QUILTING POINTS:

CALL FOR PAPERS: UNIVERSITY OF YORK CENTRE FOR MODERN STUDIES THIRD ANNUAL POSTGRADUATE SYMPOSIUM, BOWLAND AUDITORIUM, HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTRE, FRIDAY 31/5/2013. Commercial speech – advertising – makes up most of what we share as a culture . . . As the language of commercialism has become louder, the language of high culture has become quieter.                 –  James B. Twitchell,  Twenty Ads that Shook the World Throughout the modern period, advertising and consumer culture have dominated everyday life; moreover, the trappings of commercialism permeate much of supposed ‘high culture’. Commodities clutter the pages of novels from Dickens and Zola to Bret Easton Ellis; works by Joyce and DeLillo are enlivened by advertising jingles and slogans; brands and trademarks pervade the practice of artists from Picasso to Warhol and the visualisation of consumer desire is appropriated and challeng...

For the last meeting of the term, we will be reading the second half of "The Paradox of Jouissance", Part Three of Lacan's The Ethics of Psychoanalysis (Chapters 16,17 & 18). We will meet in the Douglas Jefferson Room of the School of English on Tuesday 12th of March at 5.15pm. John Mark Derbyshire (English) will introduce the text. Wine, as always, will be served. Orange juice on prior request. We are grateful to the Leeds Humanities Research Institute for funding.