Dana Polan on Raymond Williams and Film

October 5th. Kier Hardie Room 216. 4pm.
Professor Dana Polan, New York University
‘Raymond Williams and Film’.

Dana Polan is Professor of Cinema Studies at the Tisch Centre for the Arts, New York University. He is the author of 8 books in film and media and approximately 200 essays, reviews, and review-essays. He is a former president of the Society for Cinema Studies, the professional society for film, and a former editor of its publication, Cinema Journal. He has been knighted by the French Ministry of Culture for contributions to cross-cultural exchange, and in 2003, was selected as one of that year's two Academy Foundation Scholars by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Recent books include Scenes of Instruction: The Beginnings of the U.S. Study of Film (UC Press, 2007), The Sopranos and The French Chef (Duke University Press). He has done 7 DVD commentaries including, most recently, The Third Man (Criterion Collection), and is the translator of Deleuze and Guattari, Kafka; Towards a Minority Literature.

*Please note: The lecture will be followed by a reception to welcome people back, to welcome new people, and to mark the appearance of the Raymond Williams Archive Online (made possible by a donation form the Amiel-Melburn Trust, secured by Alan Finlayson, PCS).*


Hydref 5ed. Kier Hardie Ystafell 216. 4:00.
Dana Polan, Prifysgol Efrog Newydd
'Raymond Williams a Ffilm'

Mae Dana Polan yn Athro Astudiaethau Sinema yn Nghanolfan Tisch ar gyfer y Celfyddydau, Prifysgol Efrog Newydd. Mae’n awdur 8 o lyfrau ar ffilm a'r cyfryngau a thua 200 o draethodau, adolygiadau ac yn y blaen. Mae wedi cael ei urddo'n farchog gan Weinyddiaeth Diwylliant Ffrainc am ei gyfraniadau i hybu perthnasau traws-ddiwylliannol. Ef yw cyfieithydd cyfrol Deleuze a Guattari, Kafka: Towards a Minority Literture, sydd wedi bod yn ddylanwad ar ysgholheigion Cymraeg fel Angharad Price a Simon Brooks. Mae hefyd wedi cyhoeddi cyfrol yn ddiweddar ar gyfres deledu Y Sopranos.

* Noder: Bydd y ddarlith cael ei ddilyn gan dderbyniad i groesawu pobl yn ôl i Ganolfan Burton / CREW, i groesawu pobl newydd, ac i nodi’r ffaith bod Archif Raymond Williams bellach ar-lein. (Gwnaed hyn yn bosibl drwy nawdd gan Ymddiriedolaeth Amiel-Melburn, a sicrhawyd gan Dr Alan Finlayson, PCS) .*

M. Wynn Thomas yn yr Eisteddfod / Annual Hywel Teifi Edwards Lecture

Traddodwyd Darlith Flynyddol Hywel Teifi Edwards eleni gan yr Athro M. Wynn Thomas. ‘Colli Hywel Teifi - Ymadawiad Arthur’ oedd teitl y ddarlith. Nododd Wynn Thomas fod Hywel Teifi yn awyddus i weld pontio rhwng carfannau ieithyddol Cymru, gan dynnu sylw yn benodol at gyfrol Saesneg olaf Hywel ar basiant Caerdydd. Awgrymodd Wynn Thomas bod T Gwynn Jones yntau yn ymwybodol o’r angen i greu ffurf ar Gymreictod a fyddai’n gallu pontio’r traddodiadau ieithyddol. Trawsffurfio chwedlau hanfodol Saesnig yn rhai Cymraeg a wnaeth T Gwynn Jones yn Ymadawiad Arthur, mewn cerdd hir rymus oedd hefyd yn fath o farwnad i fethiant Cymry Fydd.

This year’s Annual Hywel Teifi Edwards Lecture was delivered by Professor M. Wynn Thomas. Professor Thomas noted that Hywel Teifi was eager to reach out from the core of a Welsh speaking Welshness towards the English speaking majority and drew particular attention to Edwards’s final volume on the Cardiff Pageant. Thomas then turned back to T Gwynn Jones, the founder of Welsh modernist literature, another writer who was painfully aware of the need to create a form of Welshness that would be able to bridge the nation’s linguistic traditions. In his ‘Ymadawiad Arthur’ [The Departure of Arthur] Jones transformed a body of essentially English myths into a robust Welsh mythology. Thomas also suggested that Jones’s powerful long poem was a kind of elegy for the failure of Lloyd George and Cymru Fydd.

CFP: AWWE Conference 2012

CFP AWWE conference 2012

Performing Wales: Theatre, Art, Identities

The Association of Welsh Writing in English invites submissions for conference presentations and performances for its twenty-fourth annual conference, which is to be held at Gregynog Hall, Newtown, between 30 March and 1 April 2012.

Questions around performance permeate notions of identity and culture in Wales in fundamental ways. The most often-quoted passage in Gwyn A. Williams’s When was Wales? (1984) already gestures towards an understanding of identity as socially and culturally constructed. Williams writes that “[t]he Welsh as a people have lived by making and remaking themselves in generation after generation, usually against the odds, usually within a British context. Wales is an artefact which the Welsh produce. If they want to. It requires an act of choice.” Or, as Bron, one of the characters in Ed Thomas’s play Gas Station Angel (1998) has it: “to be Welsh at the end of the 20th century you got to have imagination.” A decade into the 21st century, Wales is now widely performed as a multiplicity of such imaginings, for example in the two national theatres in Wales.

This conference asks how identities in Wales have been constructed and contested in and through performance, in the past and in the present. We are adopting a deliberately broad definition of performance. We would particularly like to encourage paper submissions on drama and theatre, but we are also interested in non-text-based performance, performance art, performance poetry, the performativity and performance of identity in cultural contexts etc. We would like to encourage submissions of academic conference papers as well as creative performances. All submissions should, however, focus on an aspect of Welsh writing in English or Welsh culture mediated through the English language. Comparative approaches are encouraged.

We would like to receive papers dealing with topics such as (but not limited to):
 Performing cultural, racial, gender or sexual identities in Wales
 Performing Welshness in global or transnational contexts
 Mediated performances of Welshness – Wales in the media
 Historical performances of Welshness – performance of history in Wales
 National theatres and shifting conceptions of identity
 Performing place in Wales
 Re-enacting cultural pasts in the context of museums and heritage and beyond
 Comparative approaches to Welsh drama in English
 Postdramatic Theatre in a Welsh context
 The National Drama Movement(s)
 Translating texts – translating identities
 Participation and Relation: Performances of Wales and their audiences
 Community theatres

Please submit a brief abstract (ca. 300 words) and a biography (50 words) to Dr Alyce von Rothkirch, Department of Adult Continuing Education, Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea SA2 8PP, a.v.von.rothkirch@swansea.ac.uk and to Dr Heike Roms, Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth SY23 3AJ, hhp@aber.ac.uk. [Please send your proposal to both convenors.] The deadline for submissions is 15 November 2011.

Please let us know which category your paper/presentation falls under: academic paper (20 mins), short presentation/performance (20 mins) or long presentation/performance (45 mins). Presentations/performances will be held in seminar rooms, so please keep them as simple as possible. A list of technical requirements is essential.

Darlith Flynyddol Richard Burton Annual Lecture

This year's Richard Burton Annual Lecture takes place at 6pm on October 4th at Port Talbot's Princess Royal Theatre. It will be delivered this year by John McGrath, Artistic Director of National Theatre Wales. We are e delighted that John has agreed to deliver the lecture this year. He will look back over the first year of National Theatre Wales, which climaxed of course with Michael Sheen's Passion in Port Talbot.

Admission is free. All welcome.

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Bydd Darlith Flynyddol Richard Burton yn cael ei gynnal am 6 o'r gloch ar 4 Hydref yn Theatr y Princess Royal, Port Talbot. John McGrath, Cyfarwyddwr Artistig National Thetare Wales, yw’r darlithydd eleni. Rydym yn falch iawn bod John wedi cytuno i gyflwyno'r ddarlith. Bydd yn edrych yn ôl dros flwyddyn gyntaf y National Theatre, a gyrhaeddodd uchafbwynt gyda Michael Sheen yn cyflwyno’r Pasiant ym Mhort Talbot.

Mynediad am ddim. Croeso i bawb.