Breakthrough 2013 (PDF) - Swansea University

]
College of Arts and Humanities ]
Centre for Research into the English Literature
and Language of Wales (CREW)
CREW leads in the field of literary and cultural study and has
developed an extensive programme of research and teaching.
Alongside a number of collaborative projects that have increased
grant capture from external bodies, the Centre hosts a busy
postgraduate programme and vibrant postgraduate research
community that has resulted in a generously-funded studentship
from the Wellcome Trust.
Leading in the study of the Anglophone literature of Wales, scholarly
work ranges across a wide number of disciplines including:
• Cultural History
• Visual Culture
• Transatlantic Connections
• Postcolonial Studies
• Gender Studies
•Donahaye, J. (2012). Whose People: Wales, Israel, Palestine
• Williams, D.G. (2012). Black Skin, Blue Books: African Americans
and Wales,1845-1945
• Walford Davies, D. (2012). Cartographies of Culture:
New Geographies of Welsh Writing in English
High profile projects include: a PhD studentship supervised by CREW
Director Dr Bohata as part of a collaborative project with Human and
Health Sciences at Swansea University funded by the Wellcome Trust
that is researching disability and industrial society; and full
participation in the Dylan Thomas centenary celebrations with the
launch of a new collected edition of Thomas’s poems edited by
CREW member Dr John Goodby and a major international
conference on Dylan Thomas in 2014.
www.swansea.ac.uk/crew/
Creative Writing at Swansea University
Key members of the team include Dr Kirsti Bohata (Director), Professor
M Wynn Thomas OBE, Dr Daniel Williams, Professor Dai Smith,
Dr John Goodby and Peter Lord (Research Fellow). Creative Writing
staff are part of CREW and the Centre also accommodates visiting
international scholars.
CREW maintains a programme of outreach/impact events that has
included a sell-out literary tour by CREW Director Dr Kirsti Bohata,
broadcasting and consultancy work, and no fewer than 34 volumes
published in the Welsh Government flagship Library of Wales Series,
sales of which have now reached 50,000. The academically prestigious
monograph series ‘Writing Wales in English’ published by the University
of Wales Press and edited by Professor M Wynn Thomas OBE now has
15 titles in print. Recent ground-breaking publications in the series include:
Key members of the CREW team lead the highly successful Creative
Writing programme at Swansea University, and since its launch in
2003, the discipline has established itself as among Britain’s best.
It offers tuition at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in a
broad spectrum of writing genres and skills, and brings students into
productive contact with a wide range of agents, editors, publishers
and writers. The programme is taught by practising writers with
international reputations, including prize-winning novelist, short-story
writer and critic Professor Stevie Davies, poet and prose writer
Nigel Jenkins (co-director), the prize-winning novelist, short-story
writer, musician and critic Dr Fflur Dafydd, and the internationallyrenowned
radio dramatist and playwright D J Britton.
The Centre for Research in Ancient Narrative
Literature (KYKNOS)
KYKNOS is the Swansea and Lampeter Centre for Research on the
Narrative Literatures of the Ancient World and is concerned with all
literary and cultural aspects of genres and texts which are intrinsically
narrative.
KYKNOS has organised panels at the Celtic Conference in Classics,
Edinburgh 2010 (‘Untold Narratives’), with speakers from the US,
France and Holland, as well as the UK; and at the Conferences of
the Classical Association (Exeter 2012, Reading 2013); a one-day
workshop on the pre-sophistic Greek novel at Lampeter June 2012,
with speakers from the US, Belgium and Italy and regular research
seminars in both Swansea and Lampeter.
The aim of the Centre is to stimulate, co-ordinate and promote
research on the narrative literatures of ancient Greece, Rome, Egypt
and the Near East, through collaborative work, conferences and
publications, and to form a focal point for national and international
networks of scholars working in this field.
One of the key strengths of KYKNOS is the stature of the Centre’s
Associate Members who include scholars from the US, Canada, South
Africa, France, Italy, Belgium, Israel, Greece, Russia, Germany, Japan
and China. This has led to the recognition of Swansea as an
international hub of ancient novel studies.
“
The Creative Writing programme’s staff and students contribute regularly to our literature programme. Not only do they launch
new books and give readings from their work, but they are also instrumental in setting up new initiatives and events, and
reviving old ones, most notably the Swansea-Cork exchange. The breadth of their work brings new people to the Centre each
time and encourages audience crossover. Their impact on the cultural life of Swansea is thus enormous; the Swansea Literature
Programme and all its audience continue to benefit from this involvement.
”
Jo Furber,
Director of the Dylan Thomas Centre
To further strengthen the work of the Centre, the MA in Ancient Narrative
Literature was set up to provide a channel for high-quality students to
progress to doctoral research in Swansea in the field of ancient narrative.
In the last two years it has attracted students from the US, Norway, China
and other UK universities, as well as the best of our own graduates.
All members of staff and postgraduate research students working on
any aspect of narrative literature within the KYKNOS remit, at
Swansea and Lampeter, are automatically eligible for membership.
KYKNOS key members at Swansea include: Professor John Morgan
(Director), Dr Ian Repath and Dr Fritz-Gregor Herrmann.
Projects on the horizon for KYKNOS include a major funding application
to the AHRC for a research project on Heliodorus. Professor Morgan,
Dr Repath and Dr Herrmann will be working on the project and the aim
is to produce a new critical edition and an original commentary, on four
of the 10 books (Books 5-8), of the Aithiopika of Heliodoros of Emesa,
a novel written in ancient Greek in the 3rd or 4th century CE. The
intention is that this project will be the first stage in the production of an
edition of and commentary on the whole text.
www.kyknos.org.uk
44
45