CeMoRe Showcase and Lunch

Nour Dakkak's Abstract -

Criticism of E. M. Forster's fiction has often viewed places as static entities. My research, however, draws attention to the dynamicity of these places through studying the mobility of both humans and non-human things.  

Forster's characters walk, stroll, drift and trail. They walk in the city and the countryside, in England and abroad. Some drive, cycle, or ride trains. They are always on the move, and in their movement they constitute different types of relationships with their environment. My research examines how bodies react differently when they experience an alteration in the textures of the places they move in and interact with. It also observes how the various experiences of movements shape the characters' perception of themselves and their sense of belonging.

My research is equally interested in studying the materiality of the various places depicted in Forster's fiction. I look at how the characters' mobility is influenced by non-human elements of the environment. I also examine how the mobility of some elements, such as dust, gains significance as a result to the changes affecting the technology of transport in the early twentieth century.

Frank Pearson's Abstract - The Body in the Cave - Moving through Cave Space Abstract: Caving has its origins in mining and cave and karst science. It has been synonymous with the term speleology: the exploration and study of limestone caves, and, as such, the literature it has generated is largely of a geomorphological nature. Relatively little has been written about the aesthetic experience of caves, even less about the embodied experience of moving through them. When cave writing really began in the eighteenth century, most writers described the cave but not their presence in it. However, a few writers did attempt to convey their movement and position in space. The space they passed through was measured by their bodily experience, for example, whether they could actually fit, whether there was enough space to breathe in flooded passages, whether they could crawl either flat-out or on their hands and knees, and whether or not they could ascend or descend open spaces, such as deep shafts. Contemporary writing still tends to overlook the embodied experience, the movement, the flow-state of passing through a cave. Archaeologists and art historians have suggested a degree of altered states of consciousness in the origin of paleolithic cave paintings brought about by movement through the cave and its inherent darkness. It is this movement, along with both the sensory intensification and deprivation they describe, that I am interested in exploring in a phenomenology of caving. Pennie, this is a relatively recent aspect of my research brought about by my experiences in cave exploration and the absence of much writing about it - past and present. There seems to be plenty written about walking, climbing, wild swimming, running and so on but little, if anything, on caving. Sorry it doesn't have a real focus yet, I'm still working on it! As you can see in the abstract, I have done much research in science and aesthetics but found precious little on the phenomenological experience - it is a huge gap. Hope this is the kind of work you are interested in and that it suits your event.