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Lectures

Autumn 2009

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Our Autumn 2009 lecture series will place on the following Saturdays:

Lectures will be held at these venues:

10th and 24th October and 7th November lectures:
Khalili Lecture Theatre
The Brunei Gallery
School of Oriental and African Studies
Thornhaugh Street
London WC1H 0XG

21st and 28th November lectures:
The Institute for Cultural Research
202 Walm Lane
London NW2 3BW


PROGRAMME

Each lecture starts at 2.00 p.m. and lasts for up to an hour. This is followed by a tea break. The remaining time until 5.00 p.m. latest is taken up with questions and discussion.

10th October
Robert Twigger
Polymaths in a monopathic world?

We are all familiar with the idea of a Renaissance Man, but does it take an historical period such as the Renaissance or Islamic Spain to produce one? In this talk Robert Twigger looks at the historical circumstances that give rise to polymaths and polymathic behaviour and asks what, if anything, encourages such outbursts of multi-directional talent.

24th October 
Professor Femi Oyebode
Jealous mistress: medicine and literature

Professor Oyebode will talk about the relationship between literature and medicine and use work by doctors such as Anton Chekhov, Dannie Abse, William Carlos Williams, and Glenn Colquhoun to throw light on the role of creative writing in the medical world. What does literature reveal about such issues as the nature of caring for others and the risks of compassion fatigue?

7th November
Dr Piers Vitebsky
Global religious change and the death of the shaman

Today thousands of the remaining ‘tribal’ religions are rapidly succumbing to a few ‘world’ religions. We hear of the threat of extinction facing plants, animals and ecosystems, yet few consider the annihilation of the flexible, pluralistic gods and metaphysical systems which have formed most of human history – an extinction taking place in the ecosystems of the spirit. Drawing on decades of fieldwork among indigenous communities currently abandoning their shamanic heritage, Dr Vitebsky will show how painful such religious conversion can be and suggest that we are living through an era in which humanity is losing an archive of possibilities, a vital spiritual gene bank as we follow the world’s dominant religions of the moment.

21st November
Caroline Washington FRSA
The story of the Paisley Shawl
SOLD OUT

The Paisley motif is of ancient Indian origin. Using examples of Persian, Kashmiri, French, English and Scottish shawls from her collection, Ms Washington will illustrate the development of the Paisley Shawl from the late 18th to the mid 19th century. Shawls of great beauty and craftsmanship were brought by ambassadors from Persia and Kashmir to royalty in the west and under royal patronage these remarkable shawls had an extraordinary impact on the weavers of France and Britain.

28th November
Caroline Washington FRSA
Patterns in Silk: How an eastern technique came to the west
SOLD OUT

Silks have been known in the West since Roman times when they were brought at great expense by caravan along the Silk Route from China. Silk textiles were the height of luxury and only the very rich and powerful could afford them. From the 5th century onwards the secret of silk manufacture gradually spread along the Silk Route from Persia to Western Europe and finally England during the reign of James I. This talk traces the development of silk manufacture in the west with slides and examples from the 16th century to the present day.


THE SPEAKERS

ROBERT TWIGGER is the author of several non-fiction books on subjects as diverse as martial arts, giant snakes and canoeing. This year Picador published his novel Dr Ragab’s Universal Language with a central character who is a polymath living in 1920s Cairo. There is much more by and about him on his blog.

FEMI OYEBODE is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Birmingham and Consultant Psychiatrist at the National Centre for Mental Health, The Barberry, Birmingham. He is interested in medical humanities and clinical psychopathology. He is also a poet.

PIERS VITEBSKY is Head of Anthropology and Russian Northern Studies at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge. He studied ancient languages before becoming a social anthropologist and carrying out extensive fieldwork among shifting cultivators in tribal India and nomadic reindeer herders in the Siberian Arctic. In Siberia, he was the first westerner since the revolution to live long-term with an indigenous community. His books include Dialogues with the dead: the discussion of mortality among the Sora of eastern India and Reindeer people: living with animals and spirits in Siberia, which won the Kiriyama Prize for non-fiction.

CAROLINE WASHINGTON has worked in the textile industry as a designer and buyer for over 40 years and has travelled from Morocco to China researching and collecting textile patterns. Her remarkable collection includes an archive of Italian and French silks from the 16th century onwards, Paisley Shawls and French Toiles de Jouy and unique textiles from the peoples of the Middle East and Asia. She has a special interest in gardens and the use of plant forms in textiles and in the exchange of ideas between the East and the West.

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Past Lectures