Parallel Sessions 3 | 1630–1730
3A. Room 1 — Stories, Images, and Urban Change
Chair: Sarah Butler, Department of English and Creative Writing, Open University
Anita Strasser
‘Towards a Radical Sociology: Bridging Academia, Arts and Activism’
+ Abstract
This presentation takes you on a journey through the creative-political material that was produced with, by and for local residents in Deptford, south-east London, in order to highlight their lived experience of gentrification processes in the area. The material was produced through a variety of creative and participatory research methods such as photography, drawing, building models, writing, workshops and walks, as well as interviews, focus groups and discussions. Participants were able to choose their way of collaborating and dictate the uses of their contributions and the direction of the project. Participants were given free access to all the materials, which was used for campaigning (e.g. resisting the destruction of social housing, the destruction of a community garden, etc.), raising awareness, publicity materials and other local causes. This project has worked with children, young adults, adults, elderly persons, homeless people, people with disabilities and mental health issues, housing campaigners and activists, from a variety of ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. As such, the project tells gentrification stories from a variety of perspectives and voices, which often remain unheard in gentrification literature. The generated stories and creative output form the data for my academic research, which investigates the violence of gentrification — the existential impact neoliberal urban change is having on those unable to enjoy the benefits of regeneration. This presentation will provide some insights into the impact of gentrification on my participants by paying attention to their stories and creative materials, but it will mainly talk about the radical agenda of creative methods that help generate (political) stories and active resistance. The hope is to stimulate thought and discussion around (political) participation in creative research methods and how a radical research agenda can make research participants into co-researchers, co-creators and co-producers.
Anita Strasser: I am a photographer / visual sociologist / writer based in Deptford, south-east London. My PhD researches the impact of gentrification on Deptford’s (working-class) population and in January 2020 I published the book Deptford is Changing: a creative exploration of the impact of gentrification the outcome of a 2-year community arts project which worked with over 160 residents. I also write a research blog where I post findings of my research or stories connected to the changing face of Deptford.
Krupa Desai
‘Re-imagining the Village as a Route to Constructing the New Nation: A Study of Photographic Practices on the Theme of Rural Development in Post-Colonial India’
+ Abstract
At midnight on 15 August 1947, India announced its Independence from colonial rule. The new government under Prime Minister J. Nehru had to direct public consciousness from a state of crisis left in the aftermath of the colonial rule, to a belief in a new future that was going to be different from the present. Visually, this marks an important phase in the history of South Asia because of concerted attempts to re-organize national vision and establish a new way of seeing – as a post-colonial, now independent nation on its way to ‘achieve’ modernity. The decade of the 1950s saw an initiation of several rural re-development projects in India, which hoped to alter the image of villages from ‘primitive and backward’ to modern and futuristic, thereby changing the global image of India from an underdeveloped to a modern nation.
In this context, my paper will look at one specific photograph album gifted to Nehru by the engineers working on a rural re-development program in the Ganga Khadar region, to explore the visual markers of development and re-construction as they emerge in the discourse of post-colonial modernity. What is the existing image of the village that the developmental planners are trying hard to alter? Is there an ideal image of a ‘modern’ village, as suggested by these photographs? My paper will hope to address these questions. In doing so, it will also attempt to examine the production of the photographic album for cues of internal dissonances and divergences as the makers of the album grapple with a state enforced definition of modernity.
Krupa Desai: I am a fourth year full-time PhD student in History of Art, at the School of Art, Birkbeck. My thesis looks at photographic practices in Nehruvian India, especially in the post-colonial decade of 1950s, and is being supervised by Prof. Steve Edwards.
3B. Room 2 — Esotericism
Chair: Janette Leaf, Department of English, Theatre and Creative Writing, Birkbeck
Marek Iwaniak
‘Modern Witchcraft as Radical Theapoetics’
Ruth Westoby
‘Why is Kuṇḍalinī Gendered Female?’
+ Abstract
Ādiśeṣạ, the primordial snake supporting the cosmos, is gendered male. Kuṇḍalinī, the esoteric serpent energy coiled at the base of the yogic body, is female. What role does the gender of kuṇḍalinī play in premodern Haṭhayoga?
This paper interrogates the gendered presentation of kuṇḍalinī in Sanskrit texts on Haṭhayoga. Kuṇḍalinī is the coiled, snake-like energy, synonymous with the female pole of the godhead, śakti. The reception history of this concept, refracted through psychoanalysis and New Age thought, has articulated a sexually, socially and psychologically liberating interpretation. By contrast, in the early Haṭha corpus, 11th–15th centuries, kuṇḍalinī is manipulated through physical and meditative techniques to realise gnoseological and soteriological empowerments. This paper delves into the textual record in Sanskrit texts such as the Gorakṣaśataka, Yogabīja and Khecarīvidyā to outline first how kuṇḍalinī is gendered feminine, and second, why.
This presentation notes the sexual and at times violent imagery deployed and asks what role a gendered duality plays in the technology of Haṭhayoga. Is the gendering of the yogic body purely accidental, conforming to antecedent gendered theistic worldviews or should the gendered duality of the yogic body be understood in terms of praxis — a duality that is amenable to physical and ritual manipulation regardless of its place in the history of ideas? Further, what are the ontological implications of a feminine principle interiorised within the bodies of, at times, celibate male practitioners?
Approaching this material through a feminist lens exposes the instrumentality of kuṇḍalinī that is at once violent, erotic, and reverential. The material suggests glimpses of the social and material world of premodern haṭha practitioners without, however, clarifying the status of women — whether practitioners or not.
Ruth Westoby is a doctoral candidate in the South Asia department of the School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics at SOAS, University of London. Her thesis is provisionally entitled ‘Bodies in Haṭhayoga: Gender, Materiality and Power’. Ruth has an article in press with Religions of South Asia on ‘Rajas in Haṭhayoga and Beyond’.
+ Abstract
Despite the exponential growth of academic interest in esotericism and occultism, Modern Witchcraft (a family of inter-related magico-religious movements devoted to reviving pre-Christian and historically marginalised forms of religiosity, as exemplified chiefly by Wicca) remains among infrequent interlocutors for the philosophy of religion, as do most New Religious Movements. My research seeks to articulate a contact situation between these two worlds, analysing how thealogies of Modern Witchcraft express — in their own esoteric ways — many of the same issues which are being named and evoked in Continental philosophy of religion, especially among thinkers at the intersection of Radical Theology and New Materialism. In this paper, I will focus in particular on how Modern Witchcraft frames its praxis in terms of what could be named ‘Radical Theapoetics’, a form of theological discourse blurring the boundaries between metaphysical and post-metaphysical, realist and fictionalist, philosophical and poetic forms of theology, in service of embodying alternative experiences of both the sacred and the profane in a post-Death of God situation.
Marek Iwaniak is a third-year PhD student in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Kent, Department of Religious Studies.
3C. Room 3 — Three-Minute Thesis 2: History and Memory
Chair: Jon Winder, School of History, Kent
Eleanor Stinson, School of History, University of East Anglia
‘Continental Influences on English Coinage and Administration in the Twelfth Century’
(numismatics; Angevins; medieval)
Amanda Taylor, Department of History, SOAS, University of London
‘Memories from the Margins: Decolonising Colonial Encounters on India’s North-East Frontier’
(borderlands; Himalaya; military; diaries; oral tradition)
Joshua de Cruz, Department of History, University of Essex
‘Half Caste and Cast Aside: The Eurasian Experience in Singapore and Malaya from 1919 to 1965’
(post-colonial; Asian nationalism; British empire)
Johan Spillner, History of Art, Birkbeck, University of London
‘Fragments of Islamic Architecture: Representation of Architectural Objects in Early Museum Collections’
(nineteenth century; Islamic architecture; Western art collection)
Ann Gillan, Department of History, Open University
‘Promoting the Third Reich to a Global Audience: The National Socialist Magazine series Freude und Arbeit’
(Nazi; propaganda; publication; design; international)
Chris Groenveld Walker, Department of Film, Media, and Cultural Studies, Birkbeck, University of London
‘Memory Through Landscape: An Exploration of the ‘Spatial Turn’ in Holocaust Mediation’
(Holocaust memory; practice-research; film studies)
Jacinta Mallon, School of History, University of Kent
‘Navigating Home-loss in Urban Britain, 1939–1960’
(WWII Britain; spatial history; emotional history)
Peter Wood, Department of History, Birkbeck
‘Homelessness, Vagrancy, and the Welfare State, 1939–1979’
(social policy, poverty, citizenship, postwar Britain)
3D. Room 4 — Brief Encounters Session
Brief Encounters is a peer reviewed online journal produced and edited by CHASE students. The journal has a wide brief, and, unusually, invites both academic articles and creative contributions. These might include poems, prose writing and audio of video works, together with a short commentary. At this session the current editorial board, all of whom are CHASE-funded PhD researchers, will discuss their experiences of editing the journal. Recruitment for the 2021/22 editorial board will begin in early 2021.
+ Editorial Board members
Sandy Balfour, Senior Editor, alexander.balfour@uea.ac.uk, University of East Anglia
Mina Radovic, Submissions Editor, mrado001@gold.ac.uk, Goldsmiths, University of London
Marta Colombo, Creative Editor, mc909@kent.ac.uk, University of Kent
Grace Thomson, Reviews Editor, Grace.Thompson@uea.ac.uk, University of East Anglia
Fiamma Mozzetta, Articles Editor, fmozz001@gold.ac.uk, Goldsmiths, University of London
3E. Room 5 — Diversity Network Session
Jack Rutherford
The CHASE Diversity Network will be present at Birkbeck Encounters. In keeping with the nature of the group, this will be a safe and respectful environment for retreat, contemplation, and discussion.
If there are any themes that anyone would particularly like to engage with during this session, please get in touch with Jack: jr18977@essex.ac.uk
The Diversity Network advocates the diversity of academic citizenship for students with disability, both physical, invisible, and mental health.
Jack Rutherford is a third year PhD student at the University of Essex. His thesis considers representations of Native Americans in film. Jack also teaches in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies and is an Assistant Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
3F. Room 6 — HOW ARE YOU? #Sergina’s Participatory Soap Opera about Wrestling with Wellbeing in the Digital Age
Elly Clarke and Kaajel Patel
NB: This event will be held in a separate Zoom meeting. The link will be shared in the main conference meeting shortly before the event, and will be available in the chat of breakout room 6.
‘HOW ARE YOU?’ is an hour-long investigation into your wellbeing in the digital age, led by #Sergina Agents Elly Clarke and Kaajel Patel. The performance engages the audience directly via questions asked in real time, and via a Google form that they can fill out. People can choose to be involved as Voyeurs (via YouTube) or Participants (via Zoom). We want your data. We want your facts. Your wellbeing is of our utmost concern. Please answer the agent when spoken to.