We are delighted to announce the latest English Research Seminar, taking place in person on Wednesday 8 February between 2:30 and 4:30 on the University of Salford campus.
If you wish to attend as a member of the public, please contact Scott Thurston on S.Thurston@salford.ac.uk. The seminar is also available to online participants.
Abstract and bio of our speaker
Joseph Darlington: Tracking the Experimentalists
Abstract: Academic interest in the British experimental writers of the 1960s has grown considerably in the past decade. An increased amount of biographical interest, particularly in the writers B.S. Johnson and Ann Quin, has produced a flourishing of theoretical studies attempting to outline and summarise the key features of the movement. What has so far been lacking is any biographical study of the movement as a whole. In this talk, based on the research behind his forthcoming book The Experimentalists, Joseph Darlington will outline the findings of a decade’s worth of archival, interview, and textual research. He will explore the methodologies of approach that he used in assembling the first empirically-evidenced mapping of the experimentalist movement, and how he translated this into narrative form to create a collective biography.
Joseph Darlington is head of the animation degree at Futureworks Media School. He completed his PhD at the University of Salford in 2014 and has since turned the subject of his thesis into a non-fiction book: The Experimentalists (Bloomsbury, 2022). His other books include Christine Brooke-Rose and Post-War Literature (Palgrave, 2021) and British Terrorist Novels of the 1970s (Palgrave, 2018). He is co-editor of the Manchester Review of Books and also publishes fiction, including a recent novel The Girl Beneath the Ice (Northodox Press, 2021). He can be found on Twitter at @Joe_Darlo.