Voices

Convenors:
Paolo D'Indinosante (Sapienza)
Isabel Rolfe (Newcastle)

Paolo D'Indinosante presented one of his dissertation chapters and explored the interconnected concepts of imperial voice and echo within poetry on empire-related issues and events which was published in Punch, or The London Charivari in the second half of the nineteenth century. Isabel Rolfe presented her work-in-progress chapter regarding the work of Olivia Shakespear. The presentation gave an overview of Shakespear's literary works, situated her within the modernist network and discussed her connections to the occult. Shakespear's lack of substantial scholarly attention and reductive accounts in Yeatsian and Poundian scholarship were detailed. Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion at the end of Paolo's and Isabel's presentations included: the place of poetry within the periodical content published in Punch; the intended readership for Punch; the role of technological progress in the construction of British imperialism; a possible genre classification for Shakespear's books; the importance and challenges of archival work to Paolo's and Isabel's projects.

Hal Coase presented his current work on Barbara Guest's poetry, particularly the poem 'The Poetess' (1973). Aparna Sivasankar presented her work for the critical section of her PhD in Creative Writing and explored the emergence of the subgenre of fantastic futurism in contemporary South Asian fiction. Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion at the end of Hal's and Aparna's presentations included: the possible impact of the reader's knowledge (or lack thereof) of Joan Miró's painting La Poétesse (1940) on their reading of Guest's 'The Poetess'; Guest's place within the New York School of Poets; femininist readings of Guest's work; magical realism; the impact of Aparna's critical work on her own creative work; the publication strategies of Guest's poetry and fantastic futuristic fiction.

Giulia Magro provided an overview on her doctoral dissertation, which explores the concept of ecomedievalism in selected instances of twentieth-century US SF. Maisie Drummond spoke on Tom Pickard's poetry, particularly the different versions of the poem 'Dancing Under Fire'. Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion at the end of Giulia's and Maisie's presentations included: the transatlantic dimension of the primary texts and authors examined by Giulia and Maisie; the intersection of ecomedievalism and colonialism in twentieth-century US SF; interesting examples of ecomedievalism in twenty-first-century anglophone SF; the doodles scattered through Pickard's manuscripts and their relevance to Maisie's textual analysis; the importance and challenges of working on living authors.

Carlotta Ferrando provided an overview on her doctoral project. After an account of the initial conception of the project, Carlotta offered an outline of her dissertation, which borrows the coinage 'Catastrofemale' from Sara Batkie and focusses on antiheroines in novels such as Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018) and Raven Leilani's Luster (2020). Vaibhav Parel also began his presentation with an account of how his interest in South Asian diasporic crime fiction was first sparked. Then he moved on to describe the state of his research on the fictional works of authors such as Sujata Massey and Vaseem Khan. Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion at the end of Carlotta's and Vaibhav's presentations included: the selection criteria adopted by Carlotta to build her corpus of primary texts; tone, overstatement, understatement and humorous language in the novels analysed by Carlotta; the connections between the novels studied by Carlotta and previous works of fiction such as Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar (1963); female representation and exoticism in the novels examined by Vaibhav; the place of social media in Carlotta's and Vaibhav's research on contemporary writers; viable approaches to study the literary output of living authors.

Asia Battiloro presented her current PhD research, which brings into focus the aesthetic and ideological implications of the use of various epistolary media practices in twenty-first-century British climate fiction. The novels examined by Asia are David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (2004), Will Self's The Book of Dave (2006), Amy Sackville's The Still Point (2010), Guinevere Glasfurd's The Year without Summer (2020) and Naomi Alderman's The Future (2023). Shiqing Zhang spoke on radicalism within Ursula K. Le Guin's young adult fiction, which forms the main topic of her dissertation. Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion at the end of Asia's and Shiqing's presentations included: the limits of realist fiction to represent climate change; the importance of historicising epistolary media practices to understand their ideological import in the novels analysed by Asia; the popular and critical reception of novels such as Ian McEwan's Solar (2010); ecological radicalism and Daoism in Le Guin's fiction.

Leonardo Bagnulo offered an overview on his doctoral project, which combines the digitisation of Giovanni Francesco Biondi's Istoria delle guerre civili d'Inghilterra tra le due case di Lancastro e Iorc with the application of appraisal theory to the analysis of Henry Carey's English translation of Biondi's work, which was published in two volumes between 1641 and 1646. Sam Bailey's presentation drew on one of his dissertation chapters, which aims to demonstrate the importance of deliberate typographical gaps in eighteenth-century English erotic books, such as Monsieur Thing's Origin (1722). Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion at the end of Leonardo's and Sam's presentations included: the circulation and reception of the respective texts on which they have been working and potentially useful methods to trace and analyse these; examples of particularly significant rhetorical strategies adopted in the paratexts of the respective books with which their research is concerned; the use of translation as a protective ploy to disseminate ideas.