Podcasts about Elleke Boehmer

Pagecast along with a host of book people take a seat in the vibrant courtyard of Smitten Cafe surrounded by a soirée of literary buzz. Maryam Adams engages in a compelling conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Mary Watson, exploring their latest works of fiction, the diverse settings that inspire their narratives, and the audiences they envision while writer.

In this episode, Elleke Boehmer introduces the world-renowned figure of Nelson Mandela and looks critically at his legacy. A PDF transcript for this episode can be found here: https://oxfordacademic.blubrry.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/VSI-Ep-74-Nelson-Mandela-transcript.pdf Learn more about Nelson Mandela: A Very Short Introduction here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/nelson-mandela-a-very-short-introduction-9780192803016 Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World English at the University of Oxford and Director of … Continue reading Nelson Mandela – The Very Short Introductions Podcast – Episode 74 →

Noted feminist economist Devaki Jain talks about writing her memoir, The Brass Notebook (2020), with her long-term friend, Gloria Steinem. They are hosted by Katherine Collins and Elleke Boehmer. Together, they discuss Jain and Steinem's friendship (which spans many years as fellow activists), telling their mothers' stories, and women becoming more radical as they get older. Content warning: brief discussion of sexual assault. Keywords: feminism, economics, India, motherhood, family history, activism, feminist economics. Find out more about: Devaki Jain: Book: The Brass Notebook: A Memoir (2020) Profile: ‘First Women at Oxford' Gloria Steinem: Website: https://www.gloriasteinem.com/ Twitter: @GloriaSteinem The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing: Website: https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/ Twitter: @OxLifeWriting If you'd like to be more involved, access exclusive events and attend our online book club, then join our Friends of OCLW scheme. We also offer writing groups and mentoring to those working on their own writing projects. The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing is based at Wolfson College, University of Oxford. Artwork by Una. Edited by Charles Pidgeon.

Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. In his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), award-winning poet, lyricist, musician, and activist Benjamin Zephaniah speaks out candidly about the writer's responsibility to step outside the medium of literature and engage in political activism: “You can't just be a poet or writer and say your activism is simply writing about these things; you have to do something as well, especially if your public profile can be put to good use.” In conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Malachi McIntosh, he will address the complex relationship of authorship and activism in a celebrity-driven media culture and the ways in which his celebrity persona relates to his activist agenda. The conversation will tie in with contemporary debates about the role of literature and the celebrity author as a social commentator. Pre-recorded introduction: Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author and editor of over twenty books, including Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995, 2005), Empire, the National and the Postcolonial: Resistance in Interaction (2002), Stories of Women (2005), Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire (2015), Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-century critical readings (2018), and a widely translated biography of Nelson Mandela (2008). She is the award-winning author of five novels, including Bloodlines (2000), Nile Baby (2008), and The Shouting in the Dark (2015), and two collections of short stories, most recently To the Volcano, and other stories (2019). Boehmer is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing and principal investigator of Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds. Speakers: Benjamin Zephaniah is one of Britain's most eminent contemporary poets, best known for his compelling spoken-word and recorded performances. An award-winning playwright, novelist, children's author, and musician, he is also a committed political activist and outspoken campaigner for human and animal rights. He appears regularly on radio and TV, literary festivals, and has also taken part in plays and films. He continues to record and perform with his reggae band, recently releasing the album Revolutionary Minds. His autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. Malachi McIntosh is editor and publishing director of Wasafiri. He previously co-led the Runnymede Trust's award-winning Our Migration Story project and spent four years as a lecturer in postcolonial literature at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Emigration and Caribbean Literature (2015) and the editor of Beyond Calypso: Re-Reading Samuel Selvon (2016). His fiction and non-fiction have been published widely, including in the Caribbean Review of Books, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, The Guardian, The Journal of Romance Studies, Research in African Literatures, and The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature. Q and A Chaired by Professor Wes Williams, TORCH Director. The event is organised in association with the Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds project and The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) and forms part of the webinar series Art and Action: Literary Authorship, Politics, and Celebrity Culture.

Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. In his autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), award-winning poet, lyricist, musician, and activist Benjamin Zephaniah speaks out candidly about the writer's responsibility to step outside the medium of literature and engage in political activism: “You can't just be a poet or writer and say your activism is simply writing about these things; you have to do something as well, especially if your public profile can be put to good use.” In conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Malachi McIntosh, he will address the complex relationship of authorship and activism in a celebrity-driven media culture and the ways in which his celebrity persona relates to his activist agenda. The conversation will tie in with contemporary debates about the role of literature and the celebrity author as a social commentator. Pre-recorded introduction: Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author and editor of over twenty books, including Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995, 2005), Empire, the National and the Postcolonial: Resistance in Interaction (2002), Stories of Women (2005), Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire (2015), Postcolonial Poetics: 21st-century critical readings (2018), and a widely translated biography of Nelson Mandela (2008). She is the award-winning author of five novels, including Bloodlines (2000), Nile Baby (2008), and The Shouting in the Dark (2015), and two collections of short stories, most recently To the Volcano, and other stories (2019). Boehmer is the Director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing and principal investigator of Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds. Speakers: Benjamin Zephaniah is one of Britain's most eminent contemporary poets, best known for his compelling spoken-word and recorded performances. An award-winning playwright, novelist, children's author, and musician, he is also a committed political activist and outspoken campaigner for human and animal rights. He appears regularly on radio and TV, literary festivals, and has also taken part in plays and films. He continues to record and perform with his reggae band, recently releasing the album Revolutionary Minds. His autobiography, The Life and Rhymes of Benjamin Zephaniah (2018), was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award. Malachi McIntosh is editor and publishing director of Wasafiri. He previously co-led the Runnymede Trust's award-winning Our Migration Story project and spent four years as a lecturer in postcolonial literature at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of Emigration and Caribbean Literature (2015) and the editor of Beyond Calypso: Re-Reading Samuel Selvon (2016). His fiction and non-fiction have been published widely, including in the Caribbean Review of Books, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, The Guardian, The Journal of Romance Studies, Research in African Literatures, and The Cambridge Companion to British Black and Asian Literature. Q and A Chaired by Professor Wes Williams, TORCH Director. The event is organised in association with the Postcolonial Writers Make Worlds project and The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing (OCLW) and forms part of the webinar series Art and Action: Literary Authorship, Politics, and Celebrity Culture.

A first look at the new podcast series by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing. Co-hosts Kate Kennedy and Katherine Collins introduce themselves and the podcast, indicating what listeners can expect to hear: interesting discussions with noted writers, biographers, and academics. Hermione Lee and Elleke Boehmer describe what we mean by life-writing as well as its importance as a vital cultural practice. Find out more about OCLW: www.oclw.ox.ac.uk @OxLifeWriting.

Talking Afropean: Johny Pitts in conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Simukai Chigudu about his award-winning book. TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events!. Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. This Writers Make Worlds and TORCH panel discussion features the author Johny Pitts in conversation about his ground-breaking travelogue Afropean, his 2019 notes on a journey around contemporary Black Europe. Johny Pitts will explore together with Oxford academics Simukai Chigudu and Elleke Boehmer questions of black history, hidden archives, decolonization and community, and what it is to be black in Europe today. Hailed as a work that reframes Europe, Afropean was the 2020 winner of the Jhalak Prize. Biographies: Johny Pitts is a writer, photographer and broadcast journalist, and the author of Afropean (2019). His work exploring African-European identity has received numerous awards, including a Decibel Penguin Prize and the Jhalak Prize. He has contributed words and images to the Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. Elleke Boehmer is a writer, historian, and critic. She is Professor of World Literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her most recent books are Postcolonial Poetics (2018) and To the Volcano (2019). She is currently on a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship working on a project called ‘Southern Imagining’. Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. Simukai is interested in the social politics of inequality in Africa and his first book The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe came out in 2020. Prior to joining the academy, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service.

Talking Afropean: Johny Pitts in conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Simukai Chigudu about his award-winning book. TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events!. Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. This Writers Make Worlds and TORCH panel discussion features the author Johny Pitts in conversation about his ground-breaking travelogue Afropean, his 2019 notes on a journey around contemporary Black Europe. Johny Pitts will explore together with Oxford academics Simukai Chigudu and Elleke Boehmer questions of black history, hidden archives, decolonization and community, and what it is to be black in Europe today. Hailed as a work that reframes Europe, Afropean was the 2020 winner of the Jhalak Prize. Biographies: Johny Pitts is a writer, photographer and broadcast journalist, and the author of Afropean (2019). His work exploring African-European identity has received numerous awards, including a Decibel Penguin Prize and the Jhalak Prize. He has contributed words and images to the Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. Elleke Boehmer is a writer, historian, and critic. She is Professor of World Literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her most recent books are Postcolonial Poetics (2018) and To the Volcano (2019). She is currently on a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship working on a project called ‘Southern Imagining’. Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. Simukai is interested in the social politics of inequality in Africa and his first book The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe came out in 2020. Prior to joining the academy, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service.

Talking Afropean: Johny Pitts in conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Simukai Chigudu about his award-winning book. TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events!. Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. This Writers Make Worlds and TORCH panel discussion features the author Johny Pitts in conversation about his ground-breaking travelogue Afropean, his 2019 notes on a journey around contemporary Black Europe. Johny Pitts will explore together with Oxford academics Simukai Chigudu and Elleke Boehmer questions of black history, hidden archives, decolonization and community, and what it is to be black in Europe today. Hailed as a work that reframes Europe, Afropean was the 2020 winner of the Jhalak Prize. Biographies: Johny Pitts is a writer, photographer and broadcast journalist, and the author of Afropean (2019). His work exploring African-European identity has received numerous awards, including a Decibel Penguin Prize and the Jhalak Prize. He has contributed words and images to the Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. Elleke Boehmer is a writer, historian, and critic. She is Professor of World Literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her most recent books are Postcolonial Poetics (2018) and To the Volcano (2019). She is currently on a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship working on a project called ‘Southern Imagining’. Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. Simukai is interested in the social politics of inequality in Africa and his first book The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe came out in 2020. Prior to joining the academy, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service.

Talking Afropean: Johny Pitts in conversation with Elleke Boehmer and Simukai Chigudu about his award-winning book. TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events!. Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. This Writers Make Worlds and TORCH panel discussion features the author Johny Pitts in conversation about his ground-breaking travelogue Afropean, his 2019 notes on a journey around contemporary Black Europe. Johny Pitts will explore together with Oxford academics Simukai Chigudu and Elleke Boehmer questions of black history, hidden archives, decolonization and community, and what it is to be black in Europe today. Hailed as a work that reframes Europe, Afropean was the 2020 winner of the Jhalak Prize. Biographies: Johny Pitts is a writer, photographer and broadcast journalist, and the author of Afropean (2019). His work exploring African-European identity has received numerous awards, including a Decibel Penguin Prize and the Jhalak Prize. He has contributed words and images to the Guardian, the New Statesman and the New York Times. Elleke Boehmer is a writer, historian, and critic. She is Professor of World Literature at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. Her most recent books are Postcolonial Poetics (2018) and To the Volcano (2019). She is currently on a British Academy Senior Research Fellowship working on a project called ‘Southern Imagining’. Simukai Chigudu is Associate Professor of African Politics and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Oxford. Simukai is interested in the social politics of inequality in Africa and his first book The Political Life of an Epidemic: Cholera, Crisis and Citizenship in Zimbabwe came out in 2020. Prior to joining the academy, Simukai was a medical doctor in the UK’s National Health Service.

TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events! Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. In conversation with Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King. This event is also part of the North-east Africa Forum at the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. Hosted by Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English (English Faculty, University of Oxford). Professor Boehmer is currently the Director for the Oxford Centre for Life Writing (OCLW) based at Wolfson College, and former Director of TORCH (2015-17), and also leads on the 'Writers Make Worlds' project - https://writersmakeworlds.com/ Biographies: Maaza Mengiste is the author of the novels, Beneath the Lion's Gaze, selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books; and The Shadow King, a finalist for the LA Times Books Prize, a New York Times' Notable Book of 2019 and one of TIME's Must-Read Books of 2019. She is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Premio il ponte, and fellowships from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, and LiteraturHaus Zurich. Her work can be found in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Granta, the Guardian, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and BBC, amongst other publications. In conversation with: Birhanu T. Gessese Birhanu was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and is now studying Humanities at Kenyon College, USA. He is currently on a year abroad studying English Literature at Exeter University, UK. He likes to compose stories, work with the camera, and illustrate in ink pen. Along with Korranda Harris, he recently interviewed Maaza Mengiste for Africa in Words. Professor Richard Reid (History Faculty, University of Oxford) is a historian of modern Africa, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With a particular interest in the culture and practice of warfare in the modern period, part of Professor Reid's research interests includes the more recent armed insurgences, especially those between 1950s and the 1980s. https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-richard-reid Professor Tsehai Berhane-Selassie Tsehai Berhane-Selassie taught social-anthropology, gender, and development studies in Universities in Ethiopia, the USA, the UK, and Ireland. She has published on Ethiopian Warriorhood, and gender issues in Ethiopia. 'The Shadow King' Synopsis: Published by Canon Gate. 'DEVASTATING' Marlon James, 'A MODERN CLASSIC' Andrew Sean Greer, 'INCREDIBLE' Lemn Sissay, 'BRILLIANT' Salman Rushdie, 'MAGNIFICIENT' Aminatta Forna, 'EPIC' Mary Morris, 'WONDERFUL' Laila Lalami, 'UNFORGETTABLE' The Times, 'REMARKABLE' New York Times ETHIOPIA. 1935. With the threat of Mussolini's army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid. Her new employer, Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's army, rushes to mobilise his strongest men before the Italians invade. Hirut and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take up arms. But how could she have predicted her own personal war, still to come, as a prisoner of one of Italy's most vicious officers? The Shadow King is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, and what it means to be a woman at war.

TORCH Goes Digital! presents a series of weekly live events Big Tent - Live Events! Part of the Humanities Cultural Programme, one of the founding stones for the future Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. In conversation with Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King. This event is also part of the North-east Africa Forum at the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. Hosted by Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English (English Faculty, University of Oxford). Professor Boehmer is currently the Director for the Oxford Centre for Life Writing (OCLW) based at Wolfson College, and former Director of TORCH (2015-17), and also leads on the 'Writers Make Worlds' project - https://writersmakeworlds.com/ Biographies: Maaza Mengiste is the author of the novels, Beneath the Lion's Gaze, selected by the Guardian as one of the 10 best contemporary African books; and The Shadow King, a finalist for the LA Times Books Prize, a New York Times' Notable Book of 2019 and one of TIME's Must-Read Books of 2019. She is the recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Premio il ponte, and fellowships from the Fulbright Scholar Program, the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Capital, and LiteraturHaus Zurich. Her work can be found in The New Yorker, New York Review of Books, Granta, the Guardian, the New York Times, Rolling Stone, and BBC, amongst other publications. In conversation with: Birhanu T. Gessese Birhanu was born and raised in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and is now studying Humanities at Kenyon College, USA. He is currently on a year abroad studying English Literature at Exeter University, UK. He likes to compose stories, work with the camera, and illustrate in ink pen. Along with Korranda Harris, he recently interviewed Maaza Mengiste for Africa in Words. Professor Richard Reid (History Faculty, University of Oxford) is a historian of modern Africa, focusing on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. With a particular interest in the culture and practice of warfare in the modern period, part of Professor Reid's research interests includes the more recent armed insurgences, especially those between 1950s and the 1980s. https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/professor-richard-reid Professor Tsehai Berhane-Selassie Tsehai Berhane-Selassie taught social-anthropology, gender, and development studies in Universities in Ethiopia, the USA, the UK, and Ireland. She has published on Ethiopian Warriorhood, and gender issues in Ethiopia. 'The Shadow King' Synopsis: Published by Canon Gate. 'DEVASTATING' Marlon James, 'A MODERN CLASSIC' Andrew Sean Greer, 'INCREDIBLE' Lemn Sissay, 'BRILLIANT' Salman Rushdie, 'MAGNIFICIENT' Aminatta Forna, 'EPIC' Mary Morris, 'WONDERFUL' Laila Lalami, 'UNFORGETTABLE' The Times, 'REMARKABLE' New York Times ETHIOPIA. 1935. With the threat of Mussolini's army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid. Her new employer, Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's army, rushes to mobilise his strongest men before the Italians invade. Hirut and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take up arms. But how could she have predicted her own personal war, still to come, as a prisoner of one of Italy's most vicious officers? The Shadow King is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, and what it means to be a woman at war.

In this podcast the dynamic poet Patience Agbabi is in conversation about her Ted Hughes short-listed collection Telling Tales (2015), a rebellious reworking of Chaucer, and her contribution to the 2016 Refugee Tales project. After reading from both works Agbabi discusses with Professor Elleke Boehmer, Director of the Oxford Centre for Life Writing, and medievalist Professor Marion Turner, the key themes that animate her work: her efforts to give voice to the marginalised, the influence of Chaucer upon her writing and practice, and her interests in grime music as well as poetic form, not least the sonnet. The recording was made on 5 December 2019 at a ‘Writers Make Worlds’ event in the English Faculty, University of Oxford.

Eduardo Lalo, Elleke Boehmer, Jonny Steinberg and Premilla Nadasen give a talk for the Southern Biographies event. Chaired by, Hélène Neveu Kringelbach.

Chaired by Elleke Boehmer.

TORCH Book at Lunchtime event on Chaucer: A European Life by Professor Marion Turner. Book at Lunchtime is a series of bite-sized book discussions held fortnightly during term-time, with commentators from a range of disciplines. More than any other canonical English writer, Geoffrey Chaucer lived and worked at the centre of political life-yet his poems are anything but conventional. Edgy, complicated, and often dark, they reflect a conflicted world, and their astonishing diversity and innovative language earned Chaucer renown as the father of English literature. Marion Turner, however, reveals him as a great European writer and thinker. To understand his accomplishment, she reconstructs in unprecedented detail the cosmopolitan world of Chaucer’s adventurous life, focusing on the places and spaces that fired his imagination. Uncovering important new information about Chaucer’s travels, private life, and the early circulation of his writings, this innovative biography documents a series of vivid episodes, moving from the commercial wharves of London to the frescoed chapels of Florence and the kingdom of Navarre, where Christians, Muslims, and Jews lived side by side. The narrative recounts Chaucer’s experiences as a prisoner of war in France, as a father visiting his daughter’s nunnery, as a member of a chaotic Parliament, and as a diplomat in Milan, where he encountered the writings of Dante and Boccaccio. At the same time, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of Chaucer’s writings, taking the reader to the Troy of Troilus and Criseyde, the gardens of the dream visions, and the peripheries and thresholds of The Canterbury Tales. By exploring the places Chaucer visited, the buildings he inhabited, the books he read, and the art and objects he saw, this landmark biography tells the extraordinary story of how a wine merchant’s son became the poet of The Canterbury Tales. Bart van Es is Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford, focusing primarily on Spenser and Shakespeare. Bart is interested in connections between history writing and poetry in early modern England. In recent years his research has focused primarily on Renaissance drama and the material realities of London’s theatre world. The Cut Out Girl, his work of creative non-fiction on World War II in the Netherlands, won the 2018 Costa Book of the Year award. Marion Turner is Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow in English at Jesus College, University of Oxford. Marion’s research interests lie in late medieval secular literature and history, and she has published very widely on Chaucer, including two books and many articles. Chaucer: A European Life, was her first foray into biography, and she now teaches life-writing as well as medieval literature. Her next book is going to be a global history – or biography – of the Wife of Bath across time. Helen Swift is Associate Professor of Medieval French at the University of Oxford. Having focused for several years on fifteenth-century literary defences of women, she now explores more broadly questions of narrative voice and identity in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century French literature. Her second book, Representing the Dead: Epitaph Fictions in Late-Medieval France examines voices and bodies speaking from beyond the grave and was runner-up for the Society for French Studies R. Gapper Book Prize in 2017. John Watts is Professor of Later Medieval History at the University of Oxford and Chair of the History Faculty Board. John is interested in politics, political culture and political structures in later medieval England and Europe, between the 13th and the early 16th centuries. Most of his published work deals with later medieval English politics and political culture, but he has also written about politics in later medieval Europe. Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, Director of the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing and was the Director of TORCH from 2015 to 17. She is a founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial studies, and internationally known for her research in anglophone literatures of empire and anti-empire. She is also a novelist and short story writer, most recently of The Shouting in the Dark.

Elleke Boehmer, Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford, gives a talk for the workshop, What is a Decolonial Curriculum? Held at TORCH on 28th November 2018.

A Book at Lunchtime seminar with Elleke Boehmer, author of Postcolonial Poetics, joined by Dr Malachi McIntosh, Professor Ben Morgan, Professor Richard Drayton and Professor Robert Young (chair). Postcolonial Poetics is about how we read postcolonial and world literatures today, and about how the structures of that writing shape our reading. The book’s eight chapters explore the ways in which postcolonial writing in English from various 21st-century contexts, including southern and West Africa, and Black and Asian Britain, interacts with our imaginative understanding of the world. Throughout, the focus is on reading practices, where reading is taken as an inventive, border-traversing activity, one that postcolonial writing with its interests in margins, intersections, subversions, and crossings specifically encourages. This close, sustained focus on reading, reception, and literariness is an outstanding feature of the study, as is its wide generic range, embracing poetry, essays, and life-writing, as well as fiction. The field-defining scholar Elleke Boehmer holds that literature has the capacity to keep reimagining and refreshing how we understand ourselves in relation to the world and to some of the most pressing questions of our time, including resistance, reconciliation, survival after terror, and migration. About the author Elleke Boehmer is Professor of World Literature in English at the University of Oxford, UK, and a founding figure in the field of colonial and postcolonial literary studies. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of over twenty books, including monographs and novels. Her monographs include Colonial and Postcolonial Literature (1995/2005), Stories of Women (2005), and Indian Arrivals (winner of the ESSE 2015-16 Prize). Her novels include The Shouting in the Dark (2015) and Screens Against the Sky (1990). About the panel Dr Malachi McIntosh (Runnymede Trust) Professor Ben Morgan (Worcester College, Oxford) Professor Richard Drayton (King's College London) Professor Robert Young (NYU)

A Book at Lunchtime Seminar with Terrence Cave, Deirdre Wilson, Ben Morgan (Worcester College, Oxford), Professor Robyn Carston (Linguistics, UCL). Chaired by Professor Philip Bullock (TORCH Director). Is language a simple code, or is meaning conveyed as much by context, history, and speaker as by the arrangement of words and letters? Relevance theory, described by Alastair Fowler in the LRB as 'nothing less than the makings of a radically new theory of communication, the first since Aristotle's', takes the latter view and offers a comprehensive understanding of language and communication grounded in evidence about the ways humans think and behave. Reading Beyond the Code is the first book to explore the value for literary studies of relevance theory. Drawing on a wide range of examples-lyric poems by Yeats, Herrick, Heaney, Dickinson, and Mary Oliver, novels by Cervantes, Flaubert, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton-nine of the ten essays are written by literary specialists and use relevance theory both as a broad framing perspective and as a resource for detailed analysis. The final essay, by Deirdre Wilson, co-founder (with Dan Sperber) of relevance theory, takes a retrospective view of the issues addressed by the volume and considers the implications of literary studies for cognitive approaches to communication. Edited by Terence Cave, Emeritus Professor of French Literature, University of Oxford and Emeritus Fellow, St John's College, Oxford, and Deirdre Wilson, Emeritus Professor of Linguistics, UCL and Research Professor in Philosophy, IFIKK, University of Oslo. Terence Cave is recognized as a leading specialist in French Renaissance literature, but has also made landmark contributions to comparative literature and the history of poetics. His most recent work focuses on cognitive approaches to literature. Deirdre Wilson's book Relevance: Communication and Cognition, co-written with Dan Sperber, was described in Rhetoric Society Quarterly as 'probably the best book you'll ever read on communication.' Translated into twelve languages, it has had a lasting influence in philosophy, psychology, and linguistics and is now regarded as a classic. Contributors: Kathryn Banks, Elleke Boehmer, Guillemette Bolens, Terence Cave, Timothy Chesters, Neil Kenny, Raphael Lyne, Kirsti Sellevold, Wes Williams, Deirdre Wilson.

Elleke Boehmer talks to Kate McLoughlin about her most recent novel, The Shouting in the Dark, the language of reconciliation in South Africa, and the creative potential for the work of both fiction and literary criticism.

Author Kamila Shamsie reads from her 2014 novel A God in Every Stone, and discusses it with Prof. Elleke Boehmer and the audience. She speaks about the inspiration for the novel, who she writes for, and how she transforms historical facts into compelling narrative.

Author Kamila Shamsie reads from her 2014 novel A God in Every Stone, and discusses it with Prof. Elleke Boehmer and the audience. She speaks about the inspiration for the novel, who she writes for, and how she transforms historical facts into compelling narrative.

M. NourbeSe Philip reads from She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (1988) and Zong! (2008) as she describes her poetic development. In discussion with Prof. Elleke Boehmer, Prof. Marina Warner offers a response that emphasises the transformative power of story, and Matthew Reynolds discusses Philip's linguistic innovations.

Prof. Elleke Boehmer and Dr Erica Lombard consider how our reading experiences are shaped by various factors, from publishers' decisions about book covers to the text itself.

Prof. Elleke Boehmer and Dr Erica Lombard consider how our reading experiences are shaped by various factors, from publishers’ decisions about book covers to the text itself.

M. NourbeSe Philip reads from She Tries Her Tongue, Her Silence Softly Breaks (1988) and Zong! (2008) as she describes her poetic development. In discussion with Prof. Elleke Boehmer, Prof. Marina Warner offers a response that emphasises the transformative power of story, and Matthew Reynolds discusses Philip’s linguistic innovations.

Professor Chaudhuri speaks at the South Asia Seminar on a public meeting held in Calcutta, on December 15th, 1829. On December 15th , 1829, a large public meeting was held amidst much excitement at the Town Hall in Calcutta. The speakers, principally from the British mercantile community in Calcutta, but including, prominently, Dwarakanath Tagore and Rammohun Roy, spoke on behalf of a petition to be sent to the English Parliament arguing for what they called "The Colonization of India". The debate centred on the upcoming renewal of the Charter Act, and this community pressed for further abolishing remaining monopolies the East India Company held. I will show how the disputes generated on the subject played out in Calcutta at the time, and also, crucially, show how Rammohun’s involvement in the event and his later evidence before the Select Committee was misread by leading Marxist historians affiliated to the CSSSC in the 1970s. Rosinka Chaudhuri is Professor of Cultural Studies and Dean (Academic Affairs) at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta (CSSSC). She has published: Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent Nationalism and the Orientalist Project (Seagull: 2002), Freedom and Beef-Steaks: Colonial Calcutta Culture (Orient Blackswan: 2012) and The Literary Thing: History, Poetry and the Making of a Modern Literary Culture (Oxford University Press: 2013, Peter Lang: 2014), and has edited: Derozio, Poet of India: A Definitive Edition (Oxford University Press, 2008), and, with Elleke Boehmer, The Indian Postcolonial (Routledge, 2010). Her most recent publication is A History of Indian Poetry in English, published by Cambridge University Press, New York, in March 2016. She has also translated and introduced the complete text of the letters Rabindranath Tagore wrote his niece Indira Debi as a young man, calling it Letters from a Young Poet (1887-94) (Penguin Modern Classics, 2014); this received an Honorable Mention in the category A.K. Ramanujan Prize for Translation (S. Asia) at the Association for Asian Studies Book Prizes 2016. Currently, she is editing and introducing An Acre of Green Grass: English Writings of Buddhadeva Bose for Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Her current research is tentatively titled Young Bengal and the Empire of the Middle Classes. This seminar series is organised with the support of the History Faculty.

Elleke Boehmer considers the cosmopolitan outlooks, experiences and values of Indian travellers to the west in the late 19th century. In the late 19th c a set of remarkable Indian ‘arrivants’ – scholars, poets, religious seekers, and political activists – began, as novelist Amitav Ghosh describes it, 'travelling in the west'. They included Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore. In this paper I examine how their travel to and presence on British shores and involvement with various Britons had a shaping effect on how cosmopolitan life in the imperial capital was conceived, and, therefore, on how intercultural hospitality was expressed – especially at a time, as we remember, of high imperialism, and of outright racism especially in the imperial frontier.

In this roundtable discussion, Caroline Davis, Olivier Driessens, and Peter D McDonald reflect on literature as a mode of public intervention. The members of this expert panel, chaired by Elleke Boehmer, explore the socio-political dimension of literary production and launch a plea for institutional readings of literature that acknowledge the crucial gatekeeping role of publishers, literary agents, critics, and prize-giving bodies. Focusing on J.M. Coetzee's 'Diary of a Bad Year', Peter D McDonald (University of Oxford) reflects on the ambivalent status of literature as a form of public discourse. Caroline Davis (Oxford Brookes), analyzing the refashioning and repositioning of African writers for the UK and US markets, provides intriguing insights into the publishers' interventions in the cross-field migrations between art and politics. Olivier Driessens (University of Cambridge) then stresses the need for us to shift our focus from the author as a lone genius to the collaborative processes involved in the creation of literary reputations.

Elleke Boehmer discusses her new book with Megan Robb, Faisal Devji and Santanu Das Elleke Boehmer (Professor of World Literature in English, University of Oxford) discusses her new book with Megan Robb (Lecturer of Hindi and Urdu, Oriental Institute, and Junior Research Fellow at New College, University of Oxford), Faisal Devji (University Reader in Modern South Asian History, University of Oxford) and Santanu Das (Reader of English Literature, Kings College London). The discussion is introduced and chaired by Professor James Belich (Beit Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History, University of Oxford). Elleke Boehmer's book "Indian Arrivals 1870-1915: Networks of British Empire" explores the rich and complicated landscape of intercultural contact between Indians and Britons on British soil at the height of empire, as reflected in a range of literary writing, including poetry and life-writing. The book's four decade-based case studies, leading from 1870 and the opening of the Suez Canal, to the first years of the Great War, investigate from several different textual and cultural angles the central place of India in the British metropolitan imagination at this relatively early stage for Indian migration. Focusing on a range of remarkable Indian 'arrivants' -- scholars, poets, religious seekers, and political activists including Toru Dutt and Sarojini Naidu, Mohandas Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore -- "Indian Arrivals" examines the take-up in the metropolis of the influences and ideas that accompanied their transcontinental movement, including concepts of the west and of cultural decadence, of urban modernity and of cosmopolitan exchange.

The Human Zoo is the programme that looks at current events through the lens of psychology. From scandals to markets, elections to traffic jams, discover the nuts and bolts of human behaviour that link public life to our most private thoughts and motivations. Are people led by the head or by the heart? How rational are we? And how do we perceive the world? The programme blends intriguing experiments that reveal our biases and judgements, explorations and examples taken from what's in the news and what we do in the kitchen - all driven by a large slice of curiosity. We like to say that all human behaviour could turn up in The Human Zoo, including yours. In this episode: the flat mind. What if our 'inner world' of images, thoughts and beliefs isn't as three-dimensional as the world around us? What if we're just making it up as we go along? Recorded at the Cheltenham Science Festival, Michael Blastland investigates, with resident Zoo psychologist Professor Nick Chater and reporter Timandra Harkness. Special guests this week are advertising guru Rory Sutherland, psychologist Dr Kate Cross from St Andrews University, Elleke Boehmer, professor of world literature in English at at Wolfson College Oxford and author of The Shouting in the Dark, neuroscientist Dr Peter Zeidman from University College London, Dr Martin Coath from the Cognition Institute at Plymouth University and experimental psychologist Professor Bruce Hood from the University of Bristol. Presenter: Michael Blastland Producer: Eve Streeter and Dom Byrne A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

Elleke Boehmer, Dominique Davies, Charne Lavery and Priyasha Mukhopadhyay discuss a special issue, due to publish in March 2015 and guest-edited by Elleke Boehmer, on Leonard Woolf’s novel “The Village in the Jungle”. Posted May 2014.

Professor Elleke Boehmer of Wolfson College, Oxford, discusses her current research and proposes why we should study Postcolonial writers such as Achebe.

This Roundtable Discussion offers several ways into the life and work of Leonard Woolf from the perspectives of several academics. Hermione Lee and Anna Snaith build on the intersections of Leonard's work with Virginia Woolf's novels, while Elleke Boehmer and Nisha Manocha trace the Conradian elements of his writing. David Trotter explains why he understands Woolf's novel to be a 'primitivist' text, while Susheila Nasta brings Woolf's interactions with E.M. Forster, Mulk Raj Anand and others to the fore.

Elleke Boehmer and Imaobong Umoren talk about their research network which is investigating how twentieth-century activists, artists and intellectuals challenged racially oppressive hierarchies and sought to achieve equality. Elleke Boehmer and Imaobong Umoren explore the ways in which these activists understood their lives and their acts of resistance to racially oppressive hierarchies within a global context.

Professor Elleke Boehmer notes the distinct lack of women writers on the Post/Colonial Writing page of the Great Writers website, and explores why this is the case. She draws attention to the phenomenon of double colonization and, taking Scottish/South African author Zoe Wicomb as an example, looks at the marketing and publishing industries to discuss why postcolonial women writers are less well-known than their male counterparts.

Professor Elleke Boehmer discusses why Kipling's writing, and his poetry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in particular, launched him to international fame across the British Empire. By comparing him to contemporary popular figures such as Elton John and Paul McCartney, she offers insight into how Kipling's verse captured the popular imagination of the common people throughout the age of imperialism.

Professor Elleke Boehmer gives a talk on Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), the South African novelist, pioneering feminist, and anti-imperialist polemicist. For Boehmer, Schreiner is not 'great' in the conventional sense (she did not possess the great literary brain of George Eliot, for example), but she is a great inspiration in many spheres: she influenced other writers (fellow South African J.M. Coetzee, in particular); other critical thinkers and activists (including John A. Hobson and Vladimir Lenin); and general trends in feminism, gender studies, and postcolonialism. As Boehmer explains, Schreiner's greatness is to be found in her flaws and failures. Under the pseudonym 'Ralph Iron', Schreiner published one critically acclaimed book - The Story of an African Farm (1883) - and was highly praised in London literary circles. However, she failed to publish any more novels; she wrote two draft manuscripts but was never completely satisfied with them, so never sought publication. Schreiner suffered writer's block and several episodes of illness (both physical and psychosomatic). These struggles produced inspiring, yet never fully formed, treatises on South Africa, racism, imperialism, capitalism, gender, and other material and power relations. Indeed, it is Schreiner's struggles - her constant revisions and enduring attempts to give a formative shape to the world - which make her the embodiment of modern life, of a world in constant flux. She was a Modernist ahead of time. Schreiner died in 1920, two years before one of the most significant years for Modernist literature (1922 saw the publication of James Joyce's 'Ulysses', T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land', and Virginia Woolf's 'Jacob's Room'), but her innovative attempts to change the way the world was perceived make her a truly Modern writer. Boehmer ends her talk with a brief insight into Schreiner's biography and work. Schreiner was brought up by missionary parents but went on to denounce religion. She worked as a governess, before moving to the UK to begin (but never complete) medical school. Her choice of reading matter was varied, but she was particularly taken with J. S. Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Finally, Boehmer reads a couple of extracts from The Story of an African Farm, asking us to pay particular attention to the masterful ways in which Schreiner gives aesthetic form to her native South Africa through shifting between macrocosm and microcosm, between the country itself and detailed descriptions of single flowers.

Professor Elleke Boehmer gives a talk on Olive Schreiner (1855-1920), the South African novelist, pioneering feminist, and anti-imperialist polemicist. For Boehmer, Schreiner is not 'great' in the conventional sense (she did not possess the great literary brain of George Eliot, for example), but she is a great inspiration in many spheres: she influenced other writers (fellow South African J.M. Coetzee, in particular); other critical thinkers and activists (including John A. Hobson and Vladimir Lenin); and general trends in feminism, gender studies, and postcolonialism. As Boehmer explains, Schreiner's greatness is to be found in her flaws and failures. Under the pseudonym 'Ralph Iron', Schreiner published one critically acclaimed book - The Story of an African Farm (1883) - and was highly praised in London literary circles. However, she failed to publish any more novels; she wrote two draft manuscripts but was never completely satisfied with them, so never sought publication. Schreiner suffered writer's block and several episodes of illness (both physical and psychosomatic). These struggles produced inspiring, yet never fully formed, treatises on South Africa, racism, imperialism, capitalism, gender, and other material and power relations. Indeed, it is Schreiner's struggles - her constant revisions and enduring attempts to give a formative shape to the world - which make her the embodiment of modern life, of a world in constant flux. She was a Modernist ahead of time. Schreiner died in 1920, two years before one of the most significant years for Modernist literature (1922 saw the publication of James Joyce's 'Ulysses', T.S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land', and Virginia Woolf's 'Jacob's Room'), but her innovative attempts to change the way the world was perceived make her a truly Modern writer. Boehmer ends her talk with a brief insight into Schreiner's biography and work. Schreiner was brought up by missionary parents but went on to denounce religion. She worked as a governess, before moving to the UK to begin (but never complete) medical school. Her choice of reading matter was varied, but she was particularly taken with J. S. Mill and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Finally, Boehmer reads a couple of extracts from The Story of an African Farm, asking us to pay particular attention to the masterful ways in which Schreiner gives aesthetic form to her native South Africa through shifting between macrocosm and microcosm, between the country itself and detailed descriptions of single flowers.