2A. Room 1 — Travails of Encountering Violence: Engaging with (Mis)Representations of Trauma
In this panel we will explore some of the issues that lie in engaging with visual and textual representations of trauma. Key to this discussion will be an awareness of the potential for trauma to be misrepresented.
Molly Ackhurst
‘Speaking, Listening, Interpreting: The Lure of the Carceral Analysis in Narratives Around Sexual Violence and Justice’
+ Abstract
Feminist research has long concerned itself with the effects of situated knowledges on narratives around trauma. Nonetheless, despite widespread awareness that ‘all categories of analysis’ are ‘contextual, contested, and contingent’ (Scott, 1991, p.796), feminist work around sexual violence and justice continues to engage in an uncritical and unquestioning engagement with the voices of survivors of sexual violence. Through undertaking a comprehensive discourse analysis of academic projects that explore justice from the perspective of survivors, this paper seeks to interrogate the reasons why feminist texts on sexual violence and justice appear unable to critically engage with survivor voice. It is through troubling the ways in which the literature engages with and represents the words of survivors, that I aim to highlight the tension between individualised justice and collective politics. Drawing on Ruha Benjamin’s (2019) expansive understanding of carcerality, I will illustrate that the lack of acknowledgment of this tension obscures the limitations of survivor voice, and more importantly the fact that those who write about sexual violence bring with them their own views, beliefs and investments in carcerality, which in turn produces a carceral analysis of survivors’ voices.
Molly Ackhurst has a practice-based background having worked in sexual violence support for many years, and her work is rooted around creative approaches to trauma. This approach feeds into Molly’s academic work as a second year PhD candidate in Criminology at Birkbeck, where she explores imaginative blockages regarding justice and sexual violence.
Carson Cole Arthur
‘Make-Believe: Police Testimony and Perjury in the Death of Sean Rigg’
+ Abstract
In 2008, Sean Rigg, a 40-year-old Black British man, was killed by police in Brixton, London. Over the next ten years, two death investigations, an external review, a perjury trial, and a misconduct hearing would follow. It could be argued these series of legal investigations installed multivalent concepts of accountability on the level of governmentality (Baker, 2016). However, turning to the perjury trial of one of the officers involved in Rigg’s death, in this presentation I will be focusing on accounting, as a form of testimony. By highlighting the aporia of testimony (the indeterminacy of truth and lies) and detailing the intermodality of account giving, I will exploring not the ‘representionalism’ (to borrow from Jackson, 2018) of Rigg, but the representivity of testimony/accounting — and the sovereign logics and racial violence that undergird this type of truth-telling.
Carson Cole Arthur is studying PhD Criminology at the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London. Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), his research project is on inquests of Black people killed in UK police custody, with a focus on testimony, accountability, and narratives of racial violence in Coroner’s Courts.
‘Neither Numbers, Nor Outcomes: Fostering Dignity through Courtroom Spatiality & Linguistics in Cases of Sexual Violence against Children’
Gabriella McGrogan
‘The Weaponisation of Digital Witnessing: How Trauma Becomes Spectral in Online Spaces’
Very often the State speaks of its efficiency in dealing with child sexual violence cases through numbers. Higher conviction rates in such cases are deployed as a tool to reflect the achievement of the state machineries without much looking into the social and legal processes at play that led to the outcomes. The trauma the parties face, first as child victims of sexual violence, and secondly while navigating through those processes, are either misrepresented, or silenced in these quantitative accounts. Challenging this approach, I engage in this paper with the trauma such children face in the criminal processes and in courtrooms. With the help of an empirical study, and by employing Procedural Justice and Therapeutic Jurisprudence frameworks, I offer an account of how dignity is infused in the legal processes by the courtroom personnel to reduce such trauma by employing courtroom spatiality & linguistics to make the justice delivery process for the victims and survivors of child sexual abuse less painful.
Shailesh Kumar is a UK government funded Commonwealth Scholar currently in the fourth year of a PhD at the School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London. His research work is an empirical study of special courts dealing with cases of sexual violence against children in India.
+ Abstract
Bearing witness to trauma in legal spheres often demands the use of language as the primary means of communication and rests upon an assumption that the ‘truth’ of experiences of violence and atrocity can be adequately conveyed. The advent of new image capturing technologies and the accessibility of camera phones seemed, to those wishing to broaden the representation of trauma, to present an optimistic moment. I’ll discuss how civilian-captured and generated images come to be ‘haunted’, drawing upon the Derridean notion of spectrality, and — as new artefacts — constitute reproductions of historical trauma. This, I argue, may occur through the curation of digital images which had appeared to be imbued with the potential to be emancipated from long-existing hierarchies of representation and threatened with silencing. I consider the implications of this for conveying traumatic experiences online and ask if/how this might be navigated in popular spaces.
Gabriella McGrogan is a third-year PhD student in the School of Criminology at Birkbeck. She previously worked in education teaching English, and has long been fascinated by alternative methods of communication. She is currently teaching in the Criminology and Politics departments at Birkbeck and finds drawing interdisciplinary parallels invigorates her teaching style.
2B. Room 2 — Market Spaces
Chair: Jon Winder, School of History, Kent
Jack Watkins
‘Market Spaces, New Towns and Authority in Twelfth-Century Papal Italy’
+ Abstract
This paper examines the social space of markets in small towns and fortified villages in papal central Italy. It considers the experience of markets in the built environment of new towns, often populated by rural migrants or synthesised from surrounding villages in the late twelfth century. Using the fragmentary evidence for market exchange in rural centres, I assess the growing documentation of market regulations in the twelfth century across Umbria, Marche and Lazio and consider the relationship between documentary regulation and existing practice. This exercise combines evidence for marketing activity with extant buildings and archaeology as a means to show how commodity exchange engaged with other facets of group activity: dispute, devotion and celebration. It considers how the desire to hold and regulate markets shaped the strategies and practices of farmers, local lords and those claiming central power. Charters and disputes concerning market rights and dues provide a window into the experience of an increasingly complicated rural world, where monetisation and produce markets were changing the character and practices of authority. Produce or craft markets were a component of rural institutions developing in the interstices of larger cities and exchange networks. I argue that rural centres where market, judicial and sacred space overlap linked local agrarian change with new practices of authority shaping larger territorial states.
Jack Watkins: I’m a third-year PhD student, History, at Birkbeck, working on the society and the built environment in medieval Italy. I’m supervised by Caroline Goodson, Antonio Sennis and Filippo di Vivo. I’m actually funded by the ESRC rather CHASE.
Kanu Priya Dhingra
‘The Afterlives of Books at a Bazar’
+ Abstract
In one of my interviews, a bookseller exclaimed, ‘There is a machinery working behind this book bazar’. For this paper, I will be looking at this machinery as I examine the colossal variety of books at Patri Kitab Bazar. I will map the trajectories that the books of the Sunday Bazar undergo. These trajectories may be called ‘communication circuits’ in their own right, in accordance with the formulation that Robert Darnton coined, in 1972. One of the aims of this project is to present a perspective that eliminates a bird’s eye view of publishing and circulation of books in Delhi. As case studies, I will be looking at three specialised stalls: (a) second-hand/used books, (b) syllabus and ‘out-of-syllabus’ books, and (c) pirated, or ‘duplicate’ books. Each stall represents a unique, parallel circuit. Here, ‘parallel’ is many things: it represents alternative trajectories, the elasticity of the circulation network, the characteristics of the books, their type, genre, language, structure –– to name a few. Because of this parallel character, we also see a shift in the notion of the value of a book. (Books as waste/ Books are “rare” commodities/ Books sold by weight, etc.) Removed from the ‘original’ circuit as such, there is an alteration in the book’s worth, now that it is found on the streets in a variously modified form. Further, I will be addressing the problem of classification in a space that thrives on ‘randomness’ and serendipity. This bazar runs on an imbalanced combination of chaos and order. With the books too, there is a certain amount of intentionality vis-a-vis the demand-sale supply chain at Daryaganj Patri Kitab Bazar that is in a constant state of flux. I will study ‘randomness’ as relative to the organization and linearity of ‘proper’ circuits of ‘reading, handling, circulating’ books, which seem to ignore the premise that books which slip out of this circuit have an afterlife.
Kanu Priya Dhingra is a research scholar of Book History and Print Cultures at the Centre for Cultural, Literary, and Postcolonial Studies at SOAS, University of London, supported by the Felix Scholarship Fund. She has delivered talks on her research at The Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Studies, London, University of Delhi, SOAS, Ambedkar University, and Jadavpur University. Her work, creative and academic, has been published by Himal SouthAsian, The Caravan, Scoll.in, Indian Literature, Muse India, among others.
‘Digital Art History: What can Auctions Sales Data Tell Us about Collectors’ Preferences with Contemporary Art?’
+ Abstract
While art history claims to be one of the most interdisciplinary of disciplines, the use of computational techniques to create new knowledge or to rethink its traditional questions is less developed than in other fields. My paper contributes to narrowing that gap, using those methods to look at the preferences collectors have had for contemporary art.
My motivating question was that of whether collectors pay more at auction for works with specific titles such as How Long Must You Go, than comparable works presented as untitled or with generic titles such as Composition. However, simply comparing average sales prices for such works does not answer that question, as it ignores other differences between them and the circumstances of their sale. To understand the inter-relationships of the factors influencing collectors’ preferences I turned to the statistical techniques of cultural economics. Drawing on auction sales data I developed models for fourteen contemporary artists with an international presence in that market and with sales of works with both generic and specific titles.
In my models, for most artists collectors had a clear preference for paintings presented with specific titles. They show that size, medium and the artist’s age at execution also influenced collectors’ preferences. My models also give some insights into the auction market for contemporary art, including the impact of the auction house and sale location on the auction price.
My application of statistical analysis to auction sales data brings new kinds of knowledge into art history. With traditional art historical methods, it is not possible to develop the kind of understanding of collectors’ preferences I argue for in this paper. My work on different types of title is also new within cultural economics. In other areas it complements and re-contextualises previous scholarship, showing how collectors’ preferences and market structures have changed.
Mike Bowman: I am a part-time PhD candidate in History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London, currently in my fifth year. Following my retirement, I studied for the MA in History of Art at Birkbeck and moved on to start my PhD there in 2015, supervised by Professor Fiona Candlin. Prior to that I worked for over twenty years in financial services regulation. My first degree was in mathematics, following which I completed a PhD in theoretical physics.
2C. Discussion Group: Research During a Pandemic
Naomi Donovan
Join a discussion group about researching during a pandemic. Exchange your thoughts on the challenges of researching at this time and share tips about what you have found useful. Some potential areas of discussion include: balancing research with other activities (exercise and well-being activities etc.); managing research information and useful resources; suggestions to help with research and writing (referencing software, apps, etc.); and digital upskilling where relevant (locating resources, utilising library and IT services etc).
+ Bio
Naomi Donovan is in the fourth year of her PhD in English Literature at the University of Kent. She is currently researching eighteenth-century publishing history. Her research interests include book history, medical humanities, and music and literature.
2D. Room 4 — Can you Teach Creative Writing? Theory and Practice of the Creative Writing Workshop
Julia Bell, Philip Langeskov, Hirsh Sawhney, Ellen Hardy
Please register for this event separately here https://www.chase.ac.uk/events-1/teaching-creative-writing-can-you-teach-creative-writing-theory-and-practice-of-the-creative-writing-workshop
2E. Room 5 — Queer and Feminist Archives Research Network Session
Hatty Nestor and Lily Evans-Hill
At Encounters, we will hold a brief session to introduce the network and facilitate discussion on how the network can support our research in the coming year, especially when we are all working around the absence of archives. We envisage themes of access, pedagogic archival tendencies and subversions of those to be central to our conversation.
The Queer and Feminist Archives Research network is organised by researchers Hatty Nestor (Birkbeck) and Lily Evans-Hill (Goldsmiths), and is supported by the CHASE Doctoral Training Partnership. The network is made up of researchers who work with archives and primary materials through a feminist and/or queer lens, as well as those dealing with feminist, queer and archival theory. The activities of the network include reading groups, sharing writing and research, and archival visits. We meet monthly, and are open to all artists and researchers engaging in queer and feminist methodologies, and primary research methods.
Lily Evans-Hill is a doctoral researcher at Goldsmiths where she is working on feminist organising techniques in art of the 1970s and 1980s. She has a background in feminist organising and DIY archiving.
Hatty Nestor is a cultural critic and writer, published in Frieze, The White Review, The Times Literary Supplement and many other publications. She is currently completing a PhD at Birkbeck, University of London. Her first book Ethical Portraits is forthcoming from Zero Books in 2021.
2F. Room 6 — Three-Minute Thesis 1: Art and Language
Chair: Niall Boyce, Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck
Caroline Hawthorne, Department of Health and Social Care, University of Essex
’Identity and Agency: Exploring the Relationship between Theory and Professional Practice in Healthcare Students’ Academic Writing’
(higher education; vocational skills; voice; theory vs practice)
Chloe Cheetham, Department of English and Comparative Literature, Goldsmiths
‘Even the Girls are Lads in Hawk Class!’: A Linguistic Ethnographic Study of the Interplay of Language and Gender in a North London Primary School’
(female leadership; linguistic identity; children’s education)
Kitty Shaw, Department of Cultures and Languages, Birkbeck
‘Sublime Wealth: What We Fear & Revere in the Anthropocene’
(the sublime; mass-media; cultural studies)
Jessica Honey, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia
‘Chaucer the Historian: Chaucer’s Reception, Reproduction, and Transmission of Humanist Historiographical Style’
(medieval literature; historiography; rhetoric; style; humanism)
John Raspin, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia
‘John Milton’s Paradise Lost in the Anti-Trinitarian Crisis 1674–1732: Heresy, Orthodoxy, Poetics’
(John Milton; Richard Bentley; Abraham Hill; Isaac Newton)
Joseph Williams, School of Literature, Drama, and Creative Writing, University of East Anglia
‘The Bradbury Circle: The Writer, the Critic, and the University 1955–2000’
(Malcom Bradbury; Lorna Sage; David Lodge; Critical Quarterly; public literary culture)
Maria Perevedentseva, Department of Music, Goldsmiths
‘Something for Your Mind, Your Body and Your Soul: Timbre and Meaning in Electronic Dance Music’
(timbre; affect; ecosemiosis; listening experience)
Jilliene Sellner, Department of Music, Goldsmiths
‘هي Heya. Performing Agency: Women, Networks and Experimental Music and Sound in Cairo, Tehran, Istanbul and Beirut’
(Middle East, Experimental Music, Activism, Networked Music, Feminism)
Raquel Morais, Department of Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, Birkbeck, University of London
‘Exhibiting an Interdisciplinary Archive: Curatorial Practice as Reactivating the Film Archive, with a Case Study of Margarida Cordeiro and António Reis’
(film history; film essay; Portuguese film)
Recorded footage below: