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Ilkley Literature Festival presents Settee Seminars, a podcast series of fascinating short talks by leading experts, introducing you to a wide range of topics from modern U.S. history to psychiatry and 18th century literature.
In each episode, a leading specialist in their field condenses years of study into a bite-sized 20-minute talk, giving listeners the chance to explore entire worlds of knowledge you might not even have known existed without ever having to leave your sofa.
In each episode, a leading specialist in their field condenses years of study into a bite-sized 20-minute talk, giving listeners the chance to explore entire worlds of knowledge you might not even have known existed without ever having to leave your sofa.
35 Episodes
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Delve into the art and craft of translation in our three-part spin-off series ‘Translators on Translation’, presented in partnership with the John Dryden Translation Competition and the Centre for World Literatures at the University of Leeds.In this episode Olivia Santovetti, Associate Professor of Italian at the University of Leeds, talks to translator Antonella Lettieri who won first prize in the 2022-23 John Dryden Translation Competition for her translation The War of the Murazzi from La guerra dei Murazzi by Enrico Remmert. You can read Antonella's prize-winning translation here.You can keep up to date with Antonella's work by visiting her website here or following her on Instagram here. You can order her latest full-length translation, of A Little Matter by Maria Grazia Calandrone, here.The John Dryden Translation Competition is run by the University of Leeds Centre for World Literatures and sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association and the British Centre for Literary Translation. Prizes are awarded for the best unpublished literary translations of poetry, prose, or drama from any period from any language into English.You can find out more about the John Dryden Translation Competition and entering your translation here.
Delve into the art and craft of translation in our three-part spin-off series ‘Translators on Translation’, presented in partnership with the John Dryden Translation Competition and the Centre for World Literatures at the University of Leeds.
In this episode Sarah Hudspith, Associate Professor in Russian at the University of Leeds, talks to translator Naomi Mottram, who won second prize in the 2022-23 John Dryden Translation Competition for her translation of Mitrofanushka Durasov by Sofia Sinitskaia. They discuss Naomi’s approach to the process of translating the Russian text into English, the nuances of translating the work of a living author and why English-speaking readers should read contemporary Russian literature.
You can read Naomi’s prize-winning translation of Mitrofanushka Durasov by Sofia Sinitskaia here.
The John Dryden Translation Competition is run by the University of Leeds Centre for World Literatures and sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association and the British Centre for Literary Translation. Prizes are awarded for the best unpublished literary translations of poetry, prose, or drama from any period from any language into English.
The John Dryden Translation Competition 2024 – 2025 is now open. The competition deadline is 5 February 2025. You can find out more about the competition and entering your translation here.
Delve into the art and craft of translation in our three-part spin-off series ‘Translators on Translation’, presented in partnership with the John Dryden Translation Competition and the Centre for World Literatures at the University of Leeds.
In this episode Richard Hibbitt, Professor of French & Comparative Literature at the University of Leeds, talks to translator David McCallam, who won third prize in the 2022-23 John Dryden Translation Competition for “No Words but Word-Dough” and “The Feeling” translated from Christophe Tarkos’s French text ‘Il y a pâte-mot’ and ‘Le sentiment’. They discuss why David chose to translate Christophe Tarkos, as well as David’s approach to the process of translation.
The John Dryden Translation Competition is run by the University of Leeds Centre for World Literatures and sponsored by the British Comparative Literature Association and the British Centre for Literary Translation. Prizes are awarded for the best unpublished literary translations of poetry, prose, or drama from any period from any language into English.
The John Dryden Translation Competition 2024 – 2025 is now open. The competition deadline is 5 February 2025. You can find out more about the competition and entering your translation here.
You can read David McCallam’s translations here.
This talk was recorded at the University of Leeds in 2023. To find out more, visit the University of Leeds website.
The centenary of the birth of Italo Calvino, the most widely translated Italian author of the 20th century, was in 2023. The Italian critic Domenico Scarpa marked the centenary with his magisterial publication (Calvino fa la conchiglia. La costruzione di uno scrittore, Hoepli, 2023) and here explores the popularity of Calvino in the anglophone world. Starting from the ‘The Spiral’, the cosmicomic story about the construction of a self which is a constant narrative theme for Calvino (and the inspiration for Scarpa’s book’s title), the conversation moves back in time to the fantastic novellas of Our Ancestors from the 1950s then forward to Invisibile cities, which in 1972 established Calvino's international reputation, finally concluding with If on a winter’s night a traveller (1979) and Mr Palomar (1983). Using as a springboard the commentaries of writers who admired Calvino, including Gore Vidal, John Barth, Salman Rushdie and Semaus Heaney, the timeless qualities that make Calvino’s works so beloved outside Italy and so pertinent to understanding our contemporary world are investigated.
This talk was recorded at the 2023 Ilkley Literature Festival. To find out more about the festival, visit our website.
When Charles Darwin arrived in Ilkley in October 1859, he had just finished working on his epochal book On the Origin of Species. After his monumental labours, he looked forward to restoring his body and mind in the Northern home of “the water cure”. But his nine-week visit turned out to be socially and intellectually lively, in ways that illuminate the man and his times, and even the enigmatic illness that plagued him.
In this talk, Mike Dixon and Gregory Radick share new evidence on what Darwin got up to during his stay in the North and what he took away for his future scientific work.
This podcast was recorded as part of the 2023 Ilkley Literature Festival. To find out more about the festival, visit our website.
In a conversation with Susan Pitter, award-winning writers Alex Wheatle and Colin Grant come together to discuss their personal experiences of being Black in Britain; the people, places, and music they turned to navigate their identity and the racism they faced.
Wheatle’s Sufferah explores his childhood marred by abuse – with no knowledge of his Jamaican parentage or family history – his imprisonment as a young man protesting systemic racism and police brutality, and how he found salvation and comfort in reggae.
Grant’s I’m Black So You Don’t Have To Be explores the lives of his family members – from his mother’s longing to return to Jamaica, to his sister who refashioned herself as an African princess – and the impact they had on Grant’s own shifting sense of self.
When we think about World War Two or the Holocaust, our minds go to those who fought or were deported to the camps. In this literary dialogue, Helen Finch and Alessio Baldini bring to you the voices of those writers who were left behind.
Natalia Ginzburg was 28 and the mother of three when her husband, Leone Ginzburg (an Italian Jew of Ukrainian descent) died in prison after being beaten by the Gestapo. The Ginzburg family had lived in ‘confino’ (internal exile) for a few years. As an Italian Jew, Natalia was now in hiding with her children to flee persecution. She survived to become one of the most important writers in post-war Italy. In her writings, she explores how vulnerability and dependence make us human, and often returns to how the war years have shaped her outlook on life.
Contemporary writer Katja Petrowskaja, a Jewish writer born in Ukraine and writing in German, explores narratives of Jewish family history in Ukraine and Germany before and after the Holocaust. Her major work Maybe Esther (tr. Shelley Frisch, 2014) traces the impossibility of reconstructing the lives of her family members who were destroyed in the Holocaust. More recently, Petrowskaja’s journalism from Berlin traces the connections between the Nazi invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s current war on Ukraine, started in 2022.
What do people think about when they hear China and Tibet in the same sentence? They often think of the traumatic experiences of surveillance, self-immolations, repression of religious expression, and international accusations of cultural genocide. Rarely will they think of traditional humour, and modern comedy disseminated in audiovisual media. But laughter is more characteristic of the everyday Tibetan experience, and attending to Tibetan humor and comedy can help us understand contemporary Tibetan experience in contemporary China. Interspersed with clips in the original Tibetan, Tim Thurston and collaborator Tsering Samdrup will discuss their preparation of a book of translated Tibetan comedic scripts, and how these comedies can help provide a nuanced understanding of the complexities of everyday Tibetan experience in twentieth and twenty-first century China.
In this talk, you'll be introduced to a selection of fictional works, translated into English, that are based on the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). With Daisy Towers, PhD student from the University of Leeds, learn about how the war inspired numerous authors to draw on their experiences and the position of translated literature in the English literary sphere.
About Daisy Towers
Daisy Towers is a PhD student at the University of Leeds, her research focuses on world literature and the translations into English of the Catalan author Mercè Rodoreda.
We live on an even more urban planet, what does this mean for climate change and a sustainable future? Drawing on recent research, Andrew Sudmant explores how cities can solve the sustainability challenges of the 21st century. Drawing on examples from leading cities in the UK and internationally, this podcast offers an opportunity to think about what we’re doing right in cities, what we’re doing wrong, and what needs to happen next to achieve a net-zero future.
Further Reading
A. Gouldson, A. Sudmant, A Duncan, R. F. Williamson, A Net-Zero Carbon Roadmap for Leeds, 2020.
A. Gouldson, R. Harcourt, K. Lock, A. Duncan, A. Sudmant, Yorkshire and Humber Climate Action Plan, 2021.
D. Dowling, F. Melly, D. Boyle, D. Olgun, A. Boyle, A. Gouldson, J. Fulker, Accelerating Net Zero Delivery Unlocking the Benefits of Climate Action in UK City-Regions, 2022.
E. Kalisa, A. Sudmant, R. Ruberambuga, J. Bower, From car-free days to pollution-free cities: Reflections on clean urban transport in Rwanda, 2021.
A. Sudmant, V. Viguié, Q. Lepetit, L. Oates, A. Datev, A. Gouldson, D. Watling, 'Fair weather forecasting? The shortcomings of big data for sustainable development, a case stuudy from Hubballi-Dharwad, India.' Sustainable Development, 29L6, 1237-1248.
Consider all the available technologies, all the actions that individuals, businesses or governments could take to stabilise the Earth’s climate, to make the world greener, cleaner and safer for our children. What stops us?
In this podcast, Viktoria Spaiser, Associate Professor in Sustainability Research and Computational Social Science, and Nicole Nisbett, Research Fellow in Climate Politics, both at the University of Leeds, discuss the importance of social dynamics in finding solutions to the climate crisis, in getting out of the business-as-usual inertia.
Together, they emphasise the importance of public support for rapid and deep decarbonisation and how such public support could be reached using insights from social science research. They end their conversation with some encouraging words in how each single one of us can participate in positive climate action.
Further Reading
V. Nakate, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis (Pan MacMillan, 2021).
I.M. Otto et al, 'Social Tipping Dynamics for Stabilising Earth's Climate by 2015', PNAS, 117:5, 2354-2365.
V. Spaiser, N. Nisbett, C. Stefan, 'How Dare You? The Normative Challenge Posed by Fridays for Future,' PLoS Climate, preprint on SSRN.
Katy Thorpe is a senior conservation works officer at Moors for the Future Partnership, who develop and deliver projects to improve peat bogs in the Peak District and South Pennines. From installing big leaky dams to planting a tiny but transformative moss called sphagnum, Moors for the Future Partnership has completed an ambitious restoration project on Ilkley Moor. Join Katy, project leader, and Jody Vallance, as they discuss why the moor needed restoration, and explains the work that has been done.
Moors for the Future Partnership delivers upland conservation projects across the Peak District and South Pennine moors, with much of its work focussing on blanket bog, a precious but historically undervalued and often damaged habitat. Benefits of restoration include slowing the flow of water from the uplands, reducing the risk of flooding, better water quality, carbon storage and a better habitat for special wildlife including breeding waders like curlew and golden plover. This work is backed up by robust research and monitoring.
Further Reading
Moors for the Future Partnership: https://www.moorsforthefuture.org.uk/
Social media channels: Twitter @moorsforfuture, Facebook and Instagram @moorsforthefuture
iCasp, also known as the Yorkshire Integrated Catchment Solutions Programme, is an ambitious 6-year programme funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. They are currently working on over 40 projects to: reduce flood and drought risk, improve the resilience of cities to climate change, preserve valuable areas of peat in the moors, develop sustainable agriculture, and devise business cases for greening city developments and making more space for water.
In this podcast, join Catherine Seal, Dr Tom Willis and Dr Jenny Armstrong as they discuss some of the local projects based in the local area.
Find out more about iCasp on LinkedIn and Twitter: @Yorkshireicasp
Further reading:
Backstone Beck
Modelling natural flood management in Calderdale
Video on natural flood management in Calderdale
Improving flood risk communications through engagement tools
West Yorkshire Flood Innovation Programme
iCasp Director Joe Holden on the Flood Innovation Programme
Video about iCasp
Approaches to partnership working
Join researcher Kylie Harris as she discusses her work on a rewilding project in Tasmania, where she joined together with the aboriginal community to harness their ecological and spiritual wisdom to help prevent destructive forest fires such as those seen in Australia in the summer of 2019-2020.
As well as a writer and an activist, she is an academic and will discuss her rewilding project along with the psychological tools we can use to become part of the solution to issues such as climate change and biodiversity loss.
This event was originally presented online by Climate Action Ilkley in October 2021 and has been edited for this podcast.
What do Western states, such as the UK, owe to refugees? When politicians, policy-makers and publics recognise that they have responsibilities to refugees, they tend to view these responsibilities in terms of a humanitarian act of charity towards suffering outsiders. In this podcast, Dr James Souter argues that we should rethink this picture of our responsibilities to refugees, and recognise that Western states sometimes have a stronger obligation to offer asylum as a form of reparation for refugees whom they have uprooted as a result of their foreign policies.
Dr James Souter is a lecturer in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds, and author of Asylum as Reparation: Refuge and Responsibility for the Harms of Displacement.
Further reading:
Serena Parekh, No Refuge: Ethics and the Global Refugee Crisis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
David Owen, What Do We Owe to Refugees (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2020).
James Souter 'The UK must fully recognise its special obligations towards Iraqi and Afghan Refugees,' LSE British Politics and Policy Blog (October 2014).
James Souter, Asylum as Reparation: Refuge and Responsibility for the Harms of Displacement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).
From Henry David Thoreau's extensive list of leaf colours to Wallace Stevens's 'gusty emotions', Lucy Cheseldine explores how Autumn shaped New England's literary and cultural heritage. Cheseldine investigates what this relationship meant for the early formation of an American identity and suggests ways in which it continues to influence more contemporary regional writing.
Further reading:
Donald Hall, Kicking the Leaves (London: Secker & Warburg, 1979).
Paul Harding, Enon (London: William Heinemann, 2015).
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens, 11th edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971).
The Poems of Edward Taylor, ed. Donald E. Stanford (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989).
The Poetry of Robert Frost, ed. Edward Connery Lathem (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969).
Walden, The Writings of Henry D. Thoreau, 150th Anniversary editionn, ed. J. Lyden Shanley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004).
Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860, The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition, ed. Jason Stacy (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009).
Since the turn of the millennium, German writers have increasingly engaged with the moral and ethical dilemmas created by scientific and technological advances. Building on the rich tradition of German Utopian Thought and German Science Fiction, they explore in thoughtful and accessible mind-experiments the dangers and limits of our new capabilities, and also the opportunities should we succeed in harnessing the potential inherent in these advances. Beneath a dystopian guise, German writers attempt 'Zukunftsbewältigung': valuable strategies that may help us cope with an uncertain but also unwritten future. As more of these texts become available in English translation, Dr Ingo Cornils explores what they can tell us about the future.
Further reading:
Kurd Lasswitz, Two Planets (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1971).
Andreas Eschbach, The Hair Carpet Weavers (Penguin, 2020).
Juli Zeh, The Method (Penguin, 2014).
Marc-Uwe Kling, Qualityland (Orion, 2021).
Ingo Cornils, Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Rochester: Camden House, 2020).
Lars Schmeink and Ingo Cornils (eds.), New Perspectives on Contemporary German Science Fiction (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2022).
What does it mean to work in UK farming today? The image of farming was revitalised during the Covid-19 pandemic as essential for ensuring supply of a diverse array of food on our plates, from fresh fruit and vegetables to sugar. Yet the people involved in farming tend to be less diverse and many farms are facing a shortage in workers. After all, 84% of farm holders in England are men (DEFRA, 2016) and it is estimated that 98% of workers in seasonal agriculture are migrants (NFU, 2018). In this podcast, Dr Bethany Robertson will talk about where these patterns stem from and what the future of the sector looks like.
Further reading:
R. Barbulescu, C. Vargas-Silva, B. Robertson, 'Without freedom of a movement who will pick the fruit? UK in a Changing Europe,' (2021).
B. Bathurst, Field Work: What Land Does to People & What People Do to Land (Profile Books, 2021).
T. Lang, Feeding Britain: Our Food Problems and How to Fix Them (Pelican Books, 2021).
B. Robertson, 'Why Women are Taking Centre Field in Farming,' The Conversation (2017).
So far, we know of only one place in the universe in which life has begun and thrived: Earth. This raises many questions around the prevalence of life in the universe, including consideration of the possibility that we are special, and that our Solar System had just the right conditions and ingredients for life to begin on our planet. Despite the persistent challenges in detecting extra-terrestrial life, there is now a wealth of evidence that rocky planets around other stars are common. In addition, everywhere we look in interstellar space, we find an abundance of key molecules, including water and organic molecules, that are needed to seed the surfaces of potentially habitable planets. In this podcast, Catherine Walsh discusses the recipe needed to build a habitable world, and present the current state-of-the-art in our quest to detect the ingredients needed to seed life on planets.
Further reading:
Kenneth R. Lang, The Life and Death of Stars (Massachussetts: Cambridge University Press, 2013).
Elizabeth Tasker, The Planet Factory: Exoplanets and the Search for a Second Earth (Bloomsbury Signma, 2017).
Lucas Ellerbroek, Planet Hunters: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life (Reaktion Books, 2017).
Andrew H. Knoll, Life on a Young Planet: The First Three Billion Years of Evolution on Earth (Princeton University Press, 2015).
Elena Ferrante is one of the most critically acclaimed and popular novelists on the global stage today. Her works offer reflections on the nature of good and evil, explore issues of poverty and sexual violence and contemplate the role of the writer. These concerns are common in the works of the 19th century Russian author Dostoevsky, a writer to whom Ferrante herself has acknowledged a debt.
This podcast brings together in conversation Dr Sarah Hudspith, a scholar of Dostoevsky, and Dr Olivia Santovetti, an expert on Ferrante, both members of the University of Leeds Centre for World Literature. They discuss the resonances between Ferrante’s and Dostoevsky’s novels, read and comment on selected passages.
This talk was recorded at an Ilkley Literature Festival event. The speakers refer to a powerpoint presentation, which is available on our website at ilkleylitfest.org.uk and here.
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