http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/ Arts/cultural events in Cambridge en-gb http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/logo.png http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3002/territorial-phantom-pains-and-other-cartographic-anxieties/
Abstract

The study of borders has traditionally been the remit of political geography. Territorial disputes in particular have frequently been approached in terms of their economic and geopolitical significance. However political geography has found it notably difficult to account for a nation’s strong emotional attachment to territories that are often small, with little material or geopolitical value. In fact, if territorial disputes are conceptualised as disputes at state level, resolutions are frequently hampered by the emotional attachment of ordinary citizens to these ‘tiny specks of largely uninhabited and essentially useless isles or peaks’ (Chung 2004). State leaders are forced to play a two-level game of negotiations, with the other country as well as with their domestic constituents.

Such emotional responses bear testimony to the intimate melding of individual and national identities. Socialised into seeing themselves as inherently tied to the nation in its current physical incarnation, individuals frequently perceive the loss of national territory as an assault on bodily integrity. In revisiting the common trope of the nation-as-body through inclusion of valuable insights from neuroscience, my paper will explore what happens when a lack of fit intervenes between the physical geographical extent of the nation and the mental map held by its inhabitants. Such a disconnect becomes especially visible when a nation loses part of its territory. ‘Lost’ territories, no longer included within the national body, remain nonetheless part of a previous national incarnation. As such, they frequently draw national sentiments and affect, producing what can be labelled ‘phantom pains’. Similar disconnects can also occur when a nation finds itself in rapid expansion: as the borders of the nation extend outwards to include more and more territory, the divide between self and Other becomes clouded, and the mental map of that nation’s citizens requires constant reframing.

The event is free to attend but registration is required. Please click on the link on the right hand side of this page: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2022/

About Franck Billé

Franck Billé is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology, and member of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, Cambridge. His current project focuses on representation and mimicry in the twin cities of Blagoveshchensk and Heihe, on the Sino-Russian border. He previously carried out research in Mongolia where he investigated the prevalence of anti-Chinese sentiments. He has published articles in Inner Asia, Cambridge Anthropology and Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Spectral Presences: Anxiety, Excess and Anti-Chinese Speech in Postsocialist Mongolia.]]> arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3002/territorial-phantom-pains-and-other-cartographic-anxieties/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3046/what-is-media-archaeology/ Abstract

Dr Jussi Parikka will offer an introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology and analyse the innovative theoretical and artistic methodology used to excavate current media through its past.

What is Media Archaeology examines the theoretical challenges of studying digital culture and memory and opens up the sedimented layers of contemporary media culture. The author contextualizes media archaeology in relation to other key media studies debates including software studies, German media theory, imaginary media research, new materialism and digital humanities.]]> arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3046/what-is-media-archaeology/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3047/what-is-media-archaeology/ Abstract

Dr Jussi Parikka will offer an introduction to the emerging field of media archaeology and analyse the innovative theoretical and artistic methodology used to excavate current media through its past.

What is Media Archaeology examines the theoretical challenges of studying digital culture and memory and opens up the sedimented layers of contemporary media culture. The author contextualizes media archaeology in relation to other key media studies debates including software studies, German media theory, imaginary media research, new materialism and digital humanities.]]> arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3047/what-is-media-archaeology/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/2729/applied-urban-modelling-aum2012/
AUM2012 is the second of a planned series of annual symposia for discussing applied urban simulation models that offer insight into complex dynamics of urban change and inform practical initiatives.]]> arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/2729/applied-urban-modelling-aum2012/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3044/a-conversation-with-adam-thorpe/ arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3044/a-conversation-with-adam-thorpe/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3049/beowulf-v/ arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3049/beowulf-v/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3045/the-tastes-of-wine-towards-a-cultural-history/ arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3045/the-tastes-of-wine-towards-a-cultural-history/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3001/a-little-ghost-in-natural-colors-nabokov-and-the-reproduction-of-colour/
Abstract

In writing in 1971 that ‘a bad memoirist re-touches his past, and the result is a blue-tinted or pink-shaded photograph’, Nabokov locates himself on the snobbish side of a contemporary debate about the merits of colour photography. The problem with photographic colour has always been that the effect can seem artificial. But it was in the 1950s and 1960s, when coloured images in magazines and films, and later in polaroid snapshots and on television screens, were gradually becoming normal that their ‘bepop and electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens’ – to borrow the photographer Walker Evans’s sneering phrases – came to suggest a lack of cultural sophistication. As Evans writes: ‘There are four words which must be whispered: colour photography is vulgar.’ In reading the self-consciously artificial colours of Lolita (1955) and Pale Fire (1962) as an aspect of the larger interest in misrepresentation which characterises Nabokov’s post-war work, this paper will consider his sense of the ‘vulgarity’ of garishness as a mode of inspiration. In both these novels, I will argue, unnatural or ‘natural’ colour is crucial to the conception of fictional worlds.

The event is free to attend but registration is required: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2023/

About Beci Dobbin

Beci Dobbin is in the fourth year of her junior research fellowship at Trinity College, Cambridge. She works on Modernist literature and popular culture, with an emphasis on photography and film. She is currently gathering material for a book on Nabokov's shallowness.]]> arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3001/a-little-ghost-in-natural-colors-nabokov-and-the-reproduction-of-colour/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3048/this-project-will-self-destruct-in-five-years/
A Cambridge Digital Humanities for Early Career Researchers Workshop

The Cambridge Digital Humanities Network for Early Career researchers team is holding a workshop for postgraduates and early career researchers engaged in, or looking into, digital humanities, including the arts and social sciences. If you are an early career digital humanities researcher at Cambridge and you wish to present your project in this workshop, please click here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2034/

The event is free to attend but registration is required online http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/2034/

Confirmed speakers

Dr Stewart Brookes (DigiPal)
Dr Charles Crowther (Vindolanda project)
Dr James Brown (Cultures of Knowledge)
Chris Martin (CARET, University of Cambridge)
Dr Alison Pearn (Darwin Correspondence project, University of Cambridge)
Professor Andrew Prescott (King’s College London)
Professor Alison Sinclair (Wrongdoing in Spain project, University of Cambridge)

& lightning presentations by Cambridge Early Career Researchers]]> arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3048/this-project-will-self-destruct-in-five-years/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3020/annual-dinner-black-tie/ arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3020/annual-dinner-black-tie/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/2642/charting-vanishing-voices/ arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/2642/charting-vanishing-voices/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3057/new-approaches-to-maternal-mortality-in-africa/
The following two areas, taken together, will form the focus of the conference:

1. Biological mechanisms determining birth outcomes
2. The social and historical context for maternal mortality in Africa

We see this as a unique opportunity to bring together those with experience of implementing initiatives aimed at reducing MMR with researchers from different but highly relevant academic disciplines. Our focus on this important issue will enable us to bring together the latest research in fields that all too often do not ‘talk’ to each other. An additional question to be posed in the course of this conversation concerns the very nature of interdisciplinary enquiry. Do we have a language with which to talk meaningfully of the interactions between biology and history? To what extent can basic scientific research inform policy-making?]]> arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/3057/new-approaches-to-maternal-mortality-in-africa/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/2632/language-endangerment-methodologies-and-new-challenges/ arts http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/2632/language-endangerment-methodologies-and-new-challenges/ http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/add.html cusu http://www.cusu.cam.ac.uk/events/add.html