Professor Damian Walford Davies (Cardiff University)
Seminar Room A, English Faculty Building
Week 0, 16 Jan, 5pm (please note earlier time)
As a special Week 0 seminar* to kick off the Romantic Realignments 2014 programme, we’re very pleased to be welcoming Professor Damian Walford Davies, who will be speaking on notions of “Counterfactual Romanticism” in relation to one of his current projects:
Historicism (of various modalities) remains the critical and methodological orthodoxy in Romantic Studies. It’s had a good innings. Dare we imagine ways beyond it and cultivate more radical rhetorical moves in our attempts to get away from, and then back into, the literary text’s various ‘histories’ (and the ‘histories’ of our own criticism)? How might a counterfactual move refocus the ways we configure the literary ‘past’? This paper, which offers an account of the genesis, current contours and potential afterlives of the project Counterfactual Romanticism, tendentiously opens a window on how things might be – for ourselves as critical latecomers and for the Romantics, too – ‘otherwise’.
Join us for what promises to be a compelling talk to see in the new term - all are welcome to attend as ever, and we hope to see you on Thursday!
