Monday 17 June 2013

CANCELLATION: Research seminar, Tuesday 18th June

Unfortunately we have had to cancel the research seminar for Tuesday 18th due to both presenters falling ill. Get well soon both!

Due to the time frame it has not been possible to organise new speakers; however we still have the room (... and catering) so the plan is to meet and instead have an informal roundtable on how everyone's year has gone (both good and bad) - in an informal space amongst fellow PhD students.

Apologies for the unavoidably short notice but hope to see you tomorrow nevertheless.

Saturday 15 June 2013

Last Seminar of the year: Tuesday 18th June, 5.30pm

Our final research seminar of this academic year takes place this Tuesday (18th). We hope you can join us there and for drinks afterwards!

Where: Arts II 3.16
When: Refreshments from 5pm, papers start at 5.30pm


Dr Alison Moore, University of Western Sydney and Visiting Scholar, QMUL
A Chapter in the History of Biologism: Evolution in Interwar Medical and
Psychoanalytic Views of Sex


The interwar period saw the development of a substantial uptake of genetic dimensions of
Freudian thought in French and Spanish medical and psychoanalytic views of sex. In this
new series of reflections about psyche and sexuality, notions of the primitive past
appeared, contradictorily, both as an ideal about appropriate sexual pleasure, and as the
‘other’ of evolved civilisation. In her writings throughout the 1920s-1940s, Marie
Bonaparte, the French Freudian writer and royal heiress, followed the erudite Spanish
endocrinologist Gregorio Marañon in mapping problems of gender differentiation, female
masochism and frigidity, onto a vision of evolution from ‘primitive’ to ‘civilised societies’.
Both Bonaparte and Marañon shared similar views about evolution and sex in common
with Freud. But their ideas were a significant development of Freud’s view of the sexual
past since both were acutely aware of the emerging women’s rights currents in European
societies. Both also grappled with the powerful pronatalist ideologies of the interwar
period. This paper considers briefly, how a teleological view of the sexual past was
adapted from both Darwinian evolutionary thought and fin-de-siècle psychiatric thought
in Freud’s account of the psyche; before showing how it differed from the approach of
Marañon and Bonaparte, who each produced their own peculiar understandings of
feminine sexual pleasures as signs of progress or its failure.


Sarah Crook, QMUL
Madness and Motherhood in Mid-Twentieth Century Britain: Making Distress Visible

In 1967, a general practitioner reflected that due to the National Health Service, 'the
planning of medical education, of general practice, of psychiatry, and particularly of
community services, demands a clearer picture of the size and nature of the problem of
psychiatric illness than is now available' (Ryle 1967). This paper reflects on how the
institutional framework of the NHS made milder forms of psychiatric distress visible in the
postwar era. It argues that the general practitioner assumed a central role in researching
and treating emotional distress even before deinstitutionalisation took full effect in the
1970s. This role was a product of professional rivalries between medical specialisms, and
the proliferation of epidemiological studies a consequence of the struggle to enhance
professional prestige. This, combined with social and political anxiety over the state of the
family, made maternal distress a significant object of analysis in postwar British medicine.
This paper argues that the studies conducted from within the general practice rendered
milder forms of distress visible and, through this, created new communities of the
mentally disordered.


Friday 31 May 2013

Research Seminar AND afternoon Emotions seminar, Tuesday 11th June

Our next Research Seminar takes place on Tuesday 11th June, same place, same time:
Arts II. 3.16
Refreshments from 5, papers start at 5.30pm

Itay Lotem
"Les indigènes de la République": Colonial Continuities and Anti-Racist Activism in
France


David Harrap
'Devotional space' in the 1504 English printing of the Imitatio Christi


However there is also an interesting seminar/workshop taking place earlier that day, organised by the Centre for the History of the Emotions and featuring Dr Alison Moore, visiting scholar at QM and also presenting at our seminar on June 18th.

Alison Moore, in conversation with Katherine Angel:
The Rat's Clitoris: Rethinking Biology in Sexuality Historiography

Arts II SCR, 4pm

For this seminar we're asked to reserve a place via emotions@qmul.ac.uk

Friday 24 May 2013

Research Seminar: Tuesday 28th May, 5.30pm

Our next seminar takes place this coming Tuesday (28th)

Where: Arts II 3.16

When: 5.30pm (refreshments from 5pm) 
 
Nigel Ritchie
An Anglo-French revolutionary? Jean-Paul Marat channels the spirit of Junius

Rodney Reznek
Assimilability or Exclusion - the South African Aliens' Act of 1937
 
Hope to see you there! 

Thursday 9 May 2013

Research Seminar, Tuesday 14th May, 5.30pm

Our first event of term takes place this coming Tuesday.
Where: Arts 3.16
When: 5.30pm (refreshments from 5pm) 

Dr Chris Millard
Illness and the Social Setting: Munchausen Syndromes and Modern Medicine 
 
Eleanor Betts
Here is a Dreadful Tragedy, Which I Will Now Unfold’: The Representation of Criminal Children in Nineteenth-Century Broadsides

The full programme is now available via the tab at the top of the page. 

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Research Seminar, Tuesday 26th March, 5.30pm

Our last event of term takes place next Tuesday (26th March) - refreshments served from 5pm, papers will start at 5.30.

The venue is Lock-Keeper's Cottage Seminar Room.

Julia Nicholls (QMUL): Deportation and the nation: French revolutionary republican thought and the South Pacific, 1871-1889

Michalis Sotiropoulos (QMUL): Law as science and as political ideology: Roman Law and the formation of the Greek state (1844-1862)

The "End of Term Postgraduate Social" referenced on the programme will be rather an impromptu affair and will consist of a visit to a good local pub!

best wishes
Craig

Saturday 2 March 2013

The Present Uses of the Past: Tuesday 5th March, 5pm

Our next Historical Research Forum event isn't until March 26th, when Julia & Michalis will be presenting. However three events on this coming Tuesday that may be of interest:

Graduate Training - How to prepare for a successful leap over the First Year Hurdle
Senior Common Room, Arts II, 3.30pm

The Present Uses of the Past
Skeel Lecture Theatre, QM People's Palace, 5pm
https://www.facebook.com/events/415543411865425/

This is the inaugural Raphael Samuel History Centre event at QM.
The past is never really past; it lives on into the present, sometimes in very controversial ways. Competing interpretations of the past are used to explain, to inspire, to exonerate, to
condemn. This event looks at some of the uses made of the past in present-day life and politics.

Chaired by Professor Barbara Taylor (QMUL):
Catherine Hall (History, UCL)
Jacqueline Rose (English, QMUL)
Bill Schwarz (English, QMUL)
Gareth Stedman Jones (History, QMUL)


You may also be interested in the event which follows immediately afterwards (and ensuing wine reception):
Confessions of a Judicial Activist
Fogg Lecture Theatre, G.E Fogg Building, 6.30pm
Justice Albie Sachs
(author, activist, and retired judge on the Constitutional Court of South Africa)
Free and open to all but please book at http://sachslecture.eventbrite.co.uk/#

Maybe see you on Tuesday or at events later this month!