Please find below the programme for our upcoming workshop on ""Modernism, History, Thought," the first event for our three-year project on "Tradition and the Modern." The workshop features as a public lecture by noted feminist critic Luce Irigaray on the first day.

(And for those of you lucky enough to be in the area on the 27th of May, the Centre is hosting Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, who will give a reading from her new book of short stories Loot, followed by a discussion with Professor Hermione Lee of the University of Oxford and a reception and book signing. This event will take place at 6 pm in the Brunei Gallery Lecture Theatre at SOAS and is open to all on a first-come, first-served basis).

Abstracts for the papers are available on our website at: http://www.soas.ac.uk/literatures/Projects/Modernity/modernityworkshopone.html

To register for the workshop, which will take place in Foster Court 114 at UCL, please write to Gillian Hudson via email. (There are, as usual, no fees or forms.)

Please let Gillian know if you'd like to come to the workshop dinner on the 29th. This costs £5, payable on the first day of the workshop by cash or cheque (a sumptuous feast at a vegetarian Indian restaurant).

We look forward to seeing you at this or one of the other Centre events this term!

Wednesday, 28 May

10.30-11
Registration and Tea/Coffee/Croissants

11-11.30
Timothy Mathews (French, UCL)
Opening Remarks

11.30-1
Chair: Roland-François Lack (French, UCL)

Laura Mulvey (Art, Film and Visual Media, Birkbeck)
Passing Time: Reflections on Cinema from a New Technological Age

Christopher Pinney (Anthropology, UCL)
The Body and the Bomb: Technologies of Modernity in Colonial India

1-2 Lunch (Old Refectory)

2-3.30
Chair: Tim Beasley-Murray (SSEES, UCL)

Malcolm Bowie (Christ's College, Cambridge)
Art and Science in Proust's Writing

Francesca Orsini (Oriental Studies, Cambridge)
The Trouble with Realism: Realism and its Others in the Twentieth-century Hindi Novel

3.30-3.45 Break

3.45-5.15
Chair: Nick Harrison (French, UCL)

Henry Zhao (East Asia. SOAS)
"Buddhist Modernity" as Seen in Recent Chinese Art and Literature

Clare Finburgh (French, UCL)
Tragedy and Postcolonial Modernism: Kateb Yacine and the Algerian War of Independence

5.30
Public Lecture: AV Hill Lecture Theatre, UCL

Chair: Timothy Mathews (French, UCL)
Luce Irigaray
The Time of Becoming Human

7.00
Reception (Old Refectory, UCL)

Thursday, 29 May

9.0-9.30 Tea/Coffee/Croissants

9.30-11.00
Chair: Ada Rapoprt-Albert (Hebrew and Jewish Studies, UCL)

Regenia Gagnier (English, Exeter)
Modernity and Individualism: When Progress and Decadence are Interchangeable Terms

Frank Dikotter (History, SOAS)
Things Modern: Material Culture and Everyday Life in China (1880-1950)

11-11.15 Break

11.15-12.45
Chair: TBC

Susanne Kuechler (Anthropology, UCL)
Rethinking the Surface of Things: Pacific Modernity and Its Relevance

Tania Tribe (Art and Archaeology, SOAS)
Form and Utopia: Imaging Modernity in Africa and Latin America

12.45-1.45 Lunch (Cloisters)

1.45-3.15
Chair: Nanneke Redclift (Anthropology, UCL): TBC

George Sebastian Rousseau (English and Modern Languages, De Montfort)
The New Nostalgia Diagnosis of the Postmodern

Timothy Mathews (French, UCL)
Modernism: A Place of Decay?

3.15-3.30 Break

3.30-5.00
Chair: René Weis (English, UCL)

Martin Swales (German, UCL)
Goethe's 'Faust': History and Modernity

Sabry Hafez (Near and Middle East, SOAS)
Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Literature: A Reversal of a Trajectory

5-5.15 Break

5.15-6.45
Chair: Wen-chin Ouyang (Near and Middle East, SOAS)

Rasheed El-Enany (Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, Exeter)
The Arabs and Europe: The Desire to Emulate

Doris Jedamski (Leiden/Humboldt, Berlin)
The Novel-Humming Ulama, "Ai lap joe", and the Narration of a Nation: Malay Novels at the Brink of Indonesian Independence

7.30
Workshop Dinner at Diwana's Bhel Poori House, Drummond Street (£5 contribution from all participants).

Friday, 30 May

9-9.30 Tea/Coffee/Croissants

9.30-11
Chair: TBC

Christopher Shackle (South Asia and Religions, SOAS)
Spiritual Heritage and Romantic Fantasy in a Modern Urdu Writer

Emma Wilson (French, Cambridge)
Oblivion, the City and the Senses: Hiroshima mon amour

11-11.15 Break

11.15-12.45
Chair: Stephen Hart (Spanish, UCL)

João Cezar de Castro Rocha (Letters, State University of Rio de Janeiro) On Not Traveling to Europe: Mario de Andrade's Voyage around His Country

David Lomas (Art History, Manchester/AHRB Centre for Studies of Surrealism and Its Legacies)
Remedy or Poison? Medicine and Technology in Diego Rivera's History of Cardiology (1943 - 44) Murals

12.45-1.45 Lunch (Old Refectory)

1.45-3.15
Chair: Rachel Harrison (South East Asia, SOAS)

Ben Arps (Cultures of South East Asia and Oceania, Leiden)
Making a Modern Literature in Banyuwangi, East Java

Tsering Shakya (South Asia, SOAS)
Is Tibetan Culture Congruent with Modernity?: Tradition Versus Modernity: The Debate in Tibet

3.15-3.30 Break

3.30-5.00
Chair: Frances Weightman (East Asian Studies, Leeds)

Anna Snaith (English, Anglia Polytechnic)
Colonial Modernism: Una Marson in London

Jeesoon Hong (Chinese Studies, Cambridge)
Transcultural Production of Gendered Modernism in China: Ancient Melodies (1953) by Ling Shuhua (1900-1990)

5.00-5.15 Break

5.15-6.45
Chair: Dimitris Papanikolaou (Comparative Literature, UCL)

Takis Kayalis (Modern Greek Literature, Open Hellenic University)
Mythical Methods of Modernist Criticism: Notes on T.S.Eliot's "Historical Sense"

Rahilya Gheybullayeva (National Academy of Sciences, Azerbaijan)
Context, Dominata, Modernization, or Literary Types in National Literature as a Consequence of Modernization: The Azerbaijani Literature of the Soviet Period

6.45
Christopher Shackle (South Asia and Religions, SOAS)
Closing Remarks and Reception