Paul Merchant. <pm437>

My research examines figures of house and home in contemporary film from Argentina and Chile.The home, and with it conservative notions of familial and territorial belonging, has often been associated with repressive practices, particularly during periods of dictatorship. My research looks at how recent documentary and fiction productions from these countries destabilize the term, examining afresh the porous boundaries between the private and the public, the material and the imaginary, and between nature and culture. The films thus prompt questions on subjectivity and community, the role of media and technology, and on gender and sexuality, to be explored in dialogue with thinkers from Nelly Richard and Beatriz Sarlo to Giorgio Agamben and Jean-Luc Nancy.

 
Jack Belloli. <ggb24>

 

My PhD project investigates the importance of skill to experimental theatre. Working in counterpoint to recent critical emphases on "failure", I am interested in the ways in which theatremakers have become increasingly invested in telegraphing performers' and audiences' capacity to get better at the embodied, repeatable practices that they are involved in – and how this constitutes a new model for theatrical politics. I find an origin for these ideas in the writing and theatrical practice of Samuel Beckett, and identify how they might inspire or anticipate a range of contemporary work, largely in a British context. My work is informed by a range of thinkers across anthropology, sociology and philosophy, including Michel de Certeau, Tim Ingold, Richard Sennett and Peter Sloterdijk.

Abi L. Glen.  <alg66>

My research is focused on the interplay between early medieval literature and material cultures, with particular reference to the use of beasts to educate, admonish and entertain women.  The texts I cover range from fables in different dialects to church sculptures, stained glass, and guides for female recluses.  I am particularly interested in the group’s readings on the relative status of material objects vs. the written text, and in the field of animal studies as discussed by Cary Wolfe et al.