Celebrating the bicentenary of Wilkie Collins’s birth and 130 years since Sarah Grand popularised the term ‘New Woman’, this year’s symposium explores responses to modernity and change across literature, history and culture.

Kent Maps Online is a Digital Humanities project celebrating and commemorating the literary and cultural heritage of Kent through a website, annual symposium and related events.

'All Change! Place and Modernity' focuses on two literary events: the 130th anniversary of Sarah Grand’s article 'The New Aspect of the Woman Question', believed to be the first use of the term 'New Woman'; and the bicentenary of the birth of Wilkie Collins (1824 – 1889), who invented sensation (aka railway) fiction.

We are inviting KS5 students to be part of digital humanities workshops focussed on mapping Grand and Collins with Dr Cat Cooper, Senior Lecturer. They will explore the archives at Canterbury Christ Church University to see the materials we have related to these figures, and have an opportunity to sit in on panels as part of the main Symposium.

 

Schedule

10am - 11.30am, VH.2.39, Verena Holmes building: Royals and other Rumours

Natalie Tungate: The Kentish Royal Legend: Kent's Medieval Past in the Modern Landscape

Professor Carolyn Oulton: Rating 'Highly Spiced' Novels: Wilkie Collins, Sarah Grand and the Folkestone Free Library

Bob Chicalors: Rumours: Margate's alleged first gay bar and the evolution of the queer scene

 

11am - 1.15pm, VH.2.39, Verena Holmes building: Journeys

Liam Cohen: Canterbury's Mission: Marguerite Poland's 'A Sin of Omission'

Professor Clare Ungerson: Four Thousand Jewish lives saved: The Kitchener Camp rescue to East Kent in 1939

Jane Delamaine: A Quest to Find Bones Found in Herne Bay in 1961: 'Unknown female' or Missing Record-Breaking Pilot Amy Johnson?

 

2.15 - 3.30pm, AH3.31, Augustine House: Adaptations

Dr Diana Hirst: Sensations of Proust, Memory and Inventory in Elizabeth Bowen's 1964 Novel 'The Little Girls' and Alain Resnais' 1963 Film 'Muriel, Ou Le Temps D'Un Retour'

Rob Warren: Clock House Project, Ramsgate. Juggling on a high-wire unicycle: The challenge of a creating modern museum

Corinna Downing: Moving Pictures: Film worker, film and audience experience in Broadstairs, Margate and Ramsgate, 1890s and today

 

2.15 - 3.30pm, AH.3.22, Augustine House: School event