Sign Up Sessions 4 - Day 2 - 10:00 - 11:15

Sessions Available:

There are three options to choose from for the block of sign-up sessions on Day 2 of the Congress. The details of all three sessions are below, and you must use the relevant link to register your attendance for your chosen session via Inkpath.

Please be aware that some sessions have very limited capacities, and that spaces are available in all sessions on a first-come-first served basis. 

All three sessions run from 10:00 - 11:15.

Imaginative Archives: Recovering, Dismantling, and Re-Imagining the Diasporic Space. 

Session Details:

This workshop explores and pushes at the boundaries of an archive. It asks, how can we see an archive not only as a collection, but as community. It examines how how when faced with dislocation from one’s cultural history and memory, how imagination can be a necessary tool to recover, dismantle, and create a communal archive. In this workshop we will collage (arti)fact with fiction, and explore how we can create from memory as an unreliable narrator. We will be making art, write prompted by our collages, and hold a discussion on this practice. The workshop offers a hands-on approach for researchers seeking to work across different genres, while building a collaborative, community-focused research practice. 

Speakers / Facilitators: 

San Pham is a Vietnamese-American Doctoral Researcher in Creative Writing at the University of Surrey . Her research examines how postcolonial Asian diasporic multimodal literature re-imagines an archive for Asian stories that have been lost, destroyed, or unwritten. Her work delves into multiple forms, genres, and languages as necessary acts of imagination against diasporic disconnection.

Negotiating 18th century opera performance: Handel’s Rinaldo.

Session Details: 

Handel’s Rinaldo (1711) was the first Italian opera composed especially for London. Based on Torquato Tasso’s epic Gerusalemme liberata – a fictionalised account of the First Crusade – the opera put emphasis on the spectacular, visually and vocally, breathing a new life into the theatrical world of London, still rigid after Civil War restrictions. What is intriguing about an opera like Rinaldo is that while it turned Tasso’s epic into spectacular entertainment that continued to attract spectators for decades to come, now it rarely figures in opera repertoires, superseded by 19th century operatic blockbusters. When it is performed, two tendencies emerge. In full-length productions, directors offer their own interpretation of the opera, but they are often criticised for distancing themselves from the world of medieval knights. Most commonly, however, parts of Rinaldo are performed as a chamber concert, bringing our attention entirely to the music. In this paper, I would like to consider how the changes in the opera industry since the early 18th century have influenced the afterlife of Rinaldo. I will do this through a comparison of reports of early productions of Rinaldo with two examples of recent performances, focusing on how (and if) the three reinterpret (or ignore) the fantastical elements of Tasso’s story. This paper is part of a wider discussion surrounding 18th century opera as a means of story(re)telling across cultures, disciplines, time and place, that is central to my PhD project. 

Speakers / Facilitators: 

Adrianna Chmielewska is a second-year PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her project focuses on adaptation of literature into 18th century opera, specifically operas after the Italian tradition composed for non-Italian audiences. 

An Introduction to Working in the Radio Broadcast Industry.

Session Details: 

This session will introduce the different roles involved in the radio broadcasting industry. It will introduce entry level positions, and progression opportunities within radio networks, with emphasis on the BBC as a large broadcasting corporation and comparison with independent networks. An introductory talk will introduce the roles at the BBC, followed by group exercises and discussion.

Speakers / Facilitators: 

Jo Hutton Langton is a BBC Radio and media Technical Producer of twenty lus years having worked in different roles across, Radio 2, 3, 4, 5, Radio News and Current Affairs and BBC World Service.