Date/Time: Tuesday 22 October 2024, 5.30pm

Venue: Curtis Auditorium, Herschel Building, Newcastle University

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Vote for the lecture you want to see (maximum of 1 vote per person).

Voting will close on at 23:59 on Thursday 3 October.

Shortlisted entries:

1. BioDynamic Architectures: A New Generation of Living Buildings by Emily Birch
School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape

Can you imagine a world where our buildings could intrinsically respond to their environment as living organisms do? To breathe, perspire, and regulate their own internal comfort to be at one with their ecosystem without batteries, fuel or a power socket? To live..? With approximately 40% of global CO₂ emissions released by our built environment, such a sustainable future has never been more urgent. By tapping into the incredible resourcefulness of the natural world can we design a new generation of living, breathing, dynamic buildings activated only by some of Nature’s smallest and most powerful engines – bacteria?

2. Curating Welcome: from Theory to Practice by Sophie Ellis
School of Modern Languages

In the wake of far-right riots in the UK, the need for hospitality, or welcome, could not be more urgent. How, then, can art facilitate welcome? In this lecture, I will reflect on how I have used my research on hospitality and French visual culture to co-curate We all come from somewhere, an upcoming exhibition about welcome at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art. Touching upon theories of hospitality, the practicalities of organising an exhibition and the importance of collaborating with displaced communities, I will highlight the opportunities and challenges of doing engagement work in a certified Art Gallery of Sanctuary.

3. Dances with Dalí: Surrealism, Hollywood, and Classic Musicals by Tom Mason
School of Modern Languages

What connects the shocking irrationality of Surrealist art and the whimsical optimism of Hollywood musical films? While they seem an unlikely combination, the American public’s enduring fascination with commercialised Surrealism finds itself reflected throughout classic Hollywood musical films of the 1930s to the 1950s: from 42nd Street to Singin' in the Rain.

With the Surrealist movement celebrating its centenary in October 2024, this study will explore the surprising ways in which the twentieth century’s most notorious avant-garde art movement helped to define one of Hollywood’s favourite and most successful genres.

4. Beyond Shakespeare: Queer Imagination in Renaissance Fiction by Mabel Mundy
School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics

It’s fairly well known that Shakespeare’s stage was full of cross-dressed characters and actors, but where did his ideas come from? This lecture will introduce the historical genre of chivalric romance and its capacity for queer imagination in the sixteenth century. From female characters donning armour and ‘accidentally’ attracting ladies, to male characters discovering the delights of feminine dress, literature shows us that Renaissance writers were interested in challenging the heterosexual norms of their world—and ‘queer fiction’ is less of a modern concept than we might expect.

5. So when do we get to be post-race? by Heather Proctor
School of Arts and Cultures

Despite 21st century proclamations of being beyond race and/or colourblind, 'race' is still alive and kicking. Recent years have seen us all tasked with learning how we fit into these relations of power, and the growing mixed-race population in the UK never gave us the easy route out some had (naively) hoped for. This talk explores the obstacles to a post-racial society, the ways race is reproduced through popular culture, and the way ‘mixed-race’ complexifies, rather than simplifies, how we can envision the future of race. Underscoring this is one crucial question: why are we so scared of confronting ‘race’?

6. Less Magic, More Tragic: The Untold Truth of Witch Hunts by Zoe Waters
School X: Philosophy

Why do we get the witch hunts so wrong? They are treated differently from any other atrocity, insofar as the stereotype used to justify mass murder has become a pop culture icon. The tragic truth is that these so-called witches were not practitioners of 'witchcraft' nor mere victims of religious hysteria, but everyday women targeted for economic and political gain. Discover how our modern fascination with this misunderstood past trivialises the brutal reality of a global massacre, perpetuates a distorted and de-politicised history, fails to honour the victims of femicide, and potentially inhibits meaningful political action towards women’s liberation today.