Signs on screen: deafness and sign language in contemporary film
Seminar
The screen is a privileged site for representing sign languages, and for translating them to hearing audiences via subtitles. The auditory nature of cinema – with its capacity for cutting, muffling and distorting sound – also allows hearing audiences to perceive Deaf perspectives in immersive and…
Works that Shaped the World: The Concepts and Practices Associated with “Model Organisms”
Seminar
This talk explores the concept of the ‘model organism’ in contemporary biology. Use of non-human organisms such as fruitflies, mice, and worms has become ubiquitous in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and many major discoveries have been made with these animals. Thinking about model…
Books that Changed Humanity: Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
Seminar
How did a relatively obscure study of manners and mores in mid 20th century Shetland Islands turn into one of the most influential texts within the social sciences? Shakespeare reminds us that ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ Goffman goes deep into how that play…
Who’s Afraid of Sigmund Freud? Musicological Responses to Psychobiography
Seminar
Psychobiography has often held an uneasy position in the writing of musical biography. Ernest Newman’s: The Man Liszt: A Study of a Tragi-comedy of a Soul Divided Against Itself (1934) attempted to ride the wave of the debunking biography model laced with a psychoanalytic angle, but few of the…
Works that Shaped the World: Malthus and the Modern World
Lecture
As the planet approaches 8 billion, international debate on population will be ignited again, and as with 7 billion, 6 billion and 5 billion, discussion will still circle around Thomas Robert Malthus and his Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). Why does a controversial text from the…
Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities (Virtual Book Launch)
Book launch
This zoom webinar will launch the new book Race, Class and Christianity in South Africa: Middle-Class Moralities by Ibrahim Abraham. Exploring the relationship between race and class among middle-class Christians in South Africa, this book will be of interest to researchers of South African culture…
Works that Shaped the World: ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-III’
Seminar
The third edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM-III, is widely regarded as a watershed in the history of psychiatry. Published in 1980 after years of tense negotiation within the profession, this iteration of the manual reoriented psychiatric…