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Source: Wikipedia On February the 18th 2015, Newcastle's Literary & Philosophical Society (The Lit & Phil) will host a study afternoon featuring a wide-range of short talks from academics and Lit & Phil members on the society's history and archives. Amongst the speakers will be PhD student Patrick Low , who will give a talk entitled 'Capital Punishment, Phrenology and the Lit & Phil: The curious case of the “Bumpologist” Mayor, John Fife.' There will also be a ‘show-and-tell’ session and an opportunity to browse through a sample of the Lit & Phil’s collections. Read the full programme here .

Source: Wikipedia Philippa Abbott, a doctoral student in English, will be speaking about nineteenth-century crime fiction at Newcastle University on Thursday 12th February. Her talk forms part of the second Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies Postgraduate Research Conversation of 2014/15. The Research Conversation will take place in the Armstrong Building from 4pm-6pm. All are welcome to attend and participate in the discussion. More details can be found here . The Centre for Nineteenth-Century Studies (CNCS) is an interdisciplinary centre for research in all aspects of the long nineteenth century, from the 1750s to contemporary neo-Victorianism. CNCS is led by academics representing all five of the North East’s universities and from a wide range of disciplines. It always welcomes new members.

The Department of Culture is delighted to announce that Dr Sarah Dobbs has been appointed as lecturer in English and Creative Writing. Sarah won a Funds For Women Graduates (FfWG)   award to complete her PhD in Creative writing at Lancaster University in 2011. Her PhD explored coma as fictional space, crime, culture and masculinity and the femme fatale. Her PhD novel, Killing Daniel (Unthank Books), was published in 2012 and she recently edited and co-authored a textbook, English Language, Literature and Creative Writing: A Practical Guide for Students (Anthem Press, 2014). Previous work has been broadcast by the BBC, performed at Bolton Octagon and Cambridge ADC theatres, and published in  Flax , Stepaway magazine and Litro . She is currently at work on a novel that considers the relationship between apocalyptic fiction, illness and assisted dying. Sarah has previously taught at Lancaster, Manchester Metropolitan University, Edge Hill and the Open University, as well as on...

Café Culture is a series of free events for thinkers which aim to generate discussion, debate and a convivial atmosphere. Held in central Newcastle upon Tyne, they seek to provide a space for people to think, share ideas and to have a lively and inclusive discussion. On December 1st 2014 Dr Alison Younger gave a talk entitled 'Our Monsters: Ourselves' in which she explored the ways monsters reflect the cultural anxieties of the times in which they were spawned. Listen to the podcast here .

The Department of Culture is pleased to announce the launch of Monstrum - a journal for Spectral Visions Press . Monstrum is a celebration of all things monstrous and supernatural, from the doppelganger to Penny Dreadfuls; from folklore to Gothic of the Borders. Monstrum aims to publish the best articles on the latest thinking in Gothic and Literary studies. The deadline for proposals for our inaugural issue is 31st January 2015. The Call for Papers is available for download on the Submissions page . You can follow Monstrum on twitter or you can like Spectral Visions Press on Facebook . Monstrum Volume 1: Issue 1 will be available late 2015. For further information contact Colin Younger (colin.younger@sunderland.ac.uk).

The importance of stories written for young readers is undisputed, and in particular the central place of the fairy story in popular culture is clearly recognized. In an article published in Children's Literature in Education , Dr Angela Smith argues that whilst most of these stories are centuries old, they have been adapted by the cultures of the tellers to be more compatible with the ideological views of the audience. She explores how feminism has influenced two versions of the same story, published by the same publisher for comparable age groups through an examination of the Ladybird versions of Rapunzel as published in 1968 and 1993. Angela shows how there are subtle changes in the text which do not affect the overall narrative structure but can offer an insight into the ways in which society has ideologically positioned men and women. Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) is used to show how a close linguistic analysis of the text can reveal the impact of feminism o...