K-Link Widening Participation Scheme

(Originally posted on 24 April 2014)

As a firm believer in the importance of widening access to Higher Education, I was very happy to be asked to take part in K-Link recently. K-Link is King’s widening participation programme, which gives children from less privileged schools throughout London a taste of university education. Through the programme, I had two – very different – opportunities to teach secondary school children.

Firstly, GCSE students from the three schools that the SPLAS department is partnered with came in to King’s for a full day: a Q&A with current students, a translation workshop, tour, and finally a taster seminar. One of the school groups – 16 boys and girls, plus two teachers – had an introduction from me to studying culture as part of a language degree. I began by explaining what a seminar is – ask lots of questions, try out new ideas, do lots of practical exercises. We then broke up into small groups and brainstormed definitions of culture, before looking at some Frida Kahlo paintings and an extract from a short story by the late great Gabriel García Márquez.

The students were clearly tired after such a demanding day, and many of the boys were too cool to show enthusiasm, so it was challenging to get them to participate, but I succeeded in the end (I’m very grateful for much needed help from their teachers in this). After the session, one teacher told me that although they were reluctant to speak, he could tell that they had gained a lot from it. He said he was really happy for the children to have had the chance to experience cultural studies when the demands of GCSEs allow no time for anything like this, which made all the effort worth it.

The following week I went into another of our partner schools. This time I was extremely lucky to be teaching four of the most gifted, enthusiastic girls I could hope for. We covered similar material but the small group size and eagerness of the pupils meant we could go much more in-depth. I was hugely impressed, as they were more engaged than some of my final year students! I felt privileged to teach them and really pleased to learn that they all plan to continue to language study at university.

King’s Cultural Institute: Academia, Art and Engagement

(Originally posted 10 May 2013)

The last few weeks have been very busy but very exciting for me. In between writing 11,000 words for my upgrade, I’ve been lucky enough to have been working part time for King’s Cultural Institute. As a passionate believer in the need to bring together academia and the cultural sectors to reach wider audiences, I am really inspired by the work of KCI and their innovation in public engagement.

By first involvement with KCI was as a gallery assistant at the Integrating Knowledge exhibition at Inigo Rooms  The project paired King’s academics and PhD students with MA Communication Design students from Central St Martin’s to create art installations and videos that share academic research in a way that entices the public. Working at the gallery was an amazing opportunity to meet the artists and learn about their work, as well as seeing first hand how visitors appreciated both the artistic and the educational qualities of the works. (See my full blog about the event here).

Then, as of last Friday, I am working on the Arts and the Digital Creative Lab project, taking notes and writing reports. The project is a collaboration between KCI and digital creative agency Caper, which brings together about 50 participants, including academics from across the nine schools and representatives of the cultural sector, from museum curators to theatre company directors.  The first session on 3 May gave participants the chance to discuss their work, find shared challenges and consider opportunities for collaboration. In the next stage, on 23 May, the participants will try to find ways to solve the problems they identified, in the form of collaborative projects, which they can then bid for £2500 of funding for. The winning projects will then be presented on 3 July. I can’t wait to see where all the ideas identified last week lead!

Happy 1st Birthday Blog!

On 8 December 2011, after thinking about it for far too long, I launched this blog with a post called 'What is culture?'. 157 published posts and 20,530 views later, it's time to celebrate my first birthday :D

This isn't my first foray into blogging, but none of my previous projects had survived more than a few months, so I'm very pleased that a year later I'm still keeping it up, although I would love to post more frequently. I always have a stack of unfinished draft posts, and often wish I could just blog full-time. Recently, especially, I've been so busy going to things I want to write about - the King's Arts and Humanities Festival, the Bush Theatre's RADAR2012 new writing festival, and lots of seminars around London - that I've had no time to actually write about all of them. 

Nonetheless, this blog has become quite an addiction. I think the secret to me not getting bored with it or running out of things to say was setting it up as broadly as possible. Looking back through the last year of posts, the blog has certainly embraced many different types of post, depending on what my life was like at the time, from academic concerns when I was mid-exams or dissertation writing, to theatre criticism when I was making the most of Cardiff's cultural scene, to 'things I'm doing with the Social Programme this week' when all of my time was spent introducing international students to Britain. The blog therefore serves both as a reminder of all the great things I've seen and done over the past year, a document to look back on and smile, and a way to organise my thoughts when working. As I'm now well under way with my PhD, I hope to take full advantage of my blog in this second way, sharing and getting feedback on ideas for my thesis, but being a culture junkie, I'm sure there'll still be a lot of rambling about great plays, films, art, books and music too. I've also set myself some challenges this year, like watching a film from every EU member state, which I will be following up on.

This time last year, I had no idea what direction this blog would go in or where it would take me. As I direct result of blogging, I've been invited to write a series of guest posts for YourCardiff, spent a few months seeing all the plays and films I wanted for free, and most recently won the chance to blog at RADAR2012. It just goes to prove how useful blogging can be. I can't wait to see where the next year of blogging takes me!

International Association of Galician Studies Conference 2012

Just over two weeks ago now (12-14 September), the 10th Conference of the International Association of Galician Studies was held at Cardiff University. As regular readers will know, my dissertation about Galician travel literature was due in to Cardiff University on 14 September, so this couldn't have been a more perfect coincidence, especially as the conference only takes place once every three years and can be anywhere in the world. What better occasion for my first conference paper?

I was also extremely lucky to be placed in such a welcoming and fascinating panel with Paula Portas Pérez (Cardiff University), Helena Miguélez Carballeira (Bagnor University) and María Liñeira (Oxford University), plus Olga Castro (Aston University) as moderator. Our papers were very varied, but complimentary, considering what various different groups mean by Galician national identity.

Paula, who I had had the pleasure of hearing speak before at Cardiff, back in December, presented research on the discourse of feminism by political nationalists, from 1975 onwards. Through analysis of conference proceedings, propaganda and other documents released by Galician nationalist groups - primarily what is now the BNG (Bloque Nacionalista Galego) - she has observed that while feminism as an abstract concept is touted as one the defining characteristics of the modern, liberal Galician nationalism, in practice women are ignored or marginalised. Most nationalist rhetoric refers to workers, farmers and fishermen - all imagined as male - not mentioning women at all, while some publications actually stated that the place of women was in the home, and that their policies would make working conditions better for men to enable them to provide for their women so that women do not have to work. Paula suggested that the espoused feminism of the Galician nationalists is therefore more of an electoral ploy than a genuine desire to achieve equality for women in Galician society.

Continuing with gender issues, Helena (who recently received an AHRC grant which will allow her to publish two books this year - yay!) spoke about cultural normalisation in Galicia and the problems with it. In particular, she discussed a collection of erotic short stories - Contos eróticos / elas (Erotic Fiction/Hers) published by Edicións Xerais de Galicia in 1991 alongside Contos eróticos / eles (Erotic Fiction/His). The aim of these collections was supposedly to normalise erotic literature, thus diversifying Galician literature and creating another space for female writers. However, of the seven writers in Elas one was actually man, while another was, according to Helena, almost certainly a man using a female pseudonym. Moreover, many of the stories contain horrific acts of sexual violence and rape, which completely goes against the idea of empowering women and celebrating female sexuality that the collection espoused. Helena also briefly alluded to the María Reimóndez affair. After María joined us for lunch, I asked some of the other conference participants who she was (I admit I'm still very ignorant when it comes to Galician culture). It turns out that she had written a gendered translation of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: where the English said only 'the', in Galician it was necessary to chose male or female, so María wrote the male nurse, the female windsurfer etc. The publishers weren't happy and fired her, as this article explains further. EDIT: María Reimóndez gives her version of the incident in this article. 

María's talk about 'the linguistic criterion' was of particular interest to me as I'm fascinated by the idea of what makes a national literature and the formation of national canons. Her argument is that we need to look beyond language to define 'Galician' literature, as this is too restrictive. Writers such as Pimentel and Valle Inclán were born and raised in Galicia, and their writing often manifested a particular Galician mindset, a preoccupation with specifically Galician themes, but they are not accepted into the Galician canon because they wrote in Castilian. The counter-argument is that the linguistic criterion stops literature being dominated by 'bio-politics' (i.e. you can only be Galician by blood), but these are surely not the only two options available. María added that this linguistic criterion has meant that many young writers, raised in monolingual Castilian-speaking environments, write in Galician in order to achieve success and status, but Galician has no meaning to them - it is as if they were writing in Esperanto. It was clear from María's presentation that a significant rethink of the definition of 'Galician literature' is necessary.

We must challenge the maxim "One nation, one language, one literature".

Finally there was my presentation about the link between travel writing and the creation of Galician national identity by the Xeración Nós (early nationalists of the 1920s and 30s). I somehow cut the 20,000 words of my dissertation into 20 minutes, discussing: why further study of Galician travel writing is necessary; the personal effects of travel on the authors Ramón Otero Pedrayo, Vincente Risco and Alfonso Castelao; how their conservative attitudes carried with them from Galicia coloured their interpretation of the cities they visited; lessons for Galician nationalism acquired from experience abroad; and finally what 'Europe' meant to the three authors. A lot to fit in to such a short space of time, but thankfully everyone was very receptive. The next job is to get it published!

I then sadly missed the rest of the day as I had many other tasks to carry out while in Cardiff (including handing in my dissertation :D), but caught two very interesting, primarily literature-based, panels on the Friday morning.

Alexia Dotras Bravo (Universidade de Coimbra) shared her experience of working with vast collection of letters to Carolina Michaelis de Vasconcelos (Portugal's foremost lady of letters at the turn of the Twentieth Century), which had been donated to the University where Vasconcelos had been the first female professor. The letters she received give a fascinating insight into the literary and musical tastes of the times and will surely be a source of much research for years to come.

Antonio Iglesias Mira (Centro de Investigacao em Artes e Comunicacao), spoke about how the attempt by a group of drama students at Coimbra University, the Circulo de Iniciacao Teatral de Coimbra, to put on a play entitled Castelao e a sua epoca in 1969 ended in severe State repression, as part of a wider Academic Crisis. He explained how the play was written by Ricard Salvat, who had gained a reputation for presenting political theatre (especially Brecht) as academic lectures so that it could be censored. A very interesting window into the repressive atmosphere of 1960s Portugal...

Marga Romero Lorenzo (Universidade de Coruña) presented Lois Tobío, another travelling early Galician nationalist and a prolific translator. He translated both to enrich the Galician language and to express himself creatively. Like Risco, he believed that Portuguese was the saviour of the Galician language, giving it the status it deserves. He also believed in the power of music for learning languages (something I share with him!) and knew how to sing - but not speak - in Bulgarian.

Learning another language is entering a new world - Lois Tobio

Danny M. Barreto (Vasser College) talked about modern Galician identity in Suso de Toro's Sete palabras, arguing that instead of trying to limit Galicia to one language and place, we must accept that there are multiple Galicia's (returning to María Liñeira's point): 'Castilianized Galicia' and 'emigrant Galicia' are just a few examples. Danny argued for a 'spurious Galicia', a Galician identity aware of its own contradictions and inconsistencies, explaining how Sete Palabras portrays a confrontation with myths of origin and hybrid, multiple identities.

David Miranda Barreiro (Bangor University) presented Claudio Rodríguez Fer's 1993 short story A Muller Loba, about a female werewolf in New York. On the one hand, the story continues the long tradition of werewolf stories in Galician culture (Risco wrote about the importance of werewolves in Galician oral tradition in 1925 for example), while on the other hand a feminist reading of the text explores the female werewolf as a manifestation of strong femininity which will not be tamed by a man. Picking up on Danny's different Galicia's, David also showed how the use of traditional Galician mythology in New York links the 'interior Galicia' with the 'exterior Galicia'.

Catherine Barbour (University of St Andrews) talked about how Queen Christina of Switzerland has become an inspirational figure for Galician women in Teresa Moure's Herba moura. While a champion of education and extremely intelligent herself, Christina is mostly remembered as Descartes' 'groupie', which Catherine suggests is symbolic of the marginalisation of women within Galician literature.

As you can see, I learnt an awful lot about a huge variety of subjects, but I'm still sad I missed out on so many more. Thankfully, all of the presentations were filmed and will hopefully be put up on the website once they've had time to process them. You can also follow @estudosgalegos on Twitter or find them on Facebook for all the latest Galicia news.

Trust Pays: Creating trust in the UK through cultural relations

I'm often asked what's the point to all this cultural stuff. Well now a report from the British Council shows that cultural relations are essential for fostering trust in Britain, which in turn is highly beneficial for British business. 

This evening, CEO of Ipsos MORI, Ben Page, presented new research on the link between culture and trust in a live-stream called Trust Pays. Although a lot of the findings seem like common sense, it's always good to have ideas backed up by science. The basic idea is that the more Britain forms cultural relations with other countries, the more people trust us and therefore want to invest in the country or do business with us. Ben explained that regardless of what people think of British politicians or parties, people across the world have increasingly positive views of the British people the more they take part in cultural activities.

The result from Saudi Arabia is particularly interesting, proving just how important cultural relations are when other types of relations between countries are limited. This increase in trust leads to a higher likelihood of working in or with the UK.

The presentation was followed by a panel featuring Ben Page,Sir Roger Carr (Chairman of the Confederation of British Industry), Razia Iqbal (BBC) and Martin Davidson (Chief Executive of the British Council). It was a fascinating debate, including many key points I highly agree with. Firstly, as a country we undervalue our cultural heritage, professionalism and even our sense of humour. All of these are assets. The media should not only focus on exposing the bad, but celebrating what we do well. Carr highlighted the importance of making visitors feel welcome - including free access to some of the world's best museums - but insisted we need to go further, ensuring that from a visitor's first experience of the UK (be it in the airport or the visa office) they must feel respected and welcomed. He also maintained that businesses must continue to support the arts as they are 'wonderful ambassadors' for the country. On a more personal level, Razia Iqbal reminded us that 'culture can utterly change people's lives'. Through culture, people can learn that they share things they never thought possible and create lasting links. In this vein, members of the audience suggested that there should be more support for people from Britain to go out and share cultural experiences with others across the world.

As someone who strongly believes in the importance of culture to bring people together and spark new ideas, I really hope this research will inspire more investment in international cultural relations.

The full report is available here: http://www.britishcouncil.org/new/Documents/full_trust_report.pdf

What place for culture in contemporary nationalism? A Galician example.

Yesterday I went to a talk by Dr Paula Portas Pérez about the contemporary narratives of the BNG, Galicia's nationalist bloc. As you would expect from a nationalist organisation, part of their rhetoric alludes to the 'protection' of Galician culture from external forces (Castile-dominated Spain used to be seen as the oppressor, but given the need to work with the Spanish government since the 1981 Statute of Autonomy, emphasis has shifted to 'threats' like the EU or, more generally, globalisation).

However, when I asked Paula what the BNG mean by culture, she said they only ever refer to the language. Speaking galego makes you Galician and therefore there should be language normalisation laws in place to protect and promote what is commonly seen as a language heading towards extinction. But beyond that, the BNG do not engage at all with the place of culture in Galician identity. It got me thinking, does culture still have a place in the construction of national identity? Have nationalists stopped creating a sense of national pride from great authors? Stopped celebrating traditions as a sign of uniqueness? Or has this cultural identity become so naturalised and internalised that people don't even question it any more? It seems that for the BNG people just are Galician and there's no need to question what that means. 

In The Sources of Nationalist IdeologyJohn Breuilly wryly observes that "[Nationalists'] claim to uniqueness is ultimately used to justify the claim to have a state just like any other", and that seems like the case here. In the fight to have the same political powers as other nations, the Galician nationalists seem to be losing sight of what makes Galicia distinct in the first place.

What is Culture?

It's a good question and one that I've encountered again and again in class and on the radio. An anthropologist would say that culture is everything that makes us human, that isn't the result of science. Different groups - tribes, nations, social classes, generations - can be said to have a different 'culture', encompassing ways of expressing themselves, rituals, beliefs. However, in every day parlance, culture is often taken to mean 'high culture': classical painting, sculpture, opera, ballet, auteur cinema. What I'm interested is somewhere in between: all kinds of artistic expression, including that high culture, but also popular culture, comedy, rom-coms, pulp fiction, musicals, graffiti - things that are often written off by the self-proclaimed defenders of 'culture' (although graffiti for one seems to be becoming rather establishment these days...).

'Culture' is such a loaded term that I have been criticised for being elitist in calling my radio show The Culture Show. Yet as much as I tried to avoid the perils of the word culture (and also the stealing from BBC2 implied in the name), there was no other word that conveyed the huge range of things I want to talk about: literature, music, theatre, dance, art and films of all kinds. So culture it is.

But as I've established, culture is a scarily vast term. So what exactly do I want to do? Well, as I'm forced to narrow my interests into some form of coherent PhD proposal, I'm not ready to let the others go just yet, so this is a place for me to consider cultural things that interest me. Sometimes that might just be 'This play/exhibition/film is awesome, go see/watch!', sometimes it might be an interview with someone that I've been lucky enough to meet through the radio. But what really gets me going is cultural analysis, so there will mainly be musings on what can be learnt from the book/film/musical/picture in question. I've always had incredibly multi-disciplinary interests (which is why I've always taken the broadest academic path, nothing can be vaguer than 'European Studies' which doesn't even know where the limits of 'Europe' are), and what I'm learning in class will undoubtedly prompt reflections here, so expect the following to appear somewhere:
-Questioning 'identity' in all its forms
-Nationalism, national identity and foundational myths
-Psychoanalysis
-Cultural mobility/intertextuality
-Translation and the politics thereof
-Foulcault and discursive techniques
-Orientalism and post-colonialism
...and probably a whole lot more! As for the source of materials, Spanish and French speaking countries will feature heavily, but I have spent the last 5 years studying 'Europe' so those influences will certainly crop up too, and as I currently live in Cardiff, how could I not be fascinated by Welsh culture?

I hope this will be not just interdisciplinary but multi-media. As well written ramblings, I will be putting my finely honed talking into a microphone skills to good use making podcasts, especially when visuals aren't essential. And when I eventually learn to use my camera, I hope to post videos too. And finally, I hope that all this inspires you to check out some of the things I talk about. My passion for languages, for travel, for research, for cultural analysis, was inspired by the films, books, music, theatre and art which I discovered one way or another and never cease to fascinate me. I hope some of them will fascinate you too.