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EUTERPE Spring School Lecture Series Date and Time:  Wednesday 21 May 2025, 5pm–7pm Location:  BS/005, Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul Building, Campus West, University of York (In-person and online) Admission:  Free, booking required → Book tickets Photo credit:  Efe Ersoy “Gaza does not propel people to cool contemplation; rather, she propels them to erupt and collide with the truth.” – Mahmoud Darwish, Silence for Gaza  (1973) In collaboration with Comma Press , the EUTERPE project  is proud to present A Collision with Truth , a powerful panel event amplifying Palestinian British voices  in literature and lived experience. This timely and urgent discussion will feature writers and performers Nada Shawa , Mohammed Ghalayini , and Azhar Herez , in conversation with moderator and EUTERPE doctoral researcher Ninutsa Nadirashvili . Together, they will explore the role of writing, storytelling, and transnational authorship amidst the trauma and injustice of ongoing violence in Gaza. Through a blend of testimony, creative reflection, and critical insight, the panel will ask: What does it mean to write under siege? To speak for and within a community facing genocide? How do we bear witness on the page and in public? A Q&A will follow the panel, offering audience members the chance to engage directly with the speakers. About the Speakers Nada Shawa  is a Palestinian writer and dancer who moved from Gaza to Scotland as a child. Her work fuses personal experience, disability activism, and solidarity with Palestinian resistance. Her latest publication, Indigenous Soul: Gaza and Me , supports the Gaza Culture and Development Group. Mohammed Ghalayini  is a writer, translator, and co-author of the play Light in Me Don’t Die , which brings to life the words of Palestinian survivors and martyrs. His work bridges journalism, science, and literature, with extensive reporting from Gaza and translations published widely by Comma Press. Azhar Herez  is a poet of mixed Palestinian and English heritage whose father’s family is from Gaza. She began publicly performing her work in response to the ongoing violence, offering her voice as both protest and solidarity. Ra Page  is the founder and CEO of Comma Press , an award-winning publisher committed to global, political, and socially conscious fiction. He has edited over 30 anthologies and is a leading figure in the UK publishing scene. Venue Map:   View map Enquiries:   Contact us This event is part of the EUTERPE Spring School Lectures — a space for critical engagement, creative resistance, and transnational literary dialogue. Join us in person or online for this vital conversation.

16–23 May 2025 | University of York The University of York is delighted to host the EUTERPE York-Coventry Spring School 2025 , a week-long event welcoming doctoral candidates, scholars, and creative practitioners from across Europe. Taking place from 16 to 23 May 2025 , the Spring School is part of the EUTERPE  project (European Theatre Performance Research), a transnational initiative exploring the intersections of literature, performance, translation, gender studies, and political memory. This year’s programme brings together an exciting range of workshops, seminars, public events, and collaborative activities designed to support early-career researchers and foster international exchange. Programme Highlights Creative workshops  with renowned scholars including Dr Juliana Mensah , Prof. Derek Attridge , Prof. Birgit M. Kaiser , and Prof. Anthony Vahni Capildeo , engaging with themes such as power and agency in research, the translocal, multilingual poetics, and feminist theory. Public evening events , including a conversation and multilingual poetry reading on Translation as Deep Reading and Creative Practice , and a roundtable titled A Collision with Truth: Palestinian British Voices , held in collaboration with Comma Press . Keynote address by Prof. Kimberly Campanello  on poetic language, vulnerability, and resistance. Hands-on experiences , such as a typesetting and printing workshop with Thin Ice Press , and a career development session tailored for doctoral researchers. Participants will also visit the Yorkshire Sculpture Park  and join evening dinners and networking opportunities designed to cultivate ongoing collaboration and community. The Spring School represents a unique opportunity for doctoral candidates to exchange ideas across disciplines and national boundaries, deepening their engagement with socially and politically engaged research practices. For further details, or to register for public events, please contact euterpe-project@york.ac.uk .

Date & Time:  Tuesday 20 May 2025, 5pm–7pm Location:  The Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul Building, Campus West, University of York & Online Admission:  Free, but booking is required → Book Tickets Photo credit:  Olivia Braggs Use the words you have to get the words you need Susan Stanford Friedman Keynote Performance-Lecture With this poetic invitation, the University of York welcomes Professor Kimberly Campanello for the Susan Stanford Friedman Keynote Performance-Lecture — a powerful and evocative exploration of language, feeling, and form. Join us on Tuesday 20 May  for an evening that promises not just a talk, but a transformative experience. Campanello, Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and an internationally celebrated writer, invites us into a space where words are not simply spoken but felt , passed , resurrected . This performance-lecture will experiment with language as a living, moving force — an “unmapping” of land and memory, a choreography of phrases that dignify, open, and ask. With fragments that brush against Gertrude Stein, Dante, Lorca, and beyond, Campanello’s piece traverses poetic terrain that is urgent, raw, and beautiful. It’s a space where a sentence becomes a gesture, and a wound becomes a bridge. Where syntax isn’t a cage, but a key. “A word is a seed. It’s not like one. We know this is true when we tend one, and we know it even more when we don’t.” This lecture is part of the EUTERPE series  honoring feminist scholar and theorist Susan Stanford Friedman. A wine reception will follow the event. About the Speaker Kimberly Campanello is the author of An Interesting Detail  (Bloomsbury Poetry) and Use the Words You Have  (Somesuch Editions), the debut novel from the BAFTA- and Oscar-winning production company’s literary imprint. Her work spans poetry, fiction, and hybrid forms, with recent pieces appearing in Poetry Ireland Review , Still Point , and Notre Dame Review . Her current project, This Knot , reimagines Dante’s Commedia  in radical and resonant new ways. For more on Kimberly’s work, visit: www.kimberlycampanello.com

Review of 'Sexe et mensonges' by Leïla Slimani Slimani’s interlocutors navigate their secret, but rich sexual lives, being constantly at risk of losing their social position and freedom. Their testimonies are often deeply saddening, but also witty and humorous. Most of them stress the society’s hypocrisy over sexuality, pointing out that the system promotes the exploitation and commercialization of the female body, while pretending to support “virtue”. Slimani leads the reader through these stories bringing different voices into a conversation by providing examples from Moroccan public life, scholarly articles, and her personal experiences. by Tamara Cvetković 17 March 2025 Review: Slimani, Leïla. Sexe et mensonges. Leïla Slimani’s first non-fiction book Sexe et mensonges: La Vie Sexuelle au Maroc (Sex and Lies: Sexual life in Morocco) is a collection of essays based on the interviews the author conducted with Moroccan women of different ages and classes, as well as on the analysis of social and political events, laws, art works, and media reports on (repressed) sexuality in contemporary Moroccan society. Sexe et mensonges was first published in 2017 in French,[1] translated into Arabic in 2019, and into English in 2020 as Sex and lies: True Stories of Women’s Intimate Lives in the Arab World . The book is divided into eighteen chapters/essays, the core of which are interviews with women who wanted to remain anonymous, but also with public figures such as feminist writer and journalist Fedwa Misk, Islamic feminist Asma Lambert, and with men such as Nabil Ayouch, a filmmaker who made a documentary on prostitution, and Mustapha, a policeman with 25 years of experience in law enforcement. Through personal stories, the book offers a detailed overview of the harsh consequences of the state ban on extramarital sexual relations, including homosexual practices. In addition, it showcases Moroccan society’s public morality that allows everything if it is kept secret, nurturing the “culture of silence” concerning sexuality, female pleasure, abortion, STDs, sexual violence, and harassment. According to the testimonies, among the harshest consequences of the morality legislation are prison sentences for the most vulnerable citizens (the poor, women, LGBT persons) who were caught having extramarital sexual relations; unsafe illegal abortions; unreported cases of rape, which occasionally force the victims to marry their rapists; public humiliation and exclusion; denial of the basic rights and citizenship to children born out of marriage, which ultimately leads to the most extreme consequences such as infanticide or suicide. Among these circumstances, Slimani’s interlocutors navigate their secret, but rich sexual lives, being constantly at risk of losing their social position and freedom. Their testimonies are often deeply saddening, but also witty and humorous. Most of them stress society’s hypocrisy, pointing out that the system promotes the exploitation and commercialization of the female body while pretending to support “virtue”.[2] Slimani leads the reader through these stories bringing different voices into conversation by providing examples from Moroccan public life, scholarly articles, and her personal experiences. From the beginning of the book, the author’s position is clear. Slimani self-identifies as a middle-class person from a liberal background. This self-identification is important, as the author sees it as the source of her values and privilege within Moroccan society. Namely, Slimani argues that her background allowed her not only to nurture self-respect, bodily autonomy, and a belief that hatred, violence, and misogyny cannot be justified by any religion, but also to remain safe.[3] From that position, she draws attention to the class dimension of sexual repression, arguing that the poorest are the mostly affected by the morality law,[4] as law enforcement is selective and arbitrary, and targets the most vulnerable citizens. Importantly, she further argues that people who are not as privileged as her in terms of education, class, and family background, nor raised according to “liberal values”, can be just as well aware of their rights: But I have to say that in Morocco I have met hundreds of people who have not had all this and who, nonetheless, believe that we should live and let live, that every human being has a right to dignity and to safety. [5] By pointing out the class dimension, Slimani argues that the right to dignity and safety is not an exclusive feature of middle-class morality or Western cultures, but also a right aligned with the core principles of Moroccan culture.[6]I find this claim important for understanding the different sides of public debate in Moroccan society. Namely, Slimani emphasizes the role that the binary opposition between West/modernity/“universal Enlightenment values” and “traditional” Islamic societies plays in debates about sex in Morocco. Talking from within this binary, Slimani seems to anticipate critique from both sides of the spectrum, claiming that privileged French liberal scholars will accuse her of Orientalism, reinforcement of stereotypes about Arab societies and Islamophobia, while Moroccan conservatives will accuse her of promoting “westernized decadence and liberalism of its elites.”[7] She argues that people suffering in prisons are not her Orientalist fantasies but reality, and calls for the ending of this opposition:[8] We need to stop pitting Islam and universal Enlightenment values against each other, stop opposing Islam and equality of the sexes, Islam and sensual pleasure.[9] While her call for dismantling this binary opposition is an important step in further building her arguments, Slimani does not problematize the values of the “liberal West”, nor middle-class morality, which sometimes leads to contradictory statements. For example, recalling the public outrage that accompanied the concert by Jennifer Lopez in 2015, who was criticized for sexually “provocative” dancing and outfit, Slimani remembers being “shocked” by the fact that Moroccan middle-class liberals called Jennifer Lopez a “whore.”[10] She further expresses similar, but affirmative shock when her housekeeper, whom she considered a conservative woman, expressed “progressive” attitudes by stating that the silence about sexuality is oppressive towards women, but also bad for Islam.[11] Unfortunately, Slimani remains “shocked”, instead of questioning the foundations of liberal middle-class morality, which has a lot in common with the “culture of silence” she argues against. In addition to that, while her conversations with the interlocutors stress the need for emancipation, and the importance of the education of youth, especially boys, about sexual rights, and women’s rights for overcoming the challenges within Moroccan society, Slimani does not extend her critical approach to the contradictions of European societies. For example, she often makes comparisons with Europe, particularly France as a place where the challenges that Moroccan women and girls are facing are non-existent and/or hardly imaginable, without mentioning the challenges that Muslim girls and women face in France, and without addressing the oppression of women in Europe.[12] I argue that an explicit critique of middle-class morality and complexities within Europe would allow the author to build a stronger argument against the binary opposition of Western modernity/Islamic traditionalism. Together with that, the book offers a valuable analysis of the debate on sexuality and women’s rights within Moroccan society. Slimani argues that Moroccan authorities are also ambiguous regarding the opposition of (Western) modernity vs. (Islamic) traditionalism, as testified by the psychiatrist Jalil Bennani, who participated in a series of public debates organized by Moroccan state authorities on abortion in 2015. Bennani claimed that politically liberal “modernists” were more hesitant to advocate for legal access to abortion, while “hard-line Islamists” were more open for discussion and negotiation,[13] revealing that these debates are more nuanced and complex than expected. In addition, even though in most of the chapters Slimani takes the Enlightenment and Western liberal values as universal and non-problematic, she also provides valuable insights for critiquing these values and dismantling the binary division Western modernity/Islamic traditionalism. In the chapter “All the religions are the same when it comes to sex” Slimani analyzes the works of scholars of Islamic culture to reveal that there is a centuries-long tradition of thematizing eroticism and sensuality in Islamic literature. According to this analysis, in Islamic literature faith was not confronted with desire, but rather intertwined with it, and sexual pleasure was seen as divine, while orgasm was compared with the “delights in paradise.”[14] She argues that the arrival of “puritanical” views on sexuality coincides with the decline of political and economic power in Arab countries at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and with the region’s subsequent colonization by Europeans. According to her the imposition of puritan views primarily served as a means of prevention of sexual relations between settlers and native women.[15] Slimani points out that the Moroccan morality law that bans homosexuality originates from the French penal code that was repealed in 1982. Further, Slimani provides important information about rich Islamic traditions that are neither conservative nor sexually repressive. She introduces the views of Avbdelwahab Bouhdiba, a scholar of sexuality, who argues that sexual freedom cannot be a copied Western model, but rather achieved through faith, relying on Islamic traditions.[16] Slimani also interviews pathologist and theology scholar Asma Lamrabet from the Centre for Women’s Studies in Islam, who goes back to close reading of Quran to support her feminist arguments. Lamrabet points out that the Quran does not deal with matters of sexuality and that virginity is not even mentioned once in the whole text. In her interpretation, women are conceptualized as free human beings in the Quran. Moreover, Lamrabet argues that over time rigidity took over the place of compassion, affection, and intimacy that were historically present in Islamic societies.[17] Lamrabet advocates for a decolonial model, rather than the Western, and points out that the liberation of women to make their own choices requires a non-hegemonic strategy, a development of a new approach.[18] I find this chapter central to the whole book, as it offers a critical approach to the traditions, as well as possible paths for analyzing social and historical complexities instead of reinforcing hierarchical binary oppositions. In conclusion, Sex and Lies offers brave, lucid, witty, and valuable testimonies about the sexual lives of Moroccan women of different ages, educational backgrounds, and classes, inclusive of lesbian experiences; then testimonies of young women who had no other option but to engage in prostitution to support their families; testimonies of married, divorced, and unmarried women who speak freely about desire and practice sexual pleasures despite of repressive circumstances. The book offers a convincing critique of Moroccan laws and public morality related to sexuality and provides an important argument that sexually repressive measures are not derived from Islamic tradition. By providing more details on the French colonial origins of the Moroccan repressive legislation, Slimani could build a stronger argument both against Moroccan conservatives who, according to her, would argue that sexual repression is an Islamic tradition, and against French liberal intellectuals whom she suspects would accuse her of Islamophobia and Orientalism. In fact, this book challenges the Orientalist stereotypes about Islamic societies, and especially about Muslim women in many ways. What I find missing from Slimani’s analysis is the critique of European colonialism and misogyny; a problematization of the strands of the Enlightenment that offered no rights or freedom to women; and ultimately, the critique of so-called middle-class morality. I argue that these elements, sorely missing from her analysis, are core to the contemporary rise of far-right movements in Europe, which are also oppressive towards sexual freedoms and women’s rights. In that sense, I consider that a critique of “universal Enlightenment values,” would allow Slimani to build a more convincing argument for overcoming binary oppositions and hierarchies. [1] The title of the French original is Sexe et Mensonges: La Vie Sexuelle au Maroc [2] Slimani, Leïla. 2020. Sex and Lies . Translated by Sophie Lewis. Faber & Faber. Society on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, p. 58 [3] Sex and Lies , pp. 68-69 [4] Sex and Lies , p. 2 [5] Ibid., p. 70 [6] p. 70 [7] p. 5 [8] p. 70 [9] P. 7 [10] p. 63 [11] p. 72 [12] p. 15, p. 19, etc. [13] p. 31 [14] p. 94 [15] p. 94 [16] p. 95 [17] p. 102 [18] p. 102 References: Slimani, Leïla. Sex and Lies. Translated by Sophie Lewis. Faber & Faber, 2020. Kindle.

Samriddhi Pandey Samriddhi's research centers on investigating the impact of the transnational turn in autobiographies as a gendered literary genre. Her academic interests span gender studies, literary-historical analysis, posthumanism, and postcolonial/decolonial theory. She completed her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English Literature at Hansraj College, Delhi University, and Shiv Nadar University, India, respectively. During her master's program at Shiv Nadar University, she received the Graduate Teaching and Research Fellowship, teaching courses on Academic Writing and Literary Culture of the Enlightenment and Romanticism. Subsequently, she worked as an Editorial Project Manager at Palgrave Macmillan and Elsevier for two years before commencing her Ph.D. at the Department of Gender Studies, Central European University, in 2023. Research topic The Center Cannot Hold: Transnational Autobiographies as a Gendered Genre Areas of Interest- gender studies, literary-historical analysis, posthumanism, and postcolonial/decolonial theory. Previous Next

Review of 'White is for Witching' by Helen Oyeyemi Helen Oyeyemi’s 'White is for Witching' combines elements of the gothic tradition, vampire stories and haunted house stories to craft a narrative which probes issues of xenophobia and racism in contemporary British society. The novel follows Miranda, a young woman with vampiric qualities, as a sentient house intervenes in her life to protect, control and possess her. by Séamus O’Kane 23 April 2025 Review: Oyeyemi, Helen. White is for Witching. Helen Oyeyemi found literary success early. She wrote her prodigious debut, The Icarus Girl (2005), and secured a publisher while she was still in secondary school. The years since then have seen her produce a tremendous output: seven more novels, two plays and one short story collection. Born in Nigeria and raised in London, Oyeyemi’s nomadic trajectory has taken her to Paris, Berlin, New York, and, finally, Prague, where she now resides. White is for Witching (2009) is Oyeyemi’s third novel and garnered her the prestigious Somerset Maugham Award in 2010, placing her in the company of such luminaries as Doris Lessing, Angela Carter and Zadie Smith. White is for Witching opens with a cryptic and disorienting prelude as its protagonist, Miranda, lies already dead, with competing accounts of how this occurred. These segments set the stage for the narrative perspectives that make up the novel: Miranda herself, Eliot (her twin), Ore (her friend and partner), and the house itself, 29 Barton Road. The house is in Dover, a coastal town in England which serves as a major port to Calais, and therefore acts as a main entry point into England for many migrants and refugees. This setting allows Oyeyemi to examine contemporary issues of racism and xenophobia in her setting of England in the year 2000. Much like the welcoming façade of the house, the locals of Dover are superficially friendly but harbour a deep-seated racism. Refugees from Kosovo are stabbed, with Miranda’s twin, Eliot, blaming other refugees for the crime. Chinese migrants die in a truck trying to cross the border. There are protests outside the immigrant detention centre after a man commits suicide. When Miranda and Eliot’s mother, Lily, inherited the house, their father, Luc, persuaded his wife to turn the seven-bedroom Devon home into a B&B. Upon moving into the house, Miranda develops the same eating disorder which afflicted her great-grandmother. This disorder, pica, causes her to constantly chew on chalk and plastic, spurning regular food unless she makes a sustained effort to eat, usually to please her parents. When Miranda and Eliot’s mother dies, shot dead at a polling station in Haiti, Miranda finds herself in a psychiatric clinic for six months. Her memory of the events is already untrustworthy as she cannot recall how she got there. Consequently, an ambiguity persists when events are recounted from Miranda’s perspective. Physically weak from her eating disorder, her perception of reality is also unreliable, meaning that it is difficult to separate the supernatural events of the novel from Miranda’s own hallucinations. The house itself often casts aspersions on the reliability of Miranda and Eliot’s stories, whilst slyly suggesting multiple possibilities of its own. When recalling the fate of one of Miranda’s predecessors, the house presents two competing stories: she could have been strangled to death or allowed to reside within the house’s walls until she reached middle age. As the novel progresses, we learn more about the house, including the origins of its sentience, beginning at the time of Miranda’s great-grandmother. Thereafter, the house’s desire to “protect” the female members of the family becomes a corrupted, unwanted inheritance, as its desire manifests as possession and control, seeking to deny them any agency or autonomy. Miranda’s eating disorder is implied to be part of this supernatural inheritance as it afflicts subsequent generations who are connected to the house. As part of this disorder, she symbolically internalises chalk, connecting to the novel’s larger themes of racialisation and whiteness. This repeated act not only allows the house to symbolically extend its xenophobia beyond its physical boundaries, but it also weakens Miranda, causing her to become reliant on the house, and foreshadows the novel’s ending where the ultimate aims of the house’s idea of protection becomes clear. One of the novel’s focalisers is Ore, a woman with a Nigerian mother and white adoptive parents, who strikes up a friendship and romance with Miranda in Cambridge in some of the novel’s most touching scenes. Her perspective gives an insight into the discomfort and impostor syndrome of an elite academic environment. Furthermore, we see how Ore is subjected to the casual, mocking racism of her white cousins, who read aloud sections of leaflets distributed by the fascist British National Party. These scenes further add to the various manifestations of racism within the novel, emphasising how the xenophobia that the reader encounters is not simply a supernatural curse that is generations old, but a contemporary reality which can personally impact characters even in a familial context. In White is for Witching , neither the family nor the home, both traditionally associated with safety, can provide refuge. Oyeyemi’s novel subverts the trope of the monstrous, racialised Other, turning it back onto the white, colonial culture of England (indeed, the house has a fondness for the glory days of Rule Britannia). The uncanny is now the British family home. Sade, the Yoruba housekeeper, uses her culture’s charms and superstitions to counter the house’s malevolence. Ore, meanwhile, recalls the Nigerian folktale of the soucouyant, a shape-shifting old woman who feeds on the souls of her victims. She projects her understanding of this tale onto her experience of the haunted house, allowing her to defend herself against it. Miranda’s eating disorder leaves her pale and thin, visually recalling the vampire, a metaphor for the parasitic, colonial draining of resources and, indeed, her relationship with Ore leaves her lover in a similarly weakened state. A kissing scene towards the novel’s climax also heightens the novel’s supernatural elements and further troubles the boundaries between perception and reality. Drawing on Gothic tropes, Oyeyemi’s novel brilliantly conveys a sense of unease, foreboding, creeping uncertainty and inescapable decline throughout its narrative. Oyeyemi’s pages list various authors of dark fairytales and gothic stories which presumably shaped her writing, including the Brothers Grimm, E. T. A. Hoffman, and Sheridan LeFanu. However, it is the influence of Edgar Allen Poe which is felt most strongly in the novel. Humorously, one scene features Miranda and Eliot discuss how they could easily deal with the events of a Poe story. Indeed, one could view the novel as a reworking of The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), with its sentient home tied to a doomed bloodline. Oyeyemi’s story, like Poe’s, hints that there is an incestuous connection between the twins. Miranda possesses many characteristics shared by the Usher twins: she suffers from a mental illness which manifests itself physically, she has uncanny, pale white skin, and soft, ethereal hair. Like Roderick Usher, her fate is inseparable from the home. The reader is left to question whether she has control of her own actions. Upon the novel’s conclusion, it is natural to return once again to the prelude, now armed with the knowledge of what happens to Miranda and able to slice through its disorienting opacity. Yet, despite everything they have read, the reader will wonder about her fate long after the book is closed. This encouragement of circularity mimics the novel’s own themes, triggering many questions and unsettling any easy resolution. Although there are scattered, individual acts of resistance to the house and its xenophobia, it ultimately achieves its goal, raising the question of whether it is possible to break the cycle of victimhood and the continuity of a colonial past. Will the house, and by extension, the racist spectre of empire, continue to haunt British society forever?