School of English

The English Showcase

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Overview

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The English Showcase celebrates the research produced by final-year undergraduate, masters and PhD students. 

Students from all disciplines in the school are invited to present any aspect of their work, ranging from dissertations to essays and creative writing.

This year's Showcase will be held on 3 May 2023. The Showcase will be held in person.

Interested in attending? Register below:

Register now

 

The English Showcase 2022 (15 June)

10:00 - Arrival and registration (with coffee and pastries)

10:30 - Welcome from Dr Joe Jackson, Director of Teaching for the School of English

10:45 - Panel 1 (Chair: Abigail Greaves)

Naama Alaboodi, 'Temporal Places and Permanent Space in Jean Rhys' Let Them Call It Jazz'
Khadiza Naznin Huda, 'The formation of identity through clothing and fashion in Mulk Raj Anand's Untouchable and Susanna Moore's One Last Look'
Yun-Sah Hsieh, 'From Mimics to Simulacra: Posthuman Pathos in Kazuo Ishigoro's Never Let Me Go (2005) and Klara and The Sun (2021)'
Amalia Costa, 'Venus as a Boy: Employing the Androgynous Gaze in Ali Smith's Hotel World, Boy Meets Girl and How To Be Both.'

11.45 - Panel 2 (Chair: Tom Fairfax)

Marie Georghiou, 'Bringing old texts to life: Translating a 1000 year-old riddle'.
Samuel Masters, 'The Divine Paradox: The Use of Paradox in English Devotional Lyrics from 1300-1600'.
Em Horne, 'An examination of the value of place-names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, the language(s) of the Lancashire coast'.
Jessica Corrigan, 'Reconstructing Patriarchal Norms in the Early Modern Forest'.

This panel will be followed by a 45 minute break for lunch.

13:30 - Panel 3 (Chair: Dr Christina Lee)

Katy Bagust-Jones, 'Cannot Lah: A comparison of the meaning and use of can and cannot in Singapore and British English'.
Minael Shahzadi, 'Representation and Interpretation in Muriel Rukeyser and Adrienne Rich's Ekphrastic Poetry.'
Emily Jones, ''For what could beauty's business be in Murphy's vicinity, if not with Murphy?' Fate and metafiction in Samuel Beckett's Murphy'.
Lauren Walker, 'Exploring Midlands attitudes towards regional linguistic variation in the UK and Ireland'.

14:30 - Panel 4 (Chair: Amanda Kale)

Abdulaziz Alhussan, 'The influence of the gamified-flipped approach on improving engagement and learning achievements'.
Jennifer Lea, 'Beyond the Archetype: How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez uses code-switching to engage the electorate and defy expectations of powerful women.'
Beiting Zheng, 'Are we learning "Textbook English"? A corpus-based study of lexical bundles in English textbooks used in Chinese secondary schools'.
Xuewu Qin, 'Demographic study with Chinese high school deaf EFL learners - a case study with Wuhan No.1 deaf school'.

This panel will be followed by a 15 minute coffee break.

15:45 - Panel 5 (Chair: Molly Watson)

Daisy Twizell, 'The relationship between contemporary "Instapoets" and second-wave feminist poetry'.
Jacob Watkins, ''To Build the Universe Stupendous': What Lord Byron and Percy Shelley searched for in Strain'.
Alex Tyndall, 'A Disappointment to My Parents'.

This panel will be followed by closing remarks and a wine reception.

Full Programme

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Past showcases 

Following the success of the first showcase in 2015, the school has made it an annual event. Read more about past events below:

2020

Due to the Covid-19 Pandemic no Showcase took place in 2020.

2019 

Find out more...

This event celebrates the research produced by final year undergraduates and by MA students, who were invited to present on any aspect of their work ranging from dissertations to essays and creative writing.

The day began with a keynote talk from  Jon McGregor, Professor of Creative Writing in the School and editor of our very own literary journal,  The Letters Page. Jon discussed his career, and his working practices; particularly the processes of writing. This was followed by a diverse range of papers with more than twenty students delivering presentations, providing a fantastic representation of work undertaken in the School.

Subjects that attendees could hear about included: how language reclamation was used on feminist protest signs from the 2017 Women’s March; swearing in Mandarin online; Afrofuturism in Anthony Joseph’s The African Origins of UFOS; and a feminist exploration of language and gender in adaptations and appropriations of Much Ado About Nothing. The ambition and enthusiasm demonstrated by participants was a great way to mark the end of term, and a wonderful culmination to the teaching year.

- Dr Lucie Sutherland, Assistant Professor, School of English

 

2018

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This year's Showcase event was held on Friday 23rd March

What a fantastic spectacle this year's Showcase was! Dr Daniel Hunt, Director of Undergraduate Studies opened up the event with a wonderful Welcome talk expressing what a great opportunity The English Showcase is for learning new things and sharing ideas. We couldn't agree more!

The line-up was certainly an impressive one whereby third year English with Creative Writing student, Tianna Johnson gave a very well received talk on 'Decolonising the Curriculum in Modern Cultural Identity in Literature' and ended with Andrea Bowd's, beautiful collection of poetries entitled, 'Panaceas' on the Creative/Critical panel. Thank you to all of our students, audience and staff for participating in and supporting this inspirational annual event.

Conference Booklet Download The English Showcase 2018 Programme

 

 
 

2017

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Proud of your work? #ShowOff17

This year's Showcase took place on Friday 7th April 2017.

Bigger than ever before, the full-day event included a diverse range of papers from fourteen speakers who were either Masters students or in their final year of Undergraduate study. Panel topics ranged from Shakespearean 'Filmic Legacies' and 'Character Interactions' to 'The Politics of Space and Things', 'The Use and Abuse of Language', and 'Religion, Science, and the Gothic'. Professor Josephine Guy, the Head of School, gave a fantastic welcome talk on the importance of public speaking both inside and outside of academia. Presentations were then followed by an informal wine reception, which provided participants with a chance to network, reflect on the day's events, and celebrate the end of term.

Conference Booklet Download the The English Showcase 2017 Programme
 
 

2016

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Proud of Your Work? #ShowOff16

The English Showcase 2016 took place on the 10th February 2016, showing off a great variety of projects and research. The event included an introductory talk by a special guest speaker, award-winning novelist (and School of English alumna) Clare Harvey, who revealed how she turned her University of Nottingham Masters submissions into a two-book publishing deal.

Eleven student speakers discussed the projects that they were most proud of, covering a range of topics including theatre, creative writing, literature and language. The presentations then closed with a discussion from Associate Professor of Viking Studies, Dr Christina Lee, on the various routes English research offers. 

Please see the Showcase resources, produced by the student committee, for more information on the 2016 English Showcase.

Conference Booklet Read Thomas Legendre's blog about Clare's keynote lecture

 
 

2015

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The English Showcase 2015 was the first of its kind for the School of English.

It was authoritative, consistently interesting, and full of enthusiasm. Speaking in public can be very difficult, and speaking about your work in front of peers and academic staff even more so, but the students handled that side of things with aplomb. Throughout, in fact, the Showcase felt like a professional academic conference – confirming the evident care with which it had been planned and structured. Well done!
 

- Dr Nathan Waddell, Assistant Professor of Literary Modernism, discussing the first English Showcase in 2015

 

Please see the video below to hear from some of the participants and organisers of the 2015 English Showcase.

Conference Booklet
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The 2015 logo
 
The English Showcase poster
 
 
 

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School of English

Trent Building
The University of Nottingham
University Park, Nottingham NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 951 5900
email: english-enquiries@nottingham.ac.uk