Play

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

Silvia Guselli drew on her current research into the transformation of the notion of 'civilisation' in North American culture from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century in order to highlight the social significance of fighting in the Backcountry. In her talk, Silvia mentioned violent practices such as rough-and-tumble fighting, as described in Charles Woodmason's writings. Lucy Lawrence borrowed Donna Haraway's concepts of the cat's cradle and string figures to underline the interdisciplinary ambitions in the four volumes of The Evergreen: A Northern Seasonal (1895–97), a late-Victorian little magazine edited by Patrick Geddes. Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion following Silvia's and Lucy's presentations included: the different scales at play in the works of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur and in Herbert Spencer's System of Synthetic Philosophy (1862–93); the politics of games and gamified violence; the connections between colonialism and the performance of masculinity through violence; the interplay between art and science; literary uses of crystals and gemstones.

Marco Sbreglia discussed how foreknowledge of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from the UK to the PRC informs the multitemporal narrative in Stanley Kwan's film Rouge (1987). Charlie Toogood adopted a transhistorical approach to explore the literary representation of sports and games in traditional, deliberate utopias such as Thomas More's Utopia (1516), William Morris's News from Nowhere (1890), H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia (1905), Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland (1915), Kim Stanley Robinson's Pacific Edge (1990) and others. Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion following Marco's and Charlie's presentations included: Hong Kong's postcoloniality and the possible analogies and distinctions that Hongkongers' cultural production draws between Hong Kong and other former British colonies; the strategic uses of the colonial past in constructing postcolonial social identity; the sources and significance of melodrama in Hong Kong cinema; the literary representation of fictional games and imaginary play.

Dr. Paolo D'Indinosante explored the politics of play in Rudyard Kipling's writings, with particular attention to the relationship between games and imperialism in texts such as 'Pharaoh and the Sergeant' (1897; 1919) and Egypt of the Magicians (1914). Isabel Rolfe analysed occultism in the magical plays of Florence Farr and Olivia Shakespear. Issues addressed during the Q&A and discussion following Paolo's and Isabel's presentations included: play as a form of propaganda; definitions and periodisations of occultism; methodological strategies for addressing research challenges, such as tracing texts referenced on a novel's title page by the same author but unavailable in databases or major reference libraries.