UCL FACULTY OF ARTS AND HUMANITIES

UCL graduate students will attend the 2011 Hermes conference, now in its fourteenth year, to present their work to a selected group of international peers and a panel of acclaimed scholars in Comparative Literature and related fields. This is a unique opportunity for students and scholars to work together on an international scale to explore the value of comparative, intercultural and interdisciplinary understanding.

From financial depression to natural disasters, flu pandemics and terrorist threats, notions of crisis and catastrophe play an increasing role in our collective imagination and cultural memory. The 2011 Hermes Seminar and Symposium aims to explore the multiple ways in which arts and culture absorb, rework or challenge many of our fears and fantasies in a global world.

This year the conference will be hosted by the Centre for Comparative Studies, Faculty of Letters at the University of Lisbon. It will be attended by Professor Timothy Mathews (French and Comparative Criticism), a founder member of the consortium and its UCL representative along with Dr Florian Mussgnug (Convenor, MA in Comparative Literature). Students from the School of European Languages Cultures and Society and from the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies will be presenting their work.

The conference will take place from 12 - 18 June, 2011.

For further information, including Hermes publications, visit: http://hermes.au.dk/

Partner institutes:

• Faculty of Arts and Humanities at University College London
• Giessen Graduate School for the Humanities at Giessener Graduiertenzentrum Kulturwissenschaften of the Justus-Liebig-University Giessen
• Faculty of Humanities at Aarhus University
• The international PhD programme “Literary and Cultural Studies” of the Onderzoekschool Literatuurwetenschap
• Faculty of Arts at the University of Leuven University
• Centro de Estudos Comparatistas (Faculdade de Letras) at the University of Lisbon
• Universidade de Santiago de Compostela

Associate partners:

• Stanford University
• University of Wisconsin-Madison
• University of Bologna