Trumpeting from the post-92s

This academic year, as the current group leader for Theorising Visual Art and Design (TVAD), I have decided to focus the programme of talks on the truly excellent research being conducted by scholars at University of Hertfordshire's School of Creative Arts.

This is not simply a nod to the REF (Research Excellence Framework) and the need to create IMPACT for our scholarship, but because I have found since coming to the University of Hertfordshire from the University of Cambridge how much class is internalised and enacted by many of those who work in the post-92 universities. For those outside the UK - or young - the post-92 universities were Polytechnics until 1992, and were therefore populated mostly by (white and male) working class lecturers and working class students from a range of backgrounds taking manual trades and related fields like art and design. Universities such as Cambridge crow easily - and with decorous aplomb - about their research successes. Many of my colleagues at Hertfordshire find this more difficult to do, assuming it is blowing one's own trumpet in all the wrong ways.

Across the School we have numerous scholars who have had their books published recently so I have decided to launch this year's talks programme with one by our Associate Dean for Research,

Dr Steven Adams will be talking about his new publication

Landscape Painting in Revolutionary France: Liberty's Embrace

(Routlege 2019)

 

‘Something happened and I wrote about it’

A review by Stewart Lee, 2015

Steven’s book looks at how we might deal with a tsunami of material when we write a book/thesis, an albatross around all our necks perhaps?  The book isn’t really about landscape painting, it’s is about space, fantasies about space flight and devil abduction and being buried alive: the ‘y’ rather than the ‘x’ axis of space. There’s even a bit about revolution and necrophilia. The project was an intimidating one but by turning to some helpful mentors – Aristotle, Freud, Foucault, Deleuze Nietzsche, Proust and TVAD colleagues – I found a way through it and enjoyed the adventure …

Future talks -

13 Nov 2019 - Stephen Hunt (UH Designer and UH DEd candidate) - On Creativity

15 Jan 2020 - Prof Grace Lees-Maffei

19 Feb 2020 - Dr Silvio Carta

1 Apr 2020 - Dr Alana Jelinek