchester creative?

The city’s spirit was challenged but not found wanting by the recent Manchester Arena terror attack, but instead of buckling we gathered and rallied to celebrate these core values.

Manchester communities responded immediately and creatively with displays of ‘I love MCR’ sweatshirts, tattooed bees on forearms and poetry on billboards, mass participation in vigils, tributes, parades and fundraising gigs in pubs and clubs.

These celebrations of community resilience through participation in everyday creativity reveal the flipside of a city that has long been industrious in its creative exports, in the arts and culture, as well as football, science and innovation. They soften the often hard-edge gilt by which Manchester negotiates creatively for investment and renown, as the leader of the Northern Cultural Powerhouse. They are the real reasons that Manchester continues to attract creative talent to live, work, play and study here.

The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (SALC) recognises these values as part of its core script. They are embedded in our relationship with the creative city and the wider creative economy. Through teaching and learning, research and knowledge exchange, social responsibility and public engagement, we place inclusion, participation and gritty realism alongside excellence and attainment at the heart of what we do with our creative communities.

We do so in great company, working closely with our cultural assets: the Manchester Museum (the largest university museum in the UK), awardwinning Whitworth, Jodrell Bank, the newest heritage site on the block with the incredible new Bluedot festival, and the John Rylands Library, Contact Theatre and the Martin Harris Centre. We work with a great many other partners in the city and beyond, from the Camerata to the Royal Exchange, Manchester International Festival to Quarry Bank Mill, in a roll call too long to complete here.

Our staff and students draw on world-class research in creative collaborations, producing robots that play music, virtual reality games for museums, refugee cultural festivals, community history festivals, filmmaking and screenings, co-curated exhibitions, and re-enactments in parks.

Relationships between universities and the arts and creative economies take a number of shapes, according to The Arts and Humanities Research Council network ‘Beyond the Campus: Higher Education and the Creative Economy’.

Alongside the cultural venues such as university arts centres, galleries and museums, relationships are formed in a range of other different contexts and settings. These include the grand projects and macro-level relationships of collaborative research and memoranda of understanding but also smaller exchanges facilitated through fieldtrips, student placements, secondments and other engagements with the creative city.

These take place in ‘third spaces’ which offer common ground for interaction and exchange with communities of interest and practice. Perhaps most importantly, they include the human capital embodied in our graduates, staff and alumni involved in creative production, governance and community cultural development, who carry this creative capital off campus and out into the world.

SALC excels in all of these areas.

The hive of relationships fostered by our staff and students are an intrinsic part of Creative Manchester and beyond, from ‘routine’ teaching activities which bring in arts and cultural leaders as guest speakers, to the huge array of collaborative projects with our creative communities. Just like the recently re-invoked symbol of Manchester, the bee, we recognise the importance of community and co-production in making Creative Manchester.

Dr Abigail Gilmore Senior Lecturer in Arts Management Institute for Cultural Practices Find out more: Beyond the Creative Campus: Reflections on the evolving relationship between higher education and the creative economy policy report, Comunian, A. & Gilmore, A (2015) Available from www.creative-campus.org.uk

QUATUOR DANEL

THE UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER’S INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED RESIDENT STRING QUARTET 2017-2018 The quartet celebrate their thirteenth season as Quartet-in-Residence at The University of Manchester

MHCentre

www.manchester.ac.uk/mhc

@MHCentre

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Go abroad

16

Canada

01

Netherlands

01

Ireland

08

14

France

USA

01

Belgium

Go abroad From Amsterdam to Zurich, undergraduate students in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures can choose from more than 100 destinations around the globe to study from one semester up to a year. *Figures refer to number of study abroad destinations within each country

01

Mexico

03

01

Portugal

Morocco

02

Brazil

01

12

Argentina

Spain

01

Uruguay

25

06

08

01

Russia

Germany

Denmark

01

Sweden

01

Austria

01

06

14

Turkey

01

Japan

Taiwan

Italy

04

Hong Kong

Switzerland

01

01

05

Australia

Israel

Jordan

02

Singapore

New Zealand

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SALC in the city

SALC in the city

The School of Arts, Languages and Cultures organises and participates in a wide range of public engagement activities across the city and beyond.

Top left: The University of Manchester’s resident string quartet, Quatuor Danel Top right: Teresa Anderson, Director of Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre and Bluedot Festival speaking at the University’s Manchester International Festival 2017 Glasshouse event: ‘Creative Campus and Beyond’.

Right: The University of Manchester Chorus concert at the University’s magnificent Whitworth Hall.

27 Left: The Medicine Cabinet: a collaborative exhibition with the Museum of Medicine and Health and Art Gallery and Museum Studies students, at Chetham’s Library.

Right: Anne Enright reads at the Centre for New Writing’s “Literature Live” event (part of Manchester Literature Festival 2016).

Above left: An event organised by The Confucius Institute, Manchester to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Above right: Afshan d’souza-Lodhi performs at the UNESCO City of Literature bid launch, Central Library, Manchester, June 2017.

Right: Future Everything event: ‘Creative and Digital Industries Sandpit’ bringing together academics with small, medium enterprise businesses working in the digital/creative sector

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Research in brief

Research in brief

Research in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures ranges from pre-historic times, through the classical and medieval periods, to the contemporary era. Our work embraces the material, visual, linguistic, textual, social and performative dimensions of human society, past and present.

Here’s a selection of research taking place across the School.

Making Peacekeeping Data Work for the International Community

The Witchfinder’s Sister

by Beth Underdown

A major Economic and Social Research Council funded study, Making Peacekeeping Data Work for the International Community, is nearing completion. The three-year project, led

by Roger Mac Ginty (Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies) and hosted by the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, investigated how the UN can better interrogate data gathered by peacekeeping missions.

Beth Underdown’s debut novel, The Witchfinder’s Sister was published in spring 2017 by Penguin Random House in both the UK and US. Beth joined the University’s Centre for New Writing in 2016 as a Lecturer in Creative Writing.

The Witchfinder’s Sister is based on the life of Matthew Hopkins, often referred to as the Witchfinder General, who hunted and then helped to convict over a hundred women for witchcraft in the 1640s.

Beth’s inspiration to research seventeenth-century England was sparked by the work of her great-uncle David Underdown, one of that period’s foremost historians.

UN Peacekeepers Distribute Water and Food in Haiti CREDIT UN Photo Marco Dormino

The Witchfinder’s Sister by Beth Underdown

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Faith in Black Power at Fifty

The Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael Exhibition

The ‘New Cold War’ Under Critical Scrutiny

The call for ‘black power’ was first uttered on the red dusty roads of rural Mississippi in the summer of 1966. Fifty years on and black power’s expansive reach has left a discernible legacy – transforming identities, enriching popular culture, expanding economic opportunities, and deepening practices of multiracial democracy.

In Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois (published by University Press of Kentucky), Dr Kerry Pimblott, Lecturer in American History, contributes to this reconsideration by performing the first study of the movement in Cairo, Illinois, chronicling the overlooked role of black churches and religious discourses in black power politics.

The Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael exhibition took place at the Whitworth and was co-curated by Dr. Edward H. Wouk from Art History and Visual Studies (AHVS) and David Morris of the Whitworth. Featuring the work of one of the radical originators and innovators of the European tradition of printmaking, Marcantonio Raimondi (c. 1480-c. 1534), this project exemplifies the collaboration the University fosters. Bringing together staff, students and cultural partners from AHVS, the Whitworth, The John Rylands Library and Manchester University Press, the result was a beautiful exhibition, a substantial catalogue, and a special volume of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library.

The AHRC-funded project Reframing Russia for the Global Mediasphere: From the Cold War to ‘Information War’? is a threeyear project led by Professors Stephen Hutchings and Vera Tolz (Russian Studies) exploring how state-sponsored media shape and are shaped by a transformed global communication environment.

This systematic study highlights the need to understand better how Russia’s role is under scrutiny by Western security services and media, as a ‘New Cold War’ rhetoric gathers momentum - especially in light of international developments, including the US presidential elections and the Ukraine crisis.

Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race, and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois by Kerry Pimblott

Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael, The Massacre of the Innocents (version without the fir tree), c. 1513, engraving, 280 x 425 mm.

The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, P.3088. Presented by George Thomas Clough in 1926 © The University of Manchester

‘The Information war in images’

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SALC making a difference

SALC making a difference

Social responsibility is central to all of our teaching, research and engagement activity. See how we are making a difference at a local, national and international level.

Top left: Students from Spanish Studies facilitate a Flamenco workshop with school children from Abraham Moss Community School, at the Cervantes Institute, Manchester.

Left: Engaging young audiences at the Manchester Museum with Pokemon and the museum’s

collection and historical/ contemporary art.

Top right: International Women’s Day: workshop for female composers Above: National Poetry Day schools’ workshop with performance poet John Hegley at the Martin Harris Centre.

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Clockwise from top left: ‘Refugee Cultural Festival’ organised by students from the Institute for Cultural Practices: A participatory arts workshop with elders in the community, to explore what home means Students and staff from Classics and Ancient History facilitate sessions on Latin, Greek or Classics in local schools The Martin Harris Centre hosts ‘Relaxed Performance’ concerts, accessible to all;

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Bookshelf

Bookshelf

Here is a selection of recent publications by staff in the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures.

Representing Ethnicity in Contemporary French Visual Culture Dr. Joseph McGonagle Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies in the French-Speaking World

For Humanism: Explorations in Theory and Politics Dr. David Alderson & Dr. Robert Spencer Senior Lecturer In English Literature / Lecturer in English and American Studies

The first book to analyse how a range of different ethnicities have been represented across contemporary French visual culture. Via a wide series of case studies – ranging from the worldwide hit film Amélie to France’s popular TV series Plus belle la vie – it explores how ethnicities have been represented in contemporary France across a wide variety of different media.

Across four extended essays, this book establishes the historical context that resulted in humanism’s eclipse, critiquing anti-humanism and exploring alternative, neglected traditions and possible new directions.

Bookshelf

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Pascal Quignard: Towards the Vanishing Point Dr. Léa Vuong Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship

The Creation of Beethoven’s 35 Piano Sonatas Prof. Barry Cooper Professor of Music

Faith in Black Power: Religion, Race and Resistance in Cairo, Illinois.

Dr. Kerry Pimblott Lecturer in International History

In this first critical study in English, Léa Vuong offers a comprehensive survey of Quignard’s still growing œuvre by examining his specific attempts to produce disappearance through – and for – writing.

The book explores the links between the notes and symbols found in the musical texts of Beethoven’s sonatas, and the environment that brought them about.

The result is a biography not of the composer, but of the works themselves.

This groundbreaking book contributes to and complicates the history of the black freedom struggle in America. It not only adds a new element to the study of African American religion, but also illuminates the relationship between black churches and black politics during this tumultuous era.

Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation: Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts Dr Andrew Koontz-Garboden Senior Lecturer in Linguistics

Death and the Rock Star Dr. Barbara Lebrun Senior Lecturer, French Studies

Rebel by vocation: Seán O’Faoláin and the generation of The Bell Dr. Niall Carson Lecturer in 20th Century British and Irish Literature

This book explores a key issue in linguistic theory; the systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages. The overall results highlight the importance of the lexicon as a locus of generalisations about the limits of crosslinguistic variation.

This edited collection explores the reception of dead rock stars, ‘rock’ being taken in the widest sense. The cultural representation of dead singers is investigated through obituaries, biographies and biopics. The book discusses the gendering of death and posthumous prestige, and the enduring appeal of the notion of ‘tragedy’ in popular music culture.

This study looks to illuminate the relationships, disputes and loves of the contributors to Ireland’s magazine The Bell, under the guiding influence of its founding editor, Seán O’Faoláin.

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School of Arts, Languages and Cultures magazine Faculty of Humanities The University of Manchester www.manchester.ac.uk/alc Tel: (0)161 306 6000 Facebook: /UoMSALC Twitter: @UoMSALC YouTube: UoM SALC Editorial: Rakhi Sinha Anne-Marie Nugnes Adi Gal-Greenwood Abigail Gilmore Alessandro Schiesaro Kaye Mitchell Michael Wood Mikaela Sitford Ziying Luo Iulia Bochis Photography: Mark Epstein www.markepstein.co.uk Maya Vision International www.mayavisionint.com Shutterstock www.shutterstock.com Jill Jennings www.jilljennings.com Chris Foster www.chrisfosterphotography.com Sam Churchill www.samchurchillphotography.co.uk

Issue 01 | 2017/18

School of Arts, Languages and Cultures The University of Manchester, Samuel Alexander Building Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9PL