Saturday 26 July 2014

OUT NOW: Prison Service Journal (July 2014, No. 214)

Special Edition: The Prison and the Public

Contents

Editorial Comment: The Prison and the Public
Dr Alana Barton and Dr Alyson Brown

Review of ‘The Prison and the Public’ Conference, Edge Hill University, Wednesday 27 March 2013
Holly White, Lindsey Ryan, Chris Wadsworth and Phil Williams

Chapter and Verse: The Role of Creating Writing in Reducing Re-offending
Michael Crowley

Free to Write: A Case Study in the Impact of Cultural History Research and Creative Writing Practice
Dr Tamsin Spargo and Dr Hannah Priest

Talking Justice: Building Vocal Public Support for Prison Reform
Katy Swaine Williams and Janet Crowe

Challenging Perceptions: Considering the Value of Public Opinion
Rachel Forster and Liz Knight

Repression and Revolution: Representations of Criminal Justice and Prisons in Recent Documentaries
Dr Jamie Bennett

How the Public Sphere was Privatized and Why Civil Society Could Reclaim it.
Mary S Corcoran

Artist or Offender?: Braving the Mirror
Robin Baillie

Civic Re-engagements Amongst Former Prisoners
Gill Buck

Film review: Everyday (2012)
Dr Jamie Bennett

Book Review: Critique and Dissent: An Anthology to Mark 40 Years of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control; Rethinking Social Exclusion: The End of the Social?; Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism; Why Prison?
Dr Jamie Bennett

For more information, please see the journal website. To download this issue of the PSJ, please click here.

CFP: Manhood in Anglo-Saxon England

Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies (MANCASS)
Easter Conference 2015

Hulme Hall, University of Manchester, UK
7-9 April 2015

Proposals for 20 minute papers on this topic are invited. Topics that the conference will include, but are not limited to:

• Male identities and constructions of masculinity
• Literary presentations and representations of manhood
• Laws and Penitentials
• Male sexualities
• Manhood and Archaeology
• Representations of masculinity in art

We are looking for submissions (approx. 300 words) on these and related subjects to reach us by 30th November 2014. Please send submissions, and direct enquiries to the conference director, Dr Charles Insley, Department of History, University of Manchester.

Saturday 12 July 2014

Hauntings: An Anthology - Launch Party

International Anthony Burgess Foundation
3 Cambridge Street
Manchester M1
United Kingdom

Thursday, 31 July 2014
7-9pm



Come and join us at the launch party for Hauntings: An Anthology, a new collection of short stories from Hic Dragones.

Hauntings: An Anthology - twenty-one new tales of the uncanny

A memory, a spectre, a feeling of regret, a sense of déjà vu, ghosts, machines, something you can’t quite put your finger on, a dark double, the long shadow of a crime, your past, a city’s past, your doppelganger, a place, a song, a half-remembered rhyme, guilt, trauma, doubt, a shape at the corner of your eye, the future, the dead, the undead, the living, someone you used to know, someone you used to be.

We are all haunted.

Join us at the launch party on Thursday July 31st. Readings by: Tracy Fahey, Mark Forshaw, Hannah Kate, Sarah Peploe, James Everington, Michael Hitchins, Daisy Black and Rachel Halsall

Free wine reception, giveaways and launch discount on the book. For more information, please visit the publisher's website.

Wednesday 9 July 2014

Summer Sale from Hic Dragones!

All paperbacks are £4.99 for the whole of July!

To celebrate the publication of Hauntings: An Anthology later this month, all our titles are now just £4.99 (plus p+p).


Check out our catalogue for more information about our titles.

CFP: Gender and Medieval Studies Conference 2015

Gender, Dirt and Taboo

7-9 January 2015
Bangor University

‘to embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure’
Odo of Cluny

The Middle Ages are synonymous with dirt – bodily, spiritual, linguistic and literary. People lived in closer proximity to the material reality of filth: privies, animal waste, the midden, and while walking city streets. Keeping one’s body and clothes uncontaminated by filth would have represented a challenge. The Church took great pains to warn about the polluting effect of sin, and the literal and metaphorical stains that it could leave upon body and soul. The Middle Ages remains (in)famous, to some, due to the perception that its comedy is simply ‘latrine humour.’ Women, with their leaky and pollutant bodies, lie at the heart of the medieval materiality of filth. Throughout her life course, a woman engaged with dirt; in bearing children, caring for the sick, working within the household and outside of the home, listening to sermons in church and to literature in a variety of contexts. In the misogynist discourse of Churchmen such as Odo of Cluny, woman was little more than dirt herself. Odo of Cluny did not acknowledge that manure is, of course, essential to healthy new growth.

We welcome abstracts from postgraduates and colleagues on all aspects of gender, dirt and taboo and from a broad range of disciplines, including history, archaeology, book history, literature, art history, music, theology and medicine.

Papers are particularly welcome on, but are not limited to:

The language of dirt
Dirt in texts/‘dirty’ texts
Landscapes of dirt
Bodily dirt
Dramatising dirt
Dirt and spirituality
Dirt and sexuality
Controlling/cleansing dirt
The comedy of dirt
The science of dirt

Please send abstracts of 200-300 words, for papers lasting 20 minutes, no later than 30 September 2014 to Dr Sue Niebrzydowski (School of English, Bangor University) for consideration. Please also include your research area, institution and level of study in your abstract.

It is hoped that The Kate Westoby Fund will be able to offer a modest contribution (but not the full costs) towards as many student travel expenses as possible.