We’re delighted to publish a short blog by society member Alexandrina Vanke on her new book and ongoing engagement with one of Williams’s most enduring concepts. Alexandrina writes…
More than half a century has passed since Raymond Williams introduced the concept of structure of feeling in the mid-1950s within film and literature studies. According to Williams, structures of feeling shape cultural patterns and forms reflecting a particular spirit of the time or atmosphere of the age. Consisting of two words, ‘structure’ and ‘feeling’, contradictory at first glance, this metaphoric concept looks at both collective (structure) and individual (feeling) experiences. In his theory of culture, Williams suggests a dialectical relationship between structure and feeling that opens an opportunity to examine not only culture but also everyday life in its diverse manifestations.
As we near the publication of this year’s Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, we’re pleased to be able to publish the introduction from editors Emily Cuming and Phil O’Brien. To make sure you receive your copy of the special issue – which features six extended essays from our Raymond Williams centenary conference – join the society or renew your membership by 31st December 2023. You can do so here.
We are delighted to announce the return of the Raymond Williams Society postgraduate essay competition for its 10th year. It’s open to anyone studying for a higher degree (masters or doctoral) in the UK or elsewhere, or who graduated no earlier than 31st January 2023. The deadline for entries is Thursday 29th February 2024.
The prize for the winning entry is now £250 and a year’s subscription to the Society. The winning essay will be considered for publication in the academic journal Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism (subject to peer review). The competition aims to encourage a new generation of scholars working in the tradition of cultural materialism, especially those whose research is rooted in the work of Raymond Williams.
Entries should be 5-7,000 words in length, including endnotes, which should normally be kept to a minimum. Entries must follow the Key Words Style Notes for contributors. Information about previous winning entries can be found here.
Entries should be accompanied by a brief coversheet with the following details:
Name Postal address Email address Institutional affiliation Current or most recent programme of study Date of graduation (if applicable) Title of essay Word count
Please ask your supervisor to send us an email confirming your status. We also request that you confirm the article is not under consideration for publication elsewhere.
The closing date for entries is 29th February 2024.
Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, the journal of the Raymond Williams Society, seeks contributions for its 2024 issue.
Key Words is committed to developing the tradition of cultural materialism derived from the founding analysis of culture and society in the work of Raymond Williams. The journal provides a forum for radical thought on history and politics, and explores the role of literary, media, and cultural forms in the contemporary global era.
Following recent themed issues on topics such as ‘Working-Class Writing’ (2020), ‘Countercultural Legacies’ (2021), ‘Raymond Williams and World Literature’ (2022) and ‘Raymond Williams: The Centenary Issue’ (2023), the editorial board now issue an open call for submissions for 2024. We invite contributions that engage with any aspects of Williams’s work and intellectual legacy, and with the cultural materialist tradition more broadly.
In the first instance, we invite potential contributors to submit an abstract (500 words max) by 31st January 2024. Potential contributors will be notified of the editors’ decisions by mid-February. Article manuscripts (6000-8000 words) will be due 31st May 2024 and will be subject to peer review.
Previous issues of the journal can be viewed here. Abstracts and enquiries should be sent to Elinor Taylor, e.taylor@westminster.ac.uk, for consideration by the editorial board.
We are delighted to announce that this year’s annual society lecture will be given by Dr Ingrid Hanson, University of Manchester, on Wednesday 18th October at 5pm, Cross Street Unitarian Chapel, Manchester City Centre.
Title: Slow reading and the processes of protest: nature, culture, and conscientious objection
Abstract: In a moment when protest is being vilified and closed down in the name of public order, what can we learn from the writings, the solidarity and the internal disagreements of the protestors and conscientious objectors (COs) of the First World War (and from what we don’t know about them)? What does ‘a belief in collective security’, to borrow Raymond Williams’s phrase from his own statement of conscientious objection to the Korean War, look like? How does it relate to pacifism and internationalism, to war, racism, protest and community, human and non-human? This talk will draw on published and unpublished writings of First World War COs and their supporters, from Fenner Brockway to Vernon Lee, to consider the ways slow, close attention to the literature of the past and to ‘the real multiplicity of things and living processes’ in Williams’s phrase, that make up the natural world and its relationship to humans and human labour, is used to challenge or expose processes of domination and subordination.
The lecture will start at 5pm. It is free and open to all. No need to book. All enquiries to ben.harker@manchester.ac.uk.
Ingrid Hanson is a lecturer in English Literature at the University of Manchester. She is author of William Morris and the Uses of Violence (Anthem Press, 2013), co-editor of Poetry, Politics and Pictures: Culture and Identity in Europe, 1840-1914 (Peter Lang, 2013), and editor of a forthcoming (2023) Oxford University Press edition of William Morris’s works. She has published articles and book chapters on aspects of late-Victorian socialist journalism and culture, utopianism and peace protest, and has spoken on Radio 4’s In Our Time and Radio 3’s The Essay about her research. Her current project, a monograph provisionally entitled Disturbing the Peace,1848-1930, examines the constitutive role of antiwar and pro-peace literature, song, protest and lament in British culture. She has disturbed the peace herself in protests against war, unjust working conditions, and the detention of asylum seekers, among other matters.
The latest issue of Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, edited by Daniel Hartley, is titled ‘Raymond Williams and World Literature’. We’re delighted to be able to share with you an extract from Daniel’s 6000-word introduction to the special issue which also includes essays by Sandeep Banerjee, Rena Jackson, Maria Elisa Cevasco, Virginia L. Conn, and Shintaro Kono. Many thanks to Elinor Taylor for overseeing the production of the issue. It will be posted out to members in the new year. To receive a copy make sure you have renewed your membership or joined the society by 31st December 2022. You can join here.
On the blog this month we have an interview with Raymond Williams, conducted by Italian academic Paola Splendore in the late 1970s in Cambridge and published in Ombre Rosse (in Italian) and Anglistica (in English). Williams had visited Naples in 1972, following the translation of Culture and Society (in 1968) and on the invitation of Fernando Ferrara and Lidia Curti. Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall had spoken at the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Naples and recommended Williams to Ferrara and Curti (see Ferrara, ‘Raymond Williams and the Italian Left’ in Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives, ed. Terry Eagleton, Polity, 1989). Splendore translated both The Long Revolution (in 1979) and Problems in Materialism and Culture (in 1983) into Italian, while other translated works include Marxism and Literature (in 1979), Culture (in 1983), and Television (in 1981). More recently, Border Country was published in Italy by PaginaUno. Many thanks to Paola Splendore for allowing the Raymond Williams Society to re-publish this fascinating insight into Williams’s thinking on Cultural Studies, Marxism, and Psychoanalysis.
Originally published in The English Magazine in the spring of 1979 and titled ‘Making it Active’, we are delighted to be able to make available this difficult to find interview with Raymond Williams, thanks to the generosity of interviewer Ken Worpole. It’s the first of four interviews to be published as monthly blogs as the society concludes the centenary celebrations ahead of Williams’s birthday in August.
We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for our centenary conference in Manchester on 22-23 April 2022. You can book your place and check out the schedule here. We will have keynotes from Rhian E. Jones, Daniel G. Williams, and the Stuart Hall Foundation, along with the book launch of Culture and Politics by Williams (edited by Phil O’Brien), the performance of Yes! Yes! UCS! by Townsend Theatre Productions, and 12 panels over two days.
This week saw the publication of Culture and Politics: Class, Writing, Socialism, a new collection of essays by Raymond Williams. On the blog we have an exclusive short extract from the book’s introductoryessay by editor Phil O’Brien. Culture and Politics, published by Verso, contains five previously unpublished essays alongside five uncollected pieces, including material on Herbert Read (a lost chapter from Culture and Society), Marxism, Popular Culture, working-class writing, Pierre Bourdieu, and modernism.
The Raymond Williams Society 