2 x 2 = 5: Protests and Experiments in Revolution-Era Russian Poetry

Dr Makarchev talks about books from his collection. The talk is based on Nikita's prize-winning submission to Cambridge University's Rose Book Collecting Prize. The UL has put this online at: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/about-library/prizes-and-fellowships/rose-book-collecting-prize.

"In hurried steps a new 'red aestheticization' is being created... An ominous sign, this. Manufacturers of cliche they are" - Imaginists, Eight Points (1924)

This talk aims to rediscover the suppressed, avant-garde poetic voices that informed and underpinned the Russian revolution's preliminary years, 1917-1925. Through a collection of contemporaneous dissident poetry, the speaker aims to underscore the richness of radical enquiry and experimentation that Bolshevik censors saw as a 'malignant outrage... on mankind, and over modern Russia (Lunacharsky 1921). Further questions to consider include: What is the role of poetry in society? What new insights can these works teach us about the early 20th century avant-garde? How do these works transcend their time-period and remain relevant today?

Between Culture and Commerce: Music Publishers and their Networks in Eighteenth-Century London

Using a database of music publishers, this paper aims to uncover the individuals and geography of the trade, opening up music publishing to questions of class, gender, politics, and place. It also discusses how a digital humanities approach will facilitate a comparative history of similar studies of literary print, and, ultimately, how this will help to uncover the stories of those individuals working in the complex networks surrounding musical print.