This month we are celebrating the work of Prof. Nicoleta Cinpoeş who has both been successful in her application to the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange and whose book project Shakespeare on European Festival Stages, has just been released by the prestigious Bloomsbury Press, in the Arden Shakespeare series.

Shakespeare on European Festival Stages emerges from Prof. Cinpoeş work with and on Shakespeare Festivals, spanning over a decade, work which has been instrumental in conceptualising this European phenomenon, as well as its impact on festivals’ cultural agency and on Shakespeare performed. Edited in collaboration with Prof. Florence March (University of Montpellier) and Prof. Paul Prescott (University of California, Merced), the volume will be launched at a number of festivals across Europe, the first being scheduled at the International Shakespeare Festival, Craiova, Romania, in May 2022.

In addition to this prestigious publication, Prof. Cinpoeş has been awarded the maximum grant in the Ulam Programme of The Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange (NAWA). The Programme supports outstanding foreign researchers from around the world to collaborate with Polish universities and scientific institutions.  Of the 290 applications across all fields of research, 51 were successful

Her project: Romeo and Juliet: The East-side Story will be conducted on location and in partnership with the University of Warsaw between 1 August 2022 – 31 March 2023. The work focuses on telling the ‘East side story’ of Romeo and Juliet. It aims first to map out the play’s arrival in countries positioned, in terms of borders – both geographical and of adaptation – East and secondly, to assess whether its early stage and print success holds in the third millennium. Building on her previous research on Hungary and Romania, it aims to explore the early and most recent life of the play in Poland, and longer term to expand to Bulgaria, Serbia and Greece. This opportunity is crucial to writing the broader narrative of Romeo and Juliet in the region and the impact it had on the reception of Shakespeare in Central and Eastern Europe, providing the missing pieces to a timely, updated history of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in performance.

In this month’s Doctoral Student Spotlight we meet Abbey Ballard, who introduces us to her PhD project.

Having completed my undergraduate degree in Literary Studies at the University of Worcester in 2017, I am very happy to be returning to the department to begin my PhD project within the Environmental Humanities.

While I began my academic journey as an ecocritic, as I furthered my understanding within this field of study the connection between ecological degradation and social injustice became overwhelming, particularly with regard to the experiences of Indigenous communities around the world. Through a persistence of settler colonialism which violently disrupts Indigenous relations with the land, environmental injustices continue to be committed. It is therefore clear that discourses of ecology are often closely related to those of colonialism.

In 2016, the Dakota Access Pipeline protests were led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the construction of a new crude oil pipeline which would cross their ancestral homelands and lead to the possible contamination of their local water source. The protest gained support from around the world, both from other Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous peoples. My literary project will investigate how similar acts of protest and resistance are taking place within the written word. Focusing on contemporary writing by Native American and Aboriginal Canadian women, my project will seek to answer the question of how these authors are approaching issues of environmental and social justice within their work to not only actively challenge Western colonial ideologies, but also concepts of genre.

Centring my analysis on innovative literary works of political Indigenous activism, I will emphasise the importance of Indigenous authors who reject Western literary norms and are instead reclaiming traditional tribal storytelling practices within their writing through the use of creation myths, lyrical language, and interspecies tales. We only have to look to recent events to see how deeply entrenched issues of colonialism and dispossession are within Western society. My hope is that through my research, and with the support of the excellent team at Worcester, I will be able to explore how non-Indigenous critics, such as myself, can best support and amplify Indigenous voices of political resistance through a reading of shared environmental concern and solidarity

Professor Jean Webb discusses her newly accepted abstract on children, pandemics and literature.

Prof Jean Webb has had a proposal accepted by the Book 2.0 Journal for an article entitled ‘Ghosts, murder and mutation: literary approaches to pandemic disasters’ which will discuss the various ways that texts for children have approached pandemics and trace the emergent themes. The coronavirus pandemic has stimulated a number of texts aimed at helping children to cope with situations alien to them. For example, the picture book Staying Home by Sally Nichols and Vivienne Schwarz (2020) deals with the conditions of lockdown and family isolation whilst Piperpotamus by Annis Watts, endeavours to explain Covid-19.

Tragically this pandemic is not the only such event in history. The Black Death swept across Europe (1347- 1351); The Great Plague in 1665 and the Spanish Flu pandemic, 1918-1920 stimulating historical fiction for older children and Young Adults interestingly employing differing literary approaches. For instance, Cat Winters’ In the Shadow of Blackbirds (2013), incorporates a ghost story set against the contexts of séances and spirit photographers as the bereaved hope to gain comfort, whilst Charles Todd’s An Unmarked Grave (2012), is a murder mystery. Dystopian science fiction has also been employed to examine the equivalent circumstances of such pandemics. The plague in Michael Grant’s Gone (2008-2014) follows a nuclear disaster which has produced a world where only those under fifteen have survived beneath a dome created by a young autistic child at the point of the explosion. Unforeseen forces have erupted resulting in mutation where individuals have super-natural powers taking them into a posthuman state. Their world is later blighted by plague and the children have to deal with re-making their lives and their society without the help of adults. These texts are not merely entertainment but give our current generation of children ways of thinking about their present and their futures.

In this post we introduce you to Ollie Case, a PhD candidate who will be joining the Department of English, Media and Culture in October. Ollie‘s project concerns the non-human in the work of Virginia Woolf. Here he tells us a little about his journey to a PhD at Worcester and how his interest in Woolf’s work developed.

In the third year of my undergraduate degree at Royal Holloway college of London I chose to study two ‘Special Author Projects’, each comprehensively studying one author’s body of work, rather than writing a dissertation. I picked Thomas Hardy and Virginia Woolf for these two projects on the basis that I had enjoyed Far from the Madding Crowd and that I was also interested in Modernist women’s writing. I quickly learned the value of reading an author’s oeuvre from start to finish and found that my greatest interest lay in Woolf. I wrote a paper on her innovative examinations of the nonhuman in several of her novels. My fascination with Woolf increased while studying for my master’s degree at Goldsmiths college of London. Here I studied a range of movements in modern literary history but found I was drawn back to Woolf time and again. Her examinations of the human psyche, our relationship to others and to the other-than-human are uniquely compelling and provocative. I wrote my thesis on three of her novels, exploring ideas of ‘intersubjectivity’ and multifaceted consciousness, and became inspired to pursue Woolf studies to doctoral level.

In the years that followed, the ideas I had formulated during both degrees began to crystallise and formed the foundations of my doctoral project. The field of environmental humanities is fast growing and has already resulted in fascinating new understandings of the role of literature on the world stage, the position of the human within the natural world, and the future of human identities. Woolf’s writing can and should play an important role in this new movement of literary criticism as an author whose works present understandings of consciousness and identity, human and nonhuman, which are so radically different and have left such an influential mark on the landscape of literature.

While exploring the ideas of recent critics in this area, I found there has been little if any study of Woolf’s approach to the nonhuman in relation to her manipulation of form and narrative style. In her later novels Woolf experiments drastically with different ways of communicating a radical vision of the natural world and the position of the human within it, pushing, stretching, and manipulating language and form to communicate that which evades human understanding because it exists beyond our reach. In reading Woolf from these perspectives, exciting new pathways appear. Looking to twenty-first century theories of posthumanism or earlier formulations of assemblage theory, for example, I found that there are vistas of new insight to be found in studying Woolf from an eco-critical point of view and that in doing so I might also be able to increase the scope and influence of the environmental humanities in literary studies.

During and after the completion of my doctoral studies I hope to continue research, disseminate my work as widely as possible, teach others and share my passion for Woolf studies with as many interested people as I can.

Guest Post by Amy Hill

Studying a degree in English Literature allows you to learn about so much more than texts alone, you become knowledgeable in history, politics, sociology, gender equality, culture – the list goes on! I chose Worcester University because I fell in love with the city and the campus, the humanities department is extremely friendly, supportive and they have expert knowledge in their subject fields. My lecturers have supported me in so many ways to achieve the best in my degree – as a mature student I have appreciated their support in helping me on my academic journey.

After my degree, I will be studying an MA in English Literature with the University of Worcester and after this a PGCE. I enjoyed the course so much I just really had to give myself an extra year with the University of Worcester and the lecturers in the English department.

My career options are so vast – currently I worked, and will work next year, with the Academic Sponsorship Trust as a student facilitator with a charity that supports people who have experienced homelessness or are homeless in Worcestershire, we read aloud to re-engage with education and confidence. I also work as an Editor / Reader for an online magazine and take part in the Worcester Literature and Fringe community. The great thing about studying with the University of Worcester is you become part of a community and have the opportunity to give to the people in the community. I really wish I had realised all the possibilities and opportunities that were available to me as a student at Worcester earlier and taken full advantage!

My advice to a first year studying English Literature is to get involved with everything in the department. The humanities department runs additional lectures on the evenings which are open to everyone and it gives you an opportunity to see how lecturers prepare and present new academic papers. My second piece of advice would be to make use of all the free educational material the university gives you access to and in this vein – Show up to all your lectures and do the reading! When you’re prepared a lecture is so much better. Finally, your lecturers are there to help – so if you need help just ask.

At Worcester you can combine your study of English with multiple other subjects, including Film Studies, as either a Joint Honours degree or in a Major/Minor arrangement. Ahead of starting his third year of his English and Film Studies degree, our student Aaron Johnson tells us about a highlight of his course so far and how it shaped his engagement with both sides of his degree.

My first year English module, ‘Introduction to Literature’ established a deeper interest in dramas, acquainting me with Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe. Prior to my studies I lacked ability to engage with the play form. Surprisingly I fell in love with Faustus, learning that, as a Film Studies student, the narrative is an integral staple and cornerstone for modern day story-telling, inspiring media ranging from Netflix’s film Upgrade, The Comedian and episode of Jordan Peele’s rebooted The Twilight Zone, and even an episode of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty. As my education has continued and my contact with dramatic texts has increased, I’ve even stumbled upon my current favourite play The Tempest, by William Shakespeare. Comparatively, film studies expanded on my personal interest for film score and soundtrack, exploring it further through the likes of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, and James Gunn’s Guardian’s of the Galaxy Vol.2. Strengthening my ability to analyse sound and view a film entirely through soundtrack, be it diegetic (within the film’s world) or non-diegetic (beyond the film’s world), I found an ever-expanding interest that I now aim to expand and utilise in my third-year dissertation on the works of John Powell.

For more information on studying English Literature with Film Studies check out our course page https://www.worcester.ac.uk/courses/english-literature-and-film-studies-ba-hons or email our admissions tutor Dr Lucy Arnold lucy.arnold@worc.ac.uk