Literature and History Public Conference 2025: Change and Innovation

Wednesday 28 May 2025, 10am to 4pm

As a part of their degree, second-year Literature and History students take part in an annual public conference, where they present a series of papers based around a central theme. For 2025, the theme is Change and Innovation.

The papers cover a wide range of topics, including the importance of coffee houses in the exchange of knowledge in the Ottoman Empire, representations of gender and sexuality in E.M Forster’s Maurice and in Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, image and reality in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, and the role of lobotomies in psychiatric care in post-war America.

If you have any questions about the day, please contact the conference organisers:

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Location

OL2,
University of Derby,
Kedleston Road,
Derby,
DE22 1GB

Event schedule

The event schedule is subject to change.

Time Event / Speakers Title
10:00 Registration —
10:30 Welcome Address —
10:45 Panel 1 —
Fran Comelio, Brooklyn Hinkley-James, Finn Howard Fixing the American Mind? Lobotomies in Psychiatric Care, 1950-1970
Emily Cuthbertson, Collette Kerfoot, Juno Mitrijevas "An Unspeakable of the Oscar Wilde Sort": E.M. Forster’s Maurice
Barakah Bint Abdul-Aziz, Macy Owen, Demimere Riddington Gender and Mythology in Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
12:15 Lunch —
13:15 Panel 2 —
Joanna Fox, Alicia Garner, Morgan Gray Victims of Simulation: Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hollie Foster, Freddie Griffiths, Max Grummett Creating Charlie Chaplin: Cinema in the Age of the Silent Film
14:15 Break —
14:45 Panel 3 —
Ezra Barker, Harry Bell, Anthony Shardlow Building John Bull’s Bomb: Atomic Diplomacy, 1940-1962
Ciaran Faulkner-Richards, Ophelia Kirkby, Grace Morton Networks of Knowledge in the Ottoman Coffeehouse, 1555-1655
15:45 Concluding Address —
16:00 Close —

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