Witch; sorceress; fairy; fay; goddess? Magical women in the literature of the fifteenth century and today. De Grey Lecture Theatre, Thursday 5th December, 6pm-8pm. Via Events.
The annual Words Matter lecture is one of the highlights of the English Literature year here at York St John University. This year, Dr Zoë Enstone presents her research on the magical women of fifteenth-century literature and their ongoing impact on contemporary culture.
As modern readers, we are often familiar with the tropes of Arthurian romance such as brave knights, damsels in distress, wise wizards, and dragons to be slain, many of which have been reshaped over centuries into fairy tales or children’s literature. However, the medieval romances themselves were often much more complicated than these aspects would suggest and offer a fascinating glimpse into the social and political concerns of a tumultuous historical period.
Zoë explores the developments of these Arthurian romances, which often featured magical women who were powerful, autonomous, and sometimes threatening figures, acting in ways that challenged the ideals of the court. She examines whether these portrayals reflect broader anxieties within an evolving Christian context, including the rising concerns around witchcraft and magic. Words really do matter, as the interplay of traditions and motivations saw these women shifting between categorisations like goddess, fairy and witch. A mediaevalist by backround, Zoë is nevertheless interested in the ways these works have influenced the more recent literature. In her lecture she introduces the rise of ‘witcherature’ and explores the renewed interest in the magical.
Dr Zoë Enstone is Associate Professor of English Literature and Associate Head of School for English Literature, specialising in medieval literature and medievalism. She has previously published on Melusine and magical women of the later romances and is currently working on a book on Morgan le Fay. More broadly, she’s interested in the ongoing influence of the medieval and has a forthcoming chapter on the ghost story tradition. She is the co-lead of the Interdisciplinary Witches Research Group here at York St John (https://www.yorksj.ac.uk/research/interdisciplinary-witches/).
The English Literature team are recognising outstanding academic achievement by students completing the first year of their degree in both single honours and joint honours cohorts through this year’s Words Matter prizes. This year’s winners are English Literature student Evie Lane and English Literature and Creative Writing student Alice Lind-O’Mara.
Level Four co-ordinator Dr Fraser Mann says that:
‘I’m really happy for Evie and Alice. Their dedication to the subject and their participation in university life are admirable. They have made rapid and remarkable progress and deserve real recognition for this success. They are both an asset to English Literature at York St John.’
On receiving news of the award, a delighted Alice said:
‘I was ten when I decided what I was going to study at university. I’d fallen in love with English. I wouldn’t learn to love school for another few years yet, but English truly captured my heart. When asked about my future plans, I always knew what I would say: “I’m going to study Creative Writing at university!” And time and again, people told me to “be realistic.” Passion was one thing; practicality was another. I almost gave up on that dream entirely, until I took English Literature at A-Level. There, I learned just how fun analysis can be, how satisfying it can feel to pull apart a text and how much you can learn from an author’s choices. Reading informs writing, after all. To now have the privilege of studying both–the dissection of literature as both its audience and creator–is a dream come true. To receive this award is so unbelievably moving, and I am so grateful to know that I am making the most of a dream I almost sacrificed. Thank you so much to everyone who encouraged me to keep going.’
Evie was equally happy and said:
‘Receiving the ‘Words Matter’ award means so much to me and I am truly moved by this incredible recognition. Studying English Literature has been both challenging and deeply
rewarding, and it is so fulfilling to see my efforts paying off. I am deeply grateful for the support and guidance of every lecturer, tutor, and peer; your encouragement has made all the difference.’ Evie and Alice will receive their awards during this year’s Words Matter Lecture. We would like to congratulate them on their success and wish them all the best for the rest of their degrees.
This year for Black History Month York St John University are hosting a range of events. These are free events, open to the YSJ community and the public. Many of these are hybrid events, accessible in person or online.
We launch the events on Monday 14th October with Celebrating Black Excellence: Remembering the past, honouring the present, and shaping the future. This in-person event invites us to reflect on the rich heritage and legacy of Black culture, while also embracing the innovation, creativity, and resilience that will drive us forward. View an exhibition of Black heroes of the past and present by Nduka Omeife, an artist local to York. Enjoy music, dance, fashion and poetry.
Next on Tuesday 15th October is Discussing Decolonisation: A guest lecture by Dr John Narayan (KCL), a hybrid event. Dr Narayan’s lecture, Survival Pending Revolution: The Revolutionary Theory of the Black Panther Party. This lecture argues that Black Panther leader Huey P.Newton’s orientation of the BPP away from armed insurrection and towards survival pending revolution was not simply a pragmatic choice of strategy, but rather based on a theorization of what he dubbed reactionary intercommunalism. Come along to find out more.
We end the month on Wednesday 30th October with a talk by Bishop Rose Hudson-Wilkin. She was previously the chaplain to the Speaker of the House of Commons, and was the first black woman to become a Bishop in Britain. An honorary graduate of York St John University, she will be talking about ‘The Church’s Role in Challenging Racism in the Public Square’.
Find out about these and many more events on our YSJ Events Page.
If you would like to review any events or books for the blog, please get in touch with us.
Rachel Bentley and Madz Warley return for the second installment of “Book’d & Busy: A Lit Life On Campus”, the official podcast of the English Literature and Creative Writing Degrees at York St John University!
In January 2024 I was invited to speak on a roundtable at the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (BSECS) annual conference about the future of the eighteenth century. Each speaker was invited to share their aspirations for what they hoped a specific aspect of eighteenth-century studies might look like, before opening the workshop up for discussion about how we might work together to make these visions a reality. I was asked to speculate about the future of eighteenth-century studies from a pedagogical perspective. The following is based on my response to this question.
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In terms of how eighteenth-century literature is taught ten years from now, I hope we will continue to see a move away from chronological survey modules that promise or promote, implicitly or explicitly, a completist account of the eighteenth-century as a literary period. In fact, the way “culture” is packaged, presented and consumed these days (though disconcerting in many ways) does perhaps equip students well for coping with the vast complexities of such a sprawling and self-referential age as the eighteenth century.
How do Gen Z consume media? Through streaming, asynchronous cultural consumption and via sprawling multimedia franchises. They’ve grown up with the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), the DCEU (DC extended universe), the SSU (Sony’s Spiderman Universe, which doesn’t actually contain Spiderman), the MonsterVerse, the Multiverse, the Metaverse, now also the Whoniverse. Yes, there are major problems with the way one one or two huge corporations have come to colonise the popular imagination, but one possible silver lining is that a student who can enjoy a film about an obscure superhero’s flying dog without worrying about how it might fit into the other prior 40+ films and goodness only knows how many TV shows, videogames, cartoons and escape rooms it’s connected to, can probably handle first encountering Alexander Pope by studying Anne Ingram’s ‘Epistle to Pope’, or gradually developing a sense of the significance of Samuel Richardson by reading Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier and Charlotte Lennox.
The recently revised Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) Benchmark statement for English Literature doubles down on the continuity and persistence of disciplinary certainties (for instance, it states that literature is the “distinct analysis of discourse and meaning in communication, including aesthetics and rhetoric”) whilst also advocating a series of themes, which include Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. The statement models really well how it is possible to embrace urgent and emergent themes, approaches and considerations, whilst also maintaining our existing disciplinary procedures.
People often say studying literature promotes citizenship, empathy and kindness, and if that’s true, I can see how it would be the natural consequence of rigorous engagement with texts on a compositional level, because the text—especially the historical text—itself becomes an encounter with difference. It requires generative attentiveness: a consideration of the context, audience and meaning of each alien utterance. With the vast digital archives of primary materials at our disposal, increasingly diverse scholarship, and Broadview Press doing the genuinely heroic work of making lesser-known texts and the stories of their composition more and more available, there are so many new texts to teach and more and more ways to think about and teach them. And I think eighteenth-century literature is a particularly well-suited forum for exploring the kinds of questions relating to matters of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.
First, because the eighteenth century is a mess. A huge, sprawling, self-referential, deeply intertextual, massively ephemeral mess. It is this mess of printed matter and the curious, contradictory, and often playful ways in which it promotes, applies, figures and resists concepts, paradigms and performances that makes the period endlessly fascinating. The messiness of it is a feature, not a bug, and something to be embraced. We can enter this maelstrom of ideas, opinions and representations from any angle – you’ll still feel the gravitational pull of Swift, the weight and ripples of Pope, the very long shadow of Dryden, the influence of Richardson, Fielding and Johnson, but you needn’t necessarily start there.
Second, the very same questions we are asking in our present moment—about who is and isn’t seen, who is heard, who is included and excluded and what we can and should do about this—are already there in eighteenth-century literature. The question of who is ‘hailed’ by the print within this public sphere draws attention to discussions that ring hauntingly prescient in our current moment. Whilst the dominant print culture might assume a white middle class reader similar to that of the authorial voice, there are texts which work hard to draw attention to this, to deconstruct it, and to find space for alternate voices and audiences.
In the periodical The Parrot, for instance, Eliza Haywood writes as an involuntarily displaced green parrot who explicitly rejects the implied kinship of his readership, as is often assumed in periodical literature, insisting instead on unfamiliarity rather than familiarity as a means of deconstructing the homogeneity of the white masculine public sphere in which it exists. These dynamics are often at work in the allegories and metaphors of the period. Arabella, the hero of Charlotte Lennox’s Female Quixote, for instance, invents a silent means of communicating in gestures as a way of resisting language prescribed by the dominant patriarchy. And of course, they’re there in the letters of Charles Ignatius Sancho: the complex subjectivities he inhabits, avoids, subverts or, just plays with. depending on who he addresses and why.
‘The Parrot’, artwork by Lauren Fenton.
On my second year early eighteenth-century module on the English Literature programme at York St John University, which is called ‘Dawn of Print’, I frame the module as being about print culture and intertextuality. The whole thing is about the dialogic relationships between these texts (and actually quite a lot about the influence of Don Quixote). So, for these students, their tour of the eighteenth century went: John Dryden, Bernard Mandeville, Mary Leapor and Anne Ingram responding to Pope, Sarah Fielding, Jane Collier, Eliza Haywood, Charlotte Lennox, Ignatius Sancho, James Cook and Lady Mary Montagu, Jonathan Swift (Gulliver’s Travels) and Laurence Sterne. And I’m telling you this because over Christmas, an interesting thing happened.
A meme began circulating on X and TikTok called “Classic Bookshelf”, which depicts a “classic map” of 57 titles, and readers are encouraged to colour them in as they read them. A lot of the viral tweets were students sharing the image – which presents a fascinating and deeply traditional vision of canonicity as understood by the public (I suspect it’s American)—complaining that they didn’t know what they were paying their tuition fees for because so few of these featured on the English degree reading lists.
Figure 3. “Classic Bookshelf” viral meme circulated on X in Dec 2023.
But then, one of the students from Dawn of Print, Maddison Warley, produced her own response—the “slayteenth century”—making the point that there are other ways of reading and, at the risk of sounding like a big humble bragger, I was so pleased and surprised by the texts she chose to include.
Figure 4. Response posted on X by Level 5 York St John University English Literature student, Maddison Warley, shortly after completing the module Dawn of Print
I wanted to end with this because it’s fun, but also because I hope this is the future. The eighteenth century has always been a conversable century and if we continue having difficult conversations, keep pushing the boundaries of how we approach this literature and whose voices we centre, I really do believe that in 2034, we can have it all.
Victoria Walpole is one of our artist liaisons on the Literature at Work module. This week she has been working with our visiting performers from the Ivano-Frankivsk Theatre Company in Ukraine. Victoria tells us more.
I hear that, despite the challenges of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ivano-Frankivsk Theatre Company has continued to showcase plays and even created a humanitarian logistics centre called “Movement of Resistance – Movement of Help” to support those displaced by the war and soldiers of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
The Ivano-Frankivsk Theatre Company has a reputation for producing creative and innovative shows that have established its place in the Ukrainian cultural world, having always been acclaimed for its unprecedented creative “explosions”, highlighting its active artistic position in culture.
This highly respected theatre company has an exceptional cast of star actors, including Ivan Blindar and Mariia Stopnyk, who have joined us this week on our campus. Ivan and Mariia have been working closely with the York International Shakespeare Festival to create an original piece of work in collaboration with volunteer actors from and around York. These include Ukrainian performers who are currently living here.
For the past week, the actors have been hard at work in rehearsals, creating and practising pieces to perform on the first weekend of the festival. The pieces they have created combine Shakespeare’s incredible plays with the contemporary. They blend Ukrainian and English culture to create compelling pieces that will astound audiences. Working alongside Ivan and Mariia has been a privilege and a fun experience for all involved. Their love and passion for their work is reflected in their performances, and it has been a pleasure to be alongside them during the creative process. Through the use of imaginative warm-up exercises and sonnet performances, Phillip Parr has been able to direct the creative process to mould a stunning performance that beautifully symbolises the collaboration between the Ivano-Frankivsk theatre and the festival. Part of this process is making sure everyone who volunteered has a voice in what they want to give and take from the final performance.
During the rehearsals, local artist Lynne O’Dowd has been diligently capturing the dedication and momentous efforts of everyone involved through her paintings. These paintings will be part of the final performance, highlighting the creativity and hard work that has gone into bringing this production to life.
This performance promises to be incredibly imaginative and powerful, so you will not want to miss this! Everyone involved has put their heart and soul into creating a beautiful piece to perform, making these performances even more special. Creating a performance in such a short amount of time is a real feat of skill and everyone involved worked incredibly hard to make this possible.
When and where?
The event will be performed on Saturday the 20th of April at 2 pm and 7.30pm in the York St John Creative Centre Auditorium as part of the York International Shakespeare Festival. Tickets are only £15 at full price, with students and concessions only paying £5.
When buying tickets also look out for and consider buying a Pass It On Ticket which we can offer to community members who may not otherwise be able to attend as we want to make it possible for as many members of the community to come to festival performances!
To buy tickets and or more information about the York International Shakespeare Festival you can go to its website.
English Literature Research Showcase – 15th April 5pm-7pm
The annual English Literature Research Showcase is an evening in which we learn about colleagues’ specialist projects. This is a chance to celebrate the rich and varied range of research that defines the department and shapes our teaching.
This year we will hear about Patti Smith’s punk queering of masculine spaces, Mark Lanegan’s destabilising of grunge myth, Medieval ghost stories, ‘good hating’ from Alexander Pope to Samuel Johnson, and critically controversial diagnoses of Charlotte Brontë’s pregnancy and death.
Please join us in learning about the important work that Literature staff and research students are engaged with. There will some refreshments provided following the event and a chance for some informal conversation.
Hey there, Shakespeare enthusiasts and creative minds of York! Are you ready to turn your passion for the Bard into a thrilling volunteering experience? The York International Shakespeare Festival is just around the corner, running from the 18th to the 27th of April, and we’ve got some exciting opportunities waiting for you! Whether you’re a die-hard Shakespeare fan or just looking to spice up your C.V., we’ve got a role for everyone.
Embrace the Excitement: Become a Festival Volunteer!
Whether you’re interested in ushering, marketing, event organisation, or social media and content creation, there’s a place for you in this exciting journey!
Why Volunteer, You Ask?
Free Access to Events
Picture this: not only do you get to be part of the magic behind the scenes, but you also get a ticket to some of the festival’s events – for free! As a Festival Volunteer, you’ll have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of your labour by attending select shows and immersing yourself in the enchanting world of Shakespeare without spending a penny.
Boost Your CV and Develop Your Graduate Attributes
Being a Festival Volunteer isn’t just about the joy of contributing to a cultural extravaganza; it’s also a fantastic addition to your CV. Employers love to see candidates who have actively participated in community events and taken on responsibilities beyond the classroom. Your volunteering stint will showcase your dedication, teamwork, and ability to take initiative – qualities that stand out in the professional world.
How to Get Involved
Fill out this form: https://form.jotform.com/240395509337057 and let the Shakespearean adventure begin! Any questions, contact Skylar at skylar@parrabbola.co.uk
Don’t miss this chance to immerse yourself in the world of Shakespeare, make lasting memories, and build a CV that shines as brightly as the stage lights. Become a Festival Volunteer and let the magic unfold!
We are very excited to celebrate and there’s a lot to get hyped about at YSJ:
Free Speech and Hate Speech: Analysing ‘anti-gender’ Discourse
7th February 2024, 4:30-5:30pm, Creative Centre Auditorium
This LGBTQ+ History Month talk focuses on what is commonly referred to as homophobic and transphobic ‘soft hate speech’ which (unlike ‘hard’ hate) operates within the limits of the law and may be perceived as ‘sayable’ in the public sphere. This makes it more difficult to recognize and challenge. This talk is being given by our very own Helen Sauntson (Professor of English Language and Linguistics) and is going to be a must-be-at event. Book your ticket here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lgbtqhm-free-speech-and-hate-speech-analysing-anti-gender-discourse-tickets-756706679047?aff=oddtdtcreator
In Conversation with Dom&Ink
Tuesday 13th February, 6-8pm, Creative Centre Auditorium
On Wednesday 13th March 2-4pm, in the run-up to Transgender Day of Visibility, the LGBTQ+ Staff Network and the Athena Swan Initiative are holding a hybrid event to celebrate trans and non-binary scholarship at York St John University. This will be an informal, supportive space where all members of staff and students who are trans, non-binary, gender-diverse or are creating work related to these communities are encouraged to take part and share their work. Whether you are a first-year undergrad with an essay you’d like to share or a seasoned academic, we want to hear from you!
We welcome our London staff and student scholars to join the event, as hybrid presentations are possible.
This is a supportive space for trans, non-binary or gender-diverse scholars and students to share their work. If you know of anyone (staff or students) at YSJ who would be interested in presenting their work, we want to celebrate your contribution to the YSJ community. For more information, please contact Naomi Orrell at LGBTQPlusStaff@yorksj.ac.uk.
This year’s YSJ Literature’s annual WordsMatter Lecture will be delivered by Dr Liesl King, speaking about ‘Speculations on Embodiment’ . This will take place on Thursday 7th December, starting at 6pm, with a drinks reception at 7pm.
This year’s lecture will explore ways in which the word ‘embodiment’ has inspired Dr Liesl King’s teaching practice, university projects, and publications. She will consider the representation of embodied living in the fiction of Ursula K. Le Guin, the ‘tertium quid’ in Dr Angela Voss’ approach to classroom teaching, and the concept of ‘sensuous knowledge’ advanced by Minna Salami in her critical work of the same name published in 2020. The presentation will look at three ways in which Liesl, sometimes through hindsight, has drawn on the word ‘embodiment’ to inform her approach to academic practice: her online science fiction magazine, Terra Two: An Ark for Off World Survival, her upcoming co-written guidebook on Speculative Fiction (New Critical Idiom series, Routledge), and her nascent project on the ‘Embodied University’.
Anna Brizzolara is a student on the YSJ Creative Writing MA who has recently been focussing on Critical Approaches to Creative Writing. This is Anna’s review of Lemn Sissay’s recent poetry reading at Manchester Literature Festival. Sissay’s adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis is coming to York Theatre Royal 10th-14th October 2023.
Lemn Sissay performing at Home, Manchester (c) Anna Brizzolara
I wanted tickets to see Zadie Smith.
That’s how I found Lemn Sissay.
He shared the programme for the Manchester Literature Festival alongside Zadie’s sold-out event.
Lemn hosted an evening at ‘Home’. Home, a theatre, gallery, independent film screen and all-round centre of creativity and culture that had a cosy, community feel. It opened in 2015 in the heart of Manchester; relaxed, no fancy wine list, plenty of craft beer and pots of pic ‘n’ mix. Volunteers in printed T-shirts smiled, ushered you along brushed concrete corridors and showed you to your multi-coloured upholstered seats.
Dr Saffron Vickers Walkling introduces titles to look out for this ESEA Heritage Month and beyond. Saffron lived and worked in China for five years, and their research area includes late twentieth century Chinese Shakespeare in performance.
September is East and South East Asian Heritage Month. Founded in 2021 by Britain’s East and South East Asian Network (besea.n), it commemorates “those who have contributed positively to British society” and celebrates “the richness of ESEA culture”, says Michelle Chan.
In alphabetical order, East Asian and South East Asian countries include: Brunei, Burma (Myanmar), Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Macau, Malaysia, Mongolia, North Korea, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, and Vietnam.
Besea.n say that their “vision is one where our communities are seen and supported in all spaces”. This includes the sold out ESEA Lit Fest at Foyles Bookshop in London, which started on 23rd September 2023.
A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo tells of a Chinese woman’s life in London, reflecting on the nature of cross-cultural love and language. The title references Roland Barthes’ book of the same name, and its Cantonese film adaptation. Novelist and filmmaker Guo came to YSJ in 2008 as part of our China Week to speak about her debut English-language novel A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, which our first years were studying on their Gender and Writing module. Although not a sequel, A Lover’s Discourse revisits and reframes many of the tropes of the earlier book. Her film She, A Chinese is also currently showing on Channel 4.
Night Sky with Exit Wounds is a collection of poetry by the Vietnamese-American writer and academic Ocean Vuong, reflecting on his refugee experience – both its horrors and its wonders.
Vuong’s novel On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous sustained us through the long holiday of 2021 as our Big Summer Read. See more here.
If you want something that will shock and amuse you in equal measures, check out Yellowface by R. F. Kuang, a hilarious satire on the ultimate in literary cultural appropriation…
This bestseller combines big ideas with humour and is simultaneously thought-provoking and immensely readable!
If you’ve never read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, then now is the time to remedy this.
A firm A-level favourite for many years, Ishiguro’s novel about a group of young people at an English boarding school quickly reveals the dystopian side of its apparent idyllic setting.
If it’s film you are interested in, Channel 4 has a selection for ESEA, including the first ever British Chinese feature film, Ping Pong, which I’ve reviewed here. “Elaine Choi (Sheen), a trainee lawyer tasked with executing the will of local businessman Sam Wong, whose body has been found in a telephone box, receiver still in hand. The trouble is, she can’t read Chinese characters.”
You can find Film 4’s complete ESEA listings here:
“To she, or not to she?” Spanish ERASMUS exchange student Roger Tomas Arques recently took our Shakespeare Perspectives module. For Pride Season 2023, he looks at the connections between Shakespeare’s theatre and Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
Recently, I was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars 8’s new episode as I do every Friday and then I thought something. Did you know that when watching RuPaul’s Drag Race you are seeing a Shakespearean thing?
Image from the British Library collection: Mark Rylance getting into costume as Olivia for Shakespeare’s Globe’s all male production of Twelfth Night.
“Drag may trace its roots to the age of William Shakespeare, when female roles were performed by men”. In Shakespeare’s times, women were not allowed to be on stage, so men were playing women’s roles. During those days acting was not considered a very refined work, so if a woman acted, she would be considered a sex worker. As Shakespeare’s contemporary said, “Our Players are not as the players beyond sea, a sort of squirting baudie Comedians.” (Thomas Nashe) However, it was not just a costumes thing. The writer had to find men that could perfectly represent a woman with their gestures, movements, and so on.
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On Wednesday 13th March 2-4pm, in the run-up to Transgender Day of Visibility, the LGBTQ+ Staff Network and the Athena Swan Initiative are holding a hybrid event to celebrate trans and non-binary scholarship at York St John University. This will be an informal, supportive space where all members of staff and students who are trans, non-binary, gender-diverse or are creating work related to these communities are encouraged to take part and share their work. Whether you are a first-year undergrad with an essay you’d like to share or a seasoned academic, we want to hear from you!/prod01/yorksjacuk/media/content-assets/staff-profile-images/Liesl-King.jpg?resize=274%2C171&ssl=1)
This year’s YSJ Literature’s annual 
A Lover’s Discourse by Xiaolu Guo
Night Sky with Exit Wounds
If you want something that will shock and amuse you in equal measures, check out 
If you’ve never read Kazuo Ishiguro’s 
If it’s film you are interested in, Channel 4 has a selection for ESEA, including the first ever British Chinese feature film, Ping Pong, which I’ve reviewed 
