Events
Take a look at upcoming events we are running.
Upcoming events
We run a monthly seminar during term time, which is usually held online and is open to all. To register, please contact Constance Bantman (c.bantman@surrey.ac.uk).
Upcoming events (semester 2)
Discussion of two articles on border abolitionism and queer mobilities.
Joint seminar with our international partner, the Mobilities and Humanities Centre at the University of Padua.
Guest lecture by Chiara Rabbiosi on video-making as a mobilities research pedagogy and discussion.
If you would like your own work to be discussed, please get in touch! In the past we have discussed grant applications, article drafts, thesis chapters, and even an exhibition project. This always proves very beneficial and interesting for all involved.
Past events (semester 1)
Introductions. Time to hear about everyone's current and ongoing projects, publications etc.
We will read the attached text, exploring urban mobilities, which we have not discussed for some time: 'The Second City in Literary Urban Studies: Methods, Approaches, Key Thematics'
Queer Second Cities – Challenges, Perspectives, Possibilities. At this digital, free roundtable event, we want to discuss with you and a small group of experts what a queer second city might be. Is it an urban LGBTQIA2S+ space that is not located in a capital city? Could it be any queer space on the periphery on metropolitan locations? Is there a connection between the notion of second cities and Beauvoir's second sex? Please join us to explore the challenges, perspectives and possibilities queerness outside of first cities represents.
Please send us any material you would like to discuss with the group; we will also work on the collaborative article which we started last year on subjectivity in research. If you have contributed a piece, please do try to attend! If you can't please get in touch and we will explore alternative slots.
Joint session with our partners from the University of Padua's Mobility & Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies. We have just signed a Memorandum of Understanding with this very established group and will be exploring our shared interests and future projects.
For this session, we will host Dr Elsa Devienne (Northumbria University) exploring environmental histories of the everyday and everyday mobilities.
From the beach to the school gates: environmental histories of the everyday
Going to the beach and picking up your child at the school gates: these are unremarkable, ordinary behaviours that are rarely fodder for historical research. Yet from an environmental history perspective, both activities can reveal much about an individual's relationship to the environment and, more broadly, how they experience and make sense of their social class, their race or their femininity/masculinity. In this presentation, Dr Elsa Devienne, an Assistant professor in history at Northumbria University, will explore these two mundane activities through the lens of environmental history and the history of the body. Dr Devienne's first book, Sand Rush: The Revival of the Beach in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles is coming out next spring with Oxford University Press. Sand Rush recounts the formidable campaign that transformed Los Angeles into one of the world's greatest coastal metropolises, revealing how the city's man-made shores became the site for the reinvention of seaside leisure and the triumph of modern bodies. It not only uncovers how the Los Angeles coastline was constructed but also how this major planning and engineering project affected the lives of ordinary city-dwellers and attracted many Americans to move to Southern California. The book is a translated and expanded version of the French original publication, which won the 2021 Willi Paul Adams Award given by the Organization of American Historians. Elsa Devienne will also present some of her new research on the history of everyday mobilities in the postwar period. She is particularly interested in the modern ritual of the "school run” in the UK and what it says about car dominance, cultural narratives of class and parenthood, and the politics of air pollution. From the beach to the school gates, this dual presentation will challenge you to think about how political choices have shaped the nature we encounter on our doorsteps.
School of Literature and Languages events
Our researchers contribute to a series of conferences, seminars and annual outreach events held at Surrey or based in the local area.