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Bring a Problem, Present a Text

Members of the group are encouraged to bring a short passage from primary or secondary text that they are working on in their research to get help and feedback from the group, or a methodological, theoretical or any other kind of problem that they are wrestling with that they'd like to workshop.

Writing Workshop

The topic for this practical workshop will be decided collaboratively on the 19^th February.

Work-in-progress papers

Sabrina Sampaio Martins (UNIGE): “Borrowed Voices: W. G. Sebald’s Figurations and Intimations of The Past”.

Caroline Martin (UNIGE): “The PhD Experience at Home and Abroad: On Academic Mobility and the Writing Process”

Sonnets at Random

Drawing its inspiration from the Spenser Society’s “Spenser at Random” meetings, this workshop will engage participants in a collaborative close-reading of sonnets to be randomly selected from the work of a few sonneteers across the centuries, from Edmund Spenser’s Amoretti (1595) and William Shakespeare’s Sonnets (1609) to Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese (1850). In addition to questions of literary history, we will also reflect on the affordances of the sonnet form itself. (Cross-listed with the Doctoral Workshop in Medieval and Early Modern English Studies).

The Case for Critical Cultural Studies in the AI Age

Isis Giraldo (UNIL)

This lecture addresses cultural studies from a historical, comparative, and transnational perspective, offering an outline of its state-of-the-art developments. It will make the case for revitalising the critical strand of the study of culture (understood broadly) that was developed by the team of the Birmingham school in the 1980s, arguing that it is a key tool in responding to the advancements of AI and its direct threat to the humanities. It will introduce participants to key concepts of critical cultural studies, and explain – taking George Orwell and Albert Camus as examples – how its main approach, i.e., “conjunctural analysis”, works and can raise the stakes of research within literary studies.

Presenting Scholarly Research: Contexts and Strategies

Katherine Hallemeier (UNIGE)

“So, what are you working on?” This question is posed in different ways by admissions and hiring committees, grant agencies, publishers, conference conveners, colleagues and peers, and friends and relations. Answering it can seem a daunting challenge or a happy opportunity. This session will cover a few conventions and strategies for clearly describing the stakes of a research project across a variety of contexts. Please come ready with your questions, and be prepared to experiment with formulating concise explanations of your current program of study.

Guided Reading: Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

Elodie Rogliardo (UNIGE)

17-18 June

Literary Approaches to the Sacred

Sam Macduff, Christiania Whitehead, UNIL

This two-day residential workshop will explore contemplative and devotional literature from the Middle Ages to the present, including medieval prose and poetry from the Christian and Islamic traditions, and Romantic, modern and contemporary responses to the sacred, nature writing, and ecocriticism. The workshop, co-organised by CUSO and the English Department at UNIL, will be held over two days at Chemin Dessus in June 2025.  Its immersive approach, placing academic responses to literature in the context of bodywork and stillness, should be helpful for doctoral students encountering problems of stress or burnout in relation to their intellectual work. The workshop will include a variety of sessions that combine works of devotional literature with meditative, contemplative or embodied exercises, inviting participants to respond to the texts presented in a variety of ways. Caromai Bouquet, a mindfulness teacher and practitioner, will invite us to contemplate the poetry of Thich Nhat Hanh, a Zen Buddhist poet, teacher and activist, through guided meditation, as well as close reading and analysis. Marie-Elsa Bragg, an author, teacher, and priest, will present the ritual of the Eucharist alongside poetry, memoir and fragments of unsent letters.