What’s new in Arts? highlights the latest Faculty news concerning planned courses and developments with Humanities qualifications. Last updated 5 April 2012.
See our Arts Matters blog for the latest updates and more detail on Arts news and events.
Recordings of the talks are now available online.
Professor Timothy Chappell
'Can doing philosophy make us happy? Should it?'
Dr Christopher Belshaw
'Pleasure, happiness and the evil of death'
Dr Piers Benn
'Happiness, meaning, and commitment'
Dr Julian Baggini
'The Politics of Happiness: Is well-being the business the government?'
The Ancient Olympics unit, a free-to-use learning resource exploring the links between the ancient and modern Olympic Games, has won an OpenCourseWare Consortium award for excellence for its use of multimedia. This was announced at the OER12 conference in Cambridge. The unit was written by Dr Aarón Alzola Romero (Classical Studies) in collaboration with a group of international scholars. Follow this link for a short video overview of the unit. Find out more about the OCW Awards.
Divine Women, which airs from 11 April at 9pm on BBC TWO, and each Wednesday after for the next three weeks, looks at the hidden history of women in religion. Bettany Hughes tells the stories of the extraordinary women whose legends and lives cast new light on some of the hottest arguments about the role of women in religion today. The OpenLearn Divine Women site includes further information about the programmes, a dedicated discussion hub and details of how to order your free Divine Women booklet.
Professor Tim Chappell, Director of the OU Ethics Centre, writes about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport for Platform. Is there a place for them? Should athletes be putting their health at risk to achieve medals? And will competing become more about the size of your wallet than your physique? Read this article now.
Symphony, which won the award for ‘Best Partnership’ at the BBC Audio & Music Awards, has now also claimed the Voice of the Listener and Viewer ‘Best Multiplatform’ award.
The series, presented by Simon Russell Beale, was produced as a collaboration between BBC4 television, the Open University’s Music Department and Open Media Unit, BBC Orchestras, Radio 3, and the BBC Symphony Orchestra Learning division.
The lead academic in the partnership was Dr Robert Samuels, and the associated material on OpenLearn also features essays by Dr Ben Winters and Dr Fiona Richards, which accompany each episode. Find out more from Arts Matters.
Empire is a major five-part series presented by one of British television’s most distinguished broadcasters, Jeremy Paxman. Produced in consultation with members of the A326 Empire: 1492-1975 module team, it tells the story of the British Empire in a new way, tracing not only the rise and fall of the empire but also the complex effects of the empire on the modern world – political, technological and social – and on Britain. The OpenLearn site includes further information about the programmes, an interactive event planner and a free wallchart. Find out more about this TV series. Find out more about A326 Empire: 1492-1975.
Beyond the Frame is touring an expanded twelve panel facsimile exhibition to seven cities in India in 2011-12.
The second phase of the exhibition will launch at the British Council library in Mumbai on 13 February, with further stops in Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai.
Managed by the British Council in collaboration with The Open University and the British Library, this exhibition tour was launched at the British Council in Delhi on 25 November 2011. The display was hosted simultaneously by the National Archives of India in Delhi, where it launched on 29 November. The exhibition then moved to British Council libraries in Kolkata and Ahmedabad.
For further details, see Beyond the Frame's website.
Brian Evans-Jones, associate lecturer on Creative Writing (A215) in the Arts Faculty, has been named Hampshire Poet for 2012. He will write about Hampshire County Council’s cultural projects and activities during the year. He will also be working with new and upcoming writers of all ages. Find out more from our Arts Matters blog.
Beyond the Frame: India in Britain, 1858-1950 celebrates the often overlooked, long history of the Indian presence in Britain. This ground-breaking exhibition, part of a larger project, Beyond the Frame: Indian British Connections, takes a new look at this little-known history and will tour India from 25 November starting at the British Council and 29th November at the National Archives of India in Delhi.
A multimedia timeline and Asians in Britain website have been created in partnership with the British Library to bring these stories alive for a much wider audience. As part of the British Council’s Connecting Classrooms programme there will be a range of educational activities running alongside the exhibition. A teachers’ pack will accompany the Indian run of the exhibition with free worksheets for school children. Find out more from the project's website.
Henry Stead, a PhD candidate in the Department of Classical Studies, has won third prize in the prestigious The Times Stephen Spender Prize 2011, awarded for the original translation of poetry into English. His winning entry is a translation from Latin of an extract of Seneca's powerful tragedy, Medea. One of the judges, Prof Edith Hall, comments: 'As a theatre enthusiast, I was delighted with the taut speakability of Henry Stead’s excerpt from his version of the grim Senecan Medea. I hope that it will encourage others to submit translations from verse drama, a category of translation in which poets such as Ted Hughes and Tony Harrison have recently shown English can be most effective.' Read Henry's winning poem.
The Open University has launched its new interactive website on the Ancient Olympics. This outreach project, which has been overseen by Dr Aarón Alzola Romero of the Department of Classical Studies, aims to bring the ancient Olympics to life in anticipation of London 2012. The site allows users to engage with the history and heritage of the Olympics experientially, through audio, animations, interactive maps and images. The content, which was written in collaboration with various external institutions, is freely available under a Creative Commons licence.
Symphony, a new four-part series showing on BBC4, invites you to explore the secrets of the symphony, the highest form of expression of Western classical music. In the first programme Simon Russell Beale charts the history of classical symphonies, beginning with the works of three of the most renowned composers of all time - Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. For more information and related resources see the OpenLearn website.
This collection of video animations and audio discussions examines how the heroes of Greek mythology have been represented in popular culture, from ancient times to the modern day. What does ‘2001: a Space Odyssey’ have to do with Odysseus? How does Brad Pitt's Achilles in 'Troy' match up to Homer's original hero? And is Arnold Schwarzenegger the new Heracles? The videos mix archive film and TV clips with character animation, and bring a playful approach to classical myth. The audio discussions, featuring members of the OU's Classical Studies department, shine a more scholarly light on how today’s popular culture sees these myths differently from the Ancient Greeks. Watch the videos and listen to the discussions on OpenLearn.
Prof Phil Perkins, of the Department of Classical Studies, appeared on the In our Time programme on The Etruscan Civilisation (29 September 2011). Phil, who is an expert on Etruscan archaeology, discussed the Etruscans with Melvyn Bragg and other expert guests David Ridgway and Corinna Riva. You can listen to this programme again from the In Our Time website.
Prof Helen King, of the Department of Classical Studies, featured on In Our Time on BBC Radio 4 on 15 September 2011. An expert on ancient medicine, Prof King discussed the Hippocratic Oath with Melvyn Bragg and his guests. This programme is available from the In Our Time website.
Emily Bullock, a tutor on A215 Creative Writing, has won the 2011 Bristol Short Story Prize. Her story, ‘My Girl’, will be published in Venue Magazine and Bristol Review of Books, as well as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology Volume 4. The competition received a record 2,100 entries from more than 30 countries, with writers from as far afield as New Zealand, Brazil, India, Canada, USA and South Africa submitting stories.
The pamphlet 'Picturing Philosophers', based on a tour of philosophers' portraits in London's National Portrait Gallery by Nigel Warburton, is available as a pdf [1.6 MB]. It focuses on figures such as Hobbes, Locke, Mill, Sartre, Russell and Iris Murdoch, exploring their philosophical ideas and raising the questions they considered.
Following the success of Philosophy Bites and Ethics Bites the Wellcome Trust is funding Bio-Ethics Bites by Nigel Warburton and David Edmonds. This series of interviews will cover various ethical perspectives, tackling controversial subjects arising out of recent scientific advances. Find out more from the Bio-Ethics Bites website.
Derren Brown talks to The Open University's Nigel Warburton about topics including Memory and Identity and Intelligent Design. The series consists of 7 videos, to be uploaded over the next couple weeks. Remember to subscribe! Watch the videos here.
This series (broadcast from 16 August) tells the story of the British novel in the 20th century told by those who know it best – the authors themselves. Plundering the BBC archive, In Their Own Words: British Novelists reveals Britain’s greatest novelists talking candidly about their life and work. A special interactive tool helps you discover the connections between 20th-century authors. Find out more from the In Their Own Words website.
Speaker Shane Malhotra will give a paper on ‘The First Afghan War: through the eyes of Florentina Sale’, this will be followed by tea and a general discussion on British perceptions of Afghanistan, cross-cultural contacts, and 'tribes'.
Chair, Hugh Beattie (author of Empire and Tribe in the Afghan Frontier Region: Custom, Conflict and British Strategy in Waziristan until 1947. London: I.B.Tauris (Forthcoming)). All are welcome.
To book a place please email Heather Scott h.scott@open.ac.uk
For more information please go to the Ferguson Centre website.
Over the last two years the Protestant-Catholic Conflict research programme has been engaged in research on the history of religious tensions in England and, through an extensive series of interviews, on present-day attitudes in Northern Ireland. A central aim of the project is to seek to explore parallels between long-standing Protestant-Catholic tensions in the United Kingdom, and the more recent prominence of Christian-Muslim-secular tensions, and thereby to derive constructive insights for forward-looking thinking and policy.
We are running seminars in Liverpool on 12 June, and Birmingham on 4 July. The Liverpool seminar will be held at The Western Rooms, Liverpool Cathedral, 12 June 2012, 2-5 pm [Map and directions].
Tea, coffee, cake and fruit will be served from 1.30 pm, prior to a prompt start at 2.00 pm. There will be four speakers:
There will then be an extended period for questions and discussion, which we hope will assist both in drawing out policy implications, and in highlighting the most productive directions for further academic research and reflection.
There will be no charge for attendance, but as space is limited and for catering purposes, please pre-register by returning the attached form to Dr Philomena Sutherland, Faculty of Arts, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, or by email to Arts-Prot-RC-Project@open.ac.uk by Wednesday 6 June.
If you are not able to attend on this occasion, you might like to note that we are planning a similar event in Birmingham on 4 July. Please let us know if you would like an invitation to this.
For more information about this project, see the Protestant-Catholic Conflict research programme website.
This one day symposium will explore the theme of war as spectacle in classical antiquity and its reception in subsequent centuries, down to the present day. The event is generously sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and the Department of Classical Studies.
Follow this link for details of the programme and information about how to register.
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