Thresholds: Contexts of Rupture, Change and Adaptation

The changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have been so radical and extensive that the concept of ‘back to normal’ has evolved into that of a ‘new normal’ in recognition of the fact that there can be no return, only new forms of existence in a new world. This sense of a before and after, and the processes of rupture, change, adaptation, translation and transformation that it entails, are what we seek to critically and creatively engage with through the symbolic vehicle of the threshold. We understand thresholds as representing the movement from one space or state to another, whether this be sudden and cataclysmic or slow and gentle.

The ‘threshold’ also allows for an exploration of ‘in-between’ or ‘in process’, i.e. that which is located on or within the threshold, rather than on either side of it. We may be forced to move through a threshold, adapting as best we can to the circumstances on the other side, or we might produce a threshold as part of a process of creativity and discovery.

This event is funded by the UCD Humanities Institute (HI). The HI was established in 2002 and has become a working home for hundreds of postgraduate, postdoctoral and visiting scholars. It forms a key component within UCD’s strategic mission to develop as a leading global research intensive university, and constitutes a vibrant and creative space for interdisciplinary research in the arts and humanities.

PROGRAMME:

9:00 Welcome

Prof. Anne Fuchs (Director and Professor, UCD Humanities Institute)

9:10 Panel 1: Digital Thresholds & Methods

Holly Parker (University of Lincoln): Escape from The Stacks: Negotiating Affective Membranes and Virtual Reality in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One

Cáit Murphy (Trinity College Dublin): The Somatic Thresholds of Palestinian Activist Videos on Instagram

Orla Delaney (University of Cambridge): Data Encounters: Towards a Theory of Databasing in the Museum

Fatma Kargin (FHNW Academy of Art and Design/ Justus Liebig University Giessen): Through the Threshold: Responsive, Performative and Self-referential

10:40 Tea/Coffee Break

11:00 Panel 2: Historical Breaks: Befores and Afters

Noble Shrivastava (Jawaharlal Nehru University): Tradition and Transition: Courtesans and the Early Colonial State in 19th Century Delhi

Viktoriia Grivina (University of St Andrews): The 4th Block Triennial of Eco Poster and Dealing with The Trauma of Chernobyl In Ukrainian Graphic Design

Jacob Miller (University College Dublin): The First Rule of Brexit is Don’t Talk about Brexit: “Liberal Nationalism” in Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet

Luke Watson (University College Cork): A Break From the Past: Adapting and Reacting to the French Revolution in Ireland, 1789-1798

12:30 Lunch

13:30 Panel 3: Identities in Flux

Fernando Alejandro Remache-Vinueza (University of Glasgow): Changes and Interactions between the Mainstream Narrative and Alternative Identities: The Case of Lithuania

Esha Nadkarni (Goa University): Probing the Transformation of Devadasis in The Undoing Dance

Yanli Xie (University College Dublin): Finding a Place for the ‘Modern/New’ Chinese women in Republican Domestic Kitchens: Gender Norms and the Cooking-Related Writings Published in the 1920s to 1930s

Monja Stahlberger (Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London): Overcoming Everyday Constraints: Agency and Identity in Diaries of Child Refugees from National Socialist Germany

15:15 Tea/Coffee Break

15:45 Panel 4: Artistic Responses to Thresholds

Anton Pereira Rodriguez (Ghent University/University of Verona): Between Modernism and Postmodernism: Jan Vercruysse’s Questioning of a Place for Art

Hattie Idle (University College Dublin): “On the Outside Looking in”: Romantic comedy, Awkward (Sub)urban Aesthetics, and US-Aotearoan Encounters in Taika Waititi’s Eagle vs Shark (2007)

Rory Clarkson (Durham University): Travelling through Grief: Elegy Crossing Thresholds in “Sailing Home from Rapallo” and “A Procession at Candlemas”

Annemarie Iker (Princeton University): Books and Secrets in Catalan Modernisme

17:15 Keynote:

Prof Caroline Bassett (Professor of Digital Humanities, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge & Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities)

The Light Under the Door: Technologies and the End of Worlds

18:30 Close

NOTE:

This is a HYBRID EVENT. It will take place both in person at UCD and online. If you want to attend online, please specify this later when prompted by Eventbrite. Following registration, we will be in touch with Zoom information via email if you are attending online.

This event is supported by UCD Research and the Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, UCD College of Arts and Humanities.