Bad Journeys, Marvellous Voyages: the Homeric imperative as revealed through Malcolm Lowry, Charles Olson, and local clowns peddling a fibreglass swan from Hastings to Hackney.

Provisional outline (to be tweaked and polished):

The structure will, very roughly, move from the way that the term ‘Waste Land’ (much favoured by early modernism) has been adapted by grand project promoters. With the insistence, before a development blitz takes place, that ‘there was nothing there’. There is a serious flaw in the pitching of ‘legacy’ as a value that can be imposed, top down, rather than earned by passage of time. So we are talking about a corruption of language against the poetry and metaphor of the original Homeric voyages of redemption. A recent expedition, by swan pedalo, undertaken with the film-maker Andrew Kötting, will be offered as one eccentric solution to current difficulties.

Cross-Faculty Lecture Series 2011/12

This coming academic year, KIASH is launching a new cross-faculty lecture series.

Each of the five schools in the Faculty will take turns in hosting a talk by a senior figure from outside the university. The talks will be aimed at Humanities scholars in general, i.e. they will not require specialist knowledge, and are intended to foster both intellectual and social communication across the Faculty. All talks start at 4.30pm (except if otherwise stated)