26 November – 18:00-19:30 – Surviving Art History: Pictorialist Photography and Artistic Reputation

Venue: Room 112, Gordon Square

Booking: no booking required

David F. Martin will discuss the idea of artistic reputation as it applies to the pictorialist movement in the Western United States in the early part of the 20th century.

Many of the photographers involved had international reputations during their lifetimes but have languished in obscurity since because of racial, gender and institutional biases. David F. Martin (Seattle, Washington) is an independent curator and writer specialising in the art history of Seattle and the Pacific Northwest as well as New York State. Many of the artists he focuses on were women, gay and lesbian, Japanese Americans and other minorities active between 1890-1960. He is the author of A Turbulent Lens: The Photographic Art of Virna Haffer (University of Washington Press, 2011) and Shadows of a Fleeting World: Pictorial Photography and the Seattle Camera Club (University of Washington Press, 2011).

27 November – 11:30-13:30 – Birkbeck Food Group – The Difficult Dinner Party (Nicola Humble)

Venue: 10 Gower Street, Paul Hirst Room

Booking: Contact Alex Colas – a.colas@bbk.ac.uk

Booking: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/birkbeck-food-group-the-difficult-dinner-party-nicola-humble-tickets-13672929099

In the second Autumn term meeting, Professor Nicola Humble (University of Roehampton) will speak on ‘The Difficult Dinner Party’.

Nicola Humble is Professor of English Literature and the University of Roehampton. She specialises in the literature and cultural history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her particular interests include middlebrow fiction; the literature, culture and history of food; historiography; women’s writing; and children’s literature.

27 November – 17:00-18:00 – The Truth, the Half-Truth and Something like the Truth: likeness and verism in trecento portraiture

Venue: B112, Gordon Square

Booking: no booking required

The Murray Seminar on Medieval and Renaissance Art
Dr Laura Jacobus, The Truth, the Half-Truth and Something like the Truth: likeness and verism in trecento portraiture

The Department of History of Art at Birkbeck presents a new series of seminars on medieval and renaissance art, supported by the Bequest established in memory of Professor Peter Murray, the Department’s founder. In the first series, beginning this autumn, Birkbeck scholars present aspects of their research.

28 November – 18:00-20:00 – BiGS Event: Gendering Representations of the Financial Crisis

Venue: 402 Malet Street

Booking: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gendering-representations-of-the-financial-crisis-tickets-14084957487

When the Financial Crisis of 2008 first hit with the collapse of Lehmann Brothers, news coverage, expert testimony and policy reports were all remarkably, if perhaps unconsciously, gendered: Christine Lagarde quipped that ‘if Lehman Brothers had been ‘Lehman Sisters,’ today’s economic crisis clearly would look quite different’. Harriet Harman agreed that if the City and Wall Street were to have a more feminine ethos, maybe financial crises would be fewer and further between (Independent 2009). Other commentators were even more direct: ‘more women on Wall Street equals less ridiculous willy-waving and ego and greed inspired risk-taking’, said Melissa Whitworth in The Telegraph (2010); and New York Magazine ran the headline ‘What if women ran Wall Street’, hypothesising that ‘having women around… prevents extreme behaviour—or irrational exuberance’ (New York magazine 2010).
In this seminar – the first of a BIGS series on Gender and Austerity, Louise Owen and Kate Maclean discuss their work on gendering representations of the financial crisis, with a focus on popular culture responses to this notoriously complex event, that has – some have argued – constituted a coup d’état. Louise will explore two well-known theatrical responses to the crisis, Lucy Prebble’s Enron (2009) and David Hare’s The Power of Yes (2009), examining their approaches to the category of gender, and the role these play in mediating understandings of (post)industrial transformation. Kate will look at cinematic responses to the crisis, specifically the corporate drama Margin Call (2011) and the comedy The Other Guys (2010), focussing in particular on gender, risk and the construction of the ‘Wall Street Alpha Male’. The event will be Chaired by Lynne Segal, who will discuss the significance of these analyses to how the ensuing recession and austerity measures have disproportionately affected women.

28 November – 18:00-21:00 – BIMI Annual University of Pittsburgh Lecture Keynote Speaker: Michael Temple

Venue: Birkbeck Cinema, Gordon Square

Booking: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bimi-annual-university-of-pittsburgh-lecture-tickets-12951376917

“Richard Roud: critic, curator, author”

In this talk Michael Temple will present “Decades Never Start on Time”, the anthology of Richard Roud’s critical writings that has just been published by BFI Publishing.

Arriving from Boston in the mid-1950s, Roud (1929-1989) became a programmer at the National Film Theatre and the London Film Festival, before going on to be director of the New York Film Festival, chief film critic for the Guardian, a regular contributor to Sight & Sound, and the author of several important film books such as his monograph on Jean-Luc Godard and his biography of Henri Langlois, A Passion for Film.

The anthology Decades Never Start on Time includes significant amounts of previously unpublished material as well as selections from Roud’s published writings in various newspapers, magazines and books.

The story of Roud’s multifaceted career and personal journey through the film culture of the 1960s and 1970s is an important episode in the history of film criticism and the history of film festivals.
The talk will feature a number of archive clips and a discussion with film critics and film programmers.
The talk will be followed by a reception in the Peltz Gallery from 8-9pm. Copies of “Decades Never Start on Time: A Richard Roud Anthology”, edited by Michael Temple and Karen Smolens, BFI, 2014, will be available for purchase.

28-29 November – 10:00 – 17:00 Lean Start-Up

Venue: G10 Gordon Square

Booking: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/lean-start-up-registration-13821710107

Are you an aspiring entrepreneur?

Lean Start-Up enables entrepreneurs to reduce the cost of developing new products and services by ensuring that they do not waste time and money designing features that customers do not want. Since 2008 the best and biggest US tech start-ups have used Lean Start-up to get their new businesses developed, launched and funded. Now most of London’s leading universities, incubators and accelerators teach the method and most UK early stage venture capital investors now expect start-ups they fund to have used the Lean Start-Up process.

BEI in partnership with Capital Enterprise is providing a free of charge 2 full-day workshop for students who want to acquire a practical understanding of how they can apply lean start-up tools and principles in starting and developing a highly successful and sustainable business.

By the end of the two days attendees will understand:

Customer Development- How to develop and validate a “Good” start-up concept
Latest start-up terminology such as MVP, Pirate Funnel, Product-Market FIT
Lean start-up essential Techniques
Business Model Generation
How to “Roadmap” from idea-to prototype-to launch