New College Salon: Animal Languages

Looking for a space where you can share ideas, enjoy reading literature, explore literary theory with others?

We have created it: The New College Salon.

This session will consider the theme of 'Animal Languages' and it will take place on

Monday, 2 March at 8.30pm in the MacGregor Matthews Room.

Wine, soft drinks and nibbles will be provided.

The New College Salon

In six sessions throughout Hilary and Trinity Terms, we will be celebrating literary expression as an integral part of the human condition by engaging with seminal texts and theories. Our specific focus this year is about literary expression as a form of embodiment — and its role in an age of artificial intelligence. We will be reading travelogues and nature writing, as well as theoretical texts on reading, sense & perception, creativity.

This is a great opportunity to mingle with like-minded peers across subject boundaries in an inclusive environment for undergraduates, postgraduates and academic teachers. We will circulate this year's programme in the first meeting and it will be published here on the college webpage.

In this first session, we will be celebrating literature as a form of resonance with individual, social and ecological environments. We will explore practices or writing of resonance and their importance for creativity in a culture that privileges productivism and consumerism. Please, find a few suggested short readings to enjoy beforehand.

Suggested short readings: 

Suggested readings for each of the six sessions can be found here. 

Individual copies will be uploaded nearer to the event.