On 30 May, the short documentary ‘Invisible’ will be screened at QMUL’s BLOC Cinema (13:00-14:30). The film explores the daily challenges faced by domestic workers in Colombia who commute on public transport. Domestic workers’ journeys are invariably long, expensive, overcrowded and often dangerous, yet they must endure them twice a day to maintain their frequently undervalued jobs and to support their own families.

The 30-minute screening (in Spanish with English subtitles) will be followed by a panel discussion and audience Q&A. We are delighted that one of the film’s directors, Dr Valentina Montoya Robledo, and a representative of the Nanny Solidarity Network (NSN), Sara Gomes, will be joining us for the discussion. For more details about this free event, and to register, please go to the Eventbrite page. 

This event is being organised as part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Affective and Immaterial Labour in Latin(x) American Culture’. For more information, see the blog site, which includes a co-authored blog post about the making of ‘Invisible’ and about the Invisible Commutes project.

[Eventbrite booking link: https://invisible-screening-panel.eventbrite.com]

You are warmly invited to the following research seminar, organized by the Centre for the History of Emotions

Laura Nys (QMUL), Love, grief and resistance. Young women and emotions in Belgian reform schools, 1900-1960

You can attend

• in person, at Queen Mary University of London, Arts One 1.36
• or online (request a link from e.carrera@qmul.ac.uk)

Abstract

This paper is a microhistory of young women and emotions in the Belgian reform school of Bruges in the early 20th century. As a state institution for juvenile offenders, the reform school imposed a harsh regime on the young women in view of their re-education. Using the women’s clandestine correspondence, of which intercepted fragments are preserved in the case files, this paper discusses romantic friendship, sexuality and the role of suffering in the women’s discourses. Personal correspondence with their families provides insights into the affective cultures of working class families, while a comparison between these types of correspondence allows to differentiate between discourses of love, friendship and family and the changes throughout time. The paper also considers the role of censorship, disciplinary power and subversive practices, exploring the possibilities for an ‘emotional agency’ in the disciplinary institution.

Dr. Laura Nys is a visiting scholar at the Centre for the History of the Emotions, QMUL. Her research is funded by the Independent Social Research Foundation. See her Profile page

Contact: l.nys@qmul.ac.uk

Please join us for an exciting event co-hosted by the QMUL Comparative Literature and Modern Languages Research Seminar and The Centre for the History of Emotions

Geography 126, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London E1 4NS (see map here).

All are very welcome! For catering purposes, please register for the event here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pedagogy-psychotherapy-and-creative-practice-in-twentieth-century-france-tickets-838499042207?aff=oddtdtcreator

Encompassing discussion of figures whose trajectories traversed the domains of psychiatry, pedagogy and the arts in twentieth-century France — including Jean Dubuffet, Élise and Célestin Freinet, François Tosquelles and Frantz Fanon — the two papers will explore how interactions across these fields generated new conceptions of creative expression and collective life.

By delineating the historical, political and aesthetic circumstances that determined these exchanges between education, psychotherapy and the arts, the session invites discussion around disciplinary innovation in the contemporary moment.

Professor Jean Duffy ‘From psychiatrist to pedagogue, patient to pupil: Jean Dubuffet’s catalytic encounters with theory and practice’  (The University of Edinburgh)

Dr Richard Mason ‘Traits d’union: institutional psychotherapy, emancipatory pedagogy and the collective stakes of learning to read and write’ (Queen Mary University London)

Chaired by Professor Kiera Vaclavik, Director of the Centre for Childhood Cultures (QMUL)

Jean Duffy is Emeritus Professor of French at the University of Edinburgh. She has published widely on the nouveau roman, on the relationship between literature and the visual arts, and on ritual, image, and artefact in contemporary French fiction. Her most recent book, Perceiving Dubuffet: Art, Embodiment, and the Viewer (2021), contextualizes Jean Dubuffet’s work within contemporary developments in phenomenology and examines the central role played by questions relating to embodiment in the evolution of his aesthetic thinking and artistic practice. She is currently preparing a second monograph on Dubuffet which will focus on his creative writings.

Richard Mason is Lecturer in Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University London. His research looks at conceptual exchanges between the domains of literature and education, primarily in French and francophone contexts. He is currently working on two projects: one on the relationship between learning to read and write and institutional and collective life in twentieth-century France; the second on the status of ‘education’ in Marcel Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. Recently he has co-edited, with Kasia Mika, a special issue of the critical theory journal Paragraph, entitled Difficulty’s Knots: Disturbance, Untimeliness, Risk (March 2024), which looks at conceptions of difficulty across education and the arts and humanities.

Research-in-progress seminar with precirculated paper

by Nira Santana Montañez (Instituto de Análisis y Aplicaciones Textuales, Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria)

and Víctor García Alemán (Instituto de Filosofía, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas)