Dr Axel Stähler, Reader in the Department of Comparative Literature, who is currently working on a new Leverhulme Trust funded book project on ‘Jerusalem Destroyed: Literature, Art, and Music in Nineteenth-Century Europe’ gave a lecture entitled ‘Giving the Lie to those “Gloomy Depictions”: Nineteenth-century Jewish Reinterpretations of Josephus’ at the University of Bern in Switzerland. His lecture was scheduled in the context of the newly-established project ‘“Lege Iosephum!” Ways of Reading Josephus in the Latin Middle Ages’ (Swiss National Science Foundation) which supersedes the project ‘The Latin Flavius Josephus in its Christian and Jewish Reception’ at the Walter-Benjamin-Kolleg in Bern.

Ever since it was described in much ‘historical’ detail by the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70 CE has been considered a pivotal event which initiated with the loss of the Promised Land and the religious centre of Judaism the Jewish diaspora and cemented Christian supersession. The Jews, thus the Christian master narrative, suffered a divine punishment for their rejection of Christ. In his paper, Axel explored the attempts of a writer and a historian of Jewish heritage to challenge and re-write this narrative in mid-nineteenth-century Germany.

Julius Kossarski’s Titus; Or, The Destruction of Jerusalem (1855) was the very first publication of the Institute for the Promotion of Israelite Literature (1855–73), a venture that was of crucial significance to the creation of a Jewish reading public in the German-speaking lands. Within its first year the Institute published also the third volume of Heinrich Graetz’s influential History of the Jews (1856) which covers the period from the Maccabees to the destruction of Jerusalem and thus offers a scholarly complement to Kossarski’s dramatic poem.

In his talk, Axel proposed a comparative reading of both texts in relation to the emerging modern Jewish historiography in nineteenth-century Germany and to conceptions of a Jewish mission among the nations. More specifically, he offered an analysis of the narrative strategies employed in the dramatic poem and the historiographic text to undermine the authority of Josephus in order to validate Jewish existence and particularity in the contemporary present with reference to what has been called ethical monotheism.

The French translation competition for A level students, organised by Dr Sara-Louise Cooper, has been won by Shifa Mahomed Teeluck. Shifa won £50 and the two runners up won £10 each. For this competition, entrants were tasked with translating a short passage by contemporary author Patrick Chamoiseau . After the competition, local entrants will be invited to a translation workshop at the University of Kent to discuss the passage and learn more about the author.

The winning translation is featured below:

‘Pain has no borders!
No pain remains an orphan!
No suffering inflicted on the living has a limit to it.
The victim is within us and the persecutor too. Threats make alliances and affect us together. Each one of us is a target without shelter. A front line and a transmitting antenna. Inaction gives the slightest indecency a terrible impetus. A child who dies in the Mediterranean recaps the ignominies tolerated for thousands of years by the human conscience and accuses us too. And those who have let him die, claim our name and put us at their bedside as if we were complicit. The slave trade prospered at a level of consciousness fed by the Enlightenment. Our current level of consciousness, which is that – phenomenal – of a connected consciousness, becomes infected by the slightest cowardice, but it welcomes with as much force and speed a simple refusal, a little bit of indignation, a rage, a smile, a coffee… the slightest radiance where vital integrity is protected, and sustained, like an ultimate torch, human dignity.’

Sara said of the event: “There were over forty entries to the competition and the standard was very high.”

A collaborative venture across the Library, Student Success Project, SECL and SSPSSR Medway received the Talis Aspire User Group Creativity Award 2019 for using reading lists as a mechanism to develop diverse library collections.

This national award was made by a group of peers drawn from UK universities, who stated: ‘This is a truly innovative use of Talis Aspire reading lists and data, and there’s potential for this project to have national impact.’ (The Talis Aspire User Group, May 2019)

Students Collins Konadu-Mensah and Evangeline Agyeman and Liaison Librarians Emma Mires-Richards and Sarah Field accepted this award on behalf of the project and presented a paper to the conference that outlines the work and its outcomes – Diversity in the curriculum: a collaborative approach.

Over the last year, Diversity Mark pilot projects have taken place in:

• • the School of European Culture and Languages led by Dr Laura Bailey (Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics)
  • SSPSSR Medway coordinated by Dr Barbara Adewumi (Sociology Lecturer) and Dave Thomas (Student Success Project Officer).

Professor April McMahon, Deputy Vice-Chancellor Education, said: ‘This is a measure of all the fantastic work that [the group] have been doing in Library Collections and in the Student Success Project in partnership with students and the wider University. We are absolutely delighted that they all have been awarded the 2019 award for their work to diversify library collections and support the development of a more inclusive learning experience. It is great for this innovative, first-class and highly collaborative project to receive national recognition in this way – it is very richly deserved.’

Following the success of the Diversity Mark pilot, there are plans to offer this service to other schools in the next academic year. For more details, contact the Student Success Project or your Liaison Librarian.

Mental Health Training, delivered by Psicon is taking place on Tuesday 21 May 10:00-13:30. Please book your place by logging onto Staff Connect.

Dr Alvise Sforza Tarabochia, Lecturer in Italian, has been interviewed by UniTo News at the University of Turin about a module that he is introducing there during the summer term. The module introduces the main narratives and representations of madness and mental disorders that emerged over the course of history. An English translation of the article (from the original Italian) is below:

To learn the history of the representation of madness and mental disorders; to critically connect these representations with science, medicine, society, culture and politics; to understand the reciprocal influence of society, science and history in the way mental disorders and madness have been represented and understood: these are the aims of the module ‘Storytelling and Mental Disorders’ that Alvise will deliver in May and until Friday 7 June.

The module, open to all students of psychology, social sciences and humanities introduces the main literary and visual topoi that have governed the representation of mental disorders, including for instance physiognomics and phrenology in their connection with painting, photography and medicine.

Lectures will also cover the lunatic asylum as a space of segregation, and will analyse the first person narratives of inmates, patients and psychiatrists, assessing the impact that literature and the visual arts have on therapeutic applications of storytelling.

Alvise explains: “The bond between psychoanalysis and literature is strong. The greatest revolution that psychoanalysis brings about is narrative and literary because it advances that symptoms of mental disorders speak and have a meaning, they develop to give meaning to experiences that would otherwise be unintelligible”.

As we come towards the end of another busy academic year, the Careers and Employability Service would like to invite University of Kent staff to a summer catch-up on Monday 1st July. This is the perfect opportunity to meet with employability contacts from across the University!

There will be a series of short talks, which focus on employer engagement, including activities which have taken place within Academic Schools. We are also pleased to welcome FDM Group, who will be discussing employability in the curriculum. A networking lunch will follow this.

The Forum will take place from 12:00 – 14:00 in Grimond LT3. If you would like to attend, please confirm your place by emailing Liz Foden; e.r.foden@kent.ac.uk by 31st May 2019.