QUILTING POINTS:

Dear all, As part of this year’s Quilting Points critical reading group sessions, we are delighted to welcome Dr Anna Bernard from King’s College London, who will be giving a talk on Edward Said and Palestinian solidarity. The talk will take place in the Alumni Room at the School of English (Cavendish Road 10) on  May 22nd from 15.30 to 17.30,  followed by a drinks reception.  Everyone (at whatever level of study and whether enrolled at the University or not) is welcome, and no prior familiarity with Said’s work or related areas is necessary. Please do let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or access requirements by contacting us at quiltingpoints@gmail.com. Dr Bernard’s talk will last approximately 45 minutes, and it will be followed by a Q&A and a general discussion. Please find more information on Dr Bernard's talk below, and we hope to see you there! About the talk: ‘Edward Said and Solidarity’ This talk will consider Edward Said’s legacy not only a...

  Dear all, The fifth Quilting Points reading group session of this academic year will take place on  Thursday, May 1st, from 5:30 to 7:30 pm . In this session, we will discuss 'Speaking Truth to Power', the fifth part of Said's  Representations of the Intellectual  (1994), a collection of essays based on his 1993 Reith Lectures. Said's essay, which argues that "one of the main intellectual activities of our century has been the questioning, not to say undermining, of authority", speaks to contemporary anxieties about intellectual authority, resistance, and the future of the humanities, and will be a useful springboard for discussing the role of the intellectual in our times. The reading can be accessed  here , and it is also available  as a lecture on the BBC website . The session will be held in the Meeting Room in the School of English (House 10 Cavendish Road — first door on your left when you come in), followed by an optional pub social. Everyone ...

  Dear all, We are happy to announce that the fourth  Quilting   Points  reading group session of this academic year will take place on March 20th. In this session, we will discuss ideas of culture and resistance through   Said’s  Culture and Imperialism  (1993), focusing on its Introduction and on the fourth subchapter of Chapter 3: ‘The Voyage In and the Emergence of Opposition’. You can access the selected reading  here . As an optional (but very helpful!) secondary reading, we also invite attendants to read a text by one of the theorists of culture that Said is engaging with in  Culture and Imperialism : Raymond Williams’s 1958 essay  ‘Culture is Ordinary’.   Important: We will have a 20-minute break for Iftar at around 6:20 pm so that attendants observing Ramadan have the chance to break fast. This means that we will be starting at 17:30 sharp to ensure that we leave enough time for discussion. Everyone is welcome to bring thei...

The third Quilting Points session of this academic year will take place next Thursday, 13th February. In this session, we will discuss   selected excerpts  from Said’s groundbreaking work  Orientalism  (1978). Following our discussions on  The Question of Palestine  and  In Search of Palestine: Edward Said’s Return Home  in prior sessions, we now turn to  Orientalism  where we will examine themes of representation and the West’s depiction of the ‘Orient’. Additionally, we will critically analyse the influence of recent Orientalist discourse in the media and academia based on Said’s ideas. The reading for this session includes two sections from Orientalism . Everyone (at whatever level of study and whether enrolled at the University or not) is welcome, and no prior familiarity with Said’s work or related areas is necessary.   The session will be held in the Meeting Room in the School of English (House 10 Cavendish Road — first door o...