Stuart Hall

Stuart Hall Foundation

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CULTURAL STUDIES

The 'Stuart Hall in Translation' series observes ideas in motion. It aims to trace the resonance and transformation of ideas as they oscillate between languages, historical moments, and varying socio-political contexts. The series, produced in partnership with Cultural Studies journal, invites translators of Stuart Hall’s work from across the world to reflect on the following questions: 

- What can be lost and gained when texts are translated into different languages?  

- Can ideas form linkages across difference?  

- How can ideas transcend spatial and temporal boundaries?  

- What are the political implications associated with ideas moving across and between boundaries? 

To initiate the project, we invited Bill Schwarz, co-author of Stuart Hall’s memoir 'Familiar Stranger', and Liv Sovik, professor of Communication at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, to discuss the nuances of translating ‘Familiar Stranger’ and Hall’s ideas into Portuguese for a Brazilian audience.

You can listen to the conversation Bill Schwarz and Liv Sovik here, recorded in August 2022.

In 2024, we extended the invitation to other translators of Hall’s work, asking them to write about their own experiences, and addressing the disparities, challenges, and synergies of translating Hall’s ideas into a different language and national context. These new texts will be published in Cultural Studies Journal and on the Stuart Hall Foundation website in Autumn 2024.  

Sign up to the SHF newsletter to keep updated! 

Supported by Taylor & Francis.

Stuart Hall in Translation: Bill Schwarz and Liv Sovik

We’re kicking off Black History Month with Pulitzer and Nobel Prize-winning author Toni Morrison, who came to NYPL in 2010 for a conversation with activist and author Angela Davis. In this wide-ranging talk, Morrison and Davis discuss Frederick Douglass, education, and liberation.

Toni Morrison and Angela Davis on Connecting for Progress

Terry Eagleton is a celebrated literary and cultural theorist. He is Distinguished Professor of English Literature at Lancaster University and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford. He is the author of over fifty books; recent publications include Why Marx Was Right (2011) and Culture and the Death of God (2014).

Terry delivered the ninth Theos Annual Lecture on 5th October 2016 at One Birdcage Walk. It was chaired by Gordon Corera, Security Correspondent at the BBC.

Theos Annual Lecture 2016: Terry Eagleton: The Death of God and the War on Terror

Audio recording from the launch of Stuart Hall's memoir Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands

Launch of Stuart Hall's memoir Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands

Discussion about Stuart Hall’s memoir Familiar Stranger: A Life Between Two Islands. 
Speakers: Bill Schwarz (Queen Mary University of London), Matthew Hilton (Queen Mary University of London), Donette Francis (University of Miami, USA) and Thomas Glave (University of Binghamton, USA). 
Event organised by Queen Mary University of London.

Familiar Stanger Discussion Part 1

From writing to art, the intense to the light hearted, imagination transports us to untold fantasy worlds. Yet Picasso claimed "everything you can imagine is real".  Should we dismiss this as the overblown claims of a celebrity artist, or might what we take to be reality actually be a product of the power of imagination?

Literary critic Terry Eagleton, New york University philosopher Paul Boghossian and Chocolat author Joanne Harris find places where reality ends and the power of imagination begins.

Imagining Imaginations | Terry Eagleton, Paul Boghossian, Joanne Harris

To celebrate the launch of On the Desert Island, the artist Ting-Ting Cheng was in conversation with Stephanie Moran, Iniva’s Library Manager on Thursday, 15 June 2017.

Offering a unique way to explore Iniva’s remarkable collection, On the Desert Island takes its cue from Professor Stuart Hall speaking to Sue Lawley on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in February 2000. The artist Ting-Ting Cheng draws on the recording of Professor Stuart Hall’s interview to create an audio map which imagines the Stuart Hall Library as islands with its bookshelves and contents as land mass to be negotiated.

The exhibition On the Desert Island will be available to listen to in the Stuart Hall Library from 1st June until 1st December 2017.

On The Desert Island Artist In Conversation

In our topsy turvy post-modern world, we're held captive by the promise of the new. One of Britain's most influential cultural critics, Terry Eagleton, examines novelty's strange perils.

Supported by Routledge - Associate Academic Partner of the IAI. To learn more, and for exclusive discounts and prizes visit: http://bit.ly/2huBNRx

The Swindle Of The New | Terry Eagleton

An afternoon of stimulating talks, readings and performances focusing on the profound political and economic changes taking place in different parts of the globe and the forms of popular resistance to those changes.

Award-winning poet Mona Arshi read new and recent poems including from her moving and intimate poetry collection, Small Hands. Keynote speeches will be given by playwright and commentator David Edgar and essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra, followed by an open discussion chaired by Gilane Tawadros, the Vice-Chair of Stuart Hall Foundation.

The First Stuart Hall Public Conversation 3rd Feb 2018

The first part of the Stuart Hall Foundation Scholars and Fellows event which was held on Friday 2nd February at Conway Hall in London.
The Stuart Hall Foundation trustees Claire Alexander, Catherine Hall, Michael Rustin and Gregor McLennan each provided introductory statements on the current importance and legacy of Stuart Hall’s work. All four statements considered Hall’s work with respect to issues of the current conjuncture, heeding one of Stuart Hall’s central principles of conjunctural analysis.

Round Table Discussion at the SHF Scholars Fellows Event 2018 Part 1

Outspoken critic of Richard Dawkins, and renowned Professor of English Literature Terry Eagleton launches himself heroically at the twin hornet’s nests of modern religious apathy & radicalism. Where should the unreligious look for answers? What has caused the recent growth in radicalism?

Supported by Routledge - Associate Academic Partner of the IAI. To learn more, and for exclusive discounts and prizes visit: bit.ly/2huBNRx

Bonus Episode | The Death Of God And The War On Terror | Terry Eagleton

Have you ever wished you could teleport? Or mind-read? Or travel time? All of these are easier than you think. Every time you press play you step into another world and open yourself up to someone else's experience. This might not sound like a groundbreaking discovery in an era of constant verbal and visual bombardment, but the potential of this truth is limitless. In his own wildly unconventional way, George the Poet uses music from his environment to convey this point. All you have to do is press play. 

Featured songs: 
Mucky - It's On Me
Maleek Berry - Gimme Life
Bonnie Beretta - Team Bonnie
Guala - Guala Gwala
1011 - Next Up?

Produced by Benbrick and George The Poet
Original score by BENBRICK

#HYHGP

#HaveYouHeardGeorgesPodcast Episode 5 Press Play

Hosts Oonagh Ryder and Sam Swann speak to Patrick Williams, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Manchester Metropolitan University, about the media and government focus on 'gangs', how this relates to the reality of violence and the impact this has on black and minority ethnic communities in Britain.

Novara Audio: Radio for a Different Politics

The Lockdown: Gangs and violence - what's going on?

Dr. Yolonda Yvette Wilson is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Howard University. Dr. Wilson does research in Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy, and Race Theory. Her current work centers on bioethics and race. She joins the program to discuss the growing topic of "Brain Death" as a classification of death and what it means in deeper cases regarding race, culture and spirituality.

Information is the Best Medicine 1.5.19 - Dr. Yolonda Y. Wilson talks ethics of Brain Death

Speaker(s): Dr Liam Bright, Dr Brian Kelly, Dr Meera Sabaratnam | W. E. B. Du Bois is usually remembered as a sociologist and civil rights campaigner, and his analysis of race and racism continues to shape the way social scientists think about these issues today. But a genuine polymath, he was also a skilled philosopher and in this event we will consider Du Bois’s philosophical thought, from art, propaganda, and science, to the very purpose of philosophy itself. Liam Bright (@lastpositivist) is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at LSE. Brian Kelly is Reader in History at Queen’s University Belfast. Meera Sabaratnam is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at SOAS. Jonathan Birch is Associate Professor of Philosophy at LSE. The Forum for European Philosophy (@ForumPhilosophy) is an educational charity that organises a full and varied programme of philosophy and interdisciplinary events in the UK.

W E B Du Bois [Audio]

Listen to the audio recording of The Second Annual Stuart Hall Public Conversation, held at Conway Hall on 2nd February 2019. The event gathered our growing community of artists, students, academics, cultural activists and engaged citizens to consider how to reimagine and reclaim public space in the context of our present social and political upheavals.

Pursuing this question through multiple lenses, the afternoon centred on two sets of conversations. The first, between artist Willie Doherty and curator Elvira Dyangani Ose, addressed the question of 'how to share a place' through Doherty's longstanding engagement with the Ireland/Northern Ireland border. The second conversation featured a panel including Guardian columnist John Harris; sociologist Michael Rustin; and senior editor, Novara Media, Ash Sarkar. Titled 'Meeting the Crisis: Trump, Brexit, and the Left', it asked 'what is to be done'. These two discussions were punctuated with interventions and perspectives from a new generation of artists, scholars and cultural activists. 


PROGRAMME

14.00: Welcome note
Hammad Nasar, Stuart Hall Foundation Executive Director

14.10: Black Cultural Activism Map Presentation
Farzana Khan

14.15: My time as a Stuart Hall Scholar
Ruth Ramsden-Karelse

14.20: How to share a place
Willie Doherty in conversation with Elvira Dyangani Ose

15.10: Joining the Stuart Hall Foundation’s work
Rebecca Hall and Hammad Nasar

15.20: Tea & coffee break

15.50: Meeting the Crisis: Trump, Brexit, and the Left
John Harris, Michael Rustin and Ash Sarkar, chaired by Claire Alexander

17.05: Closing remarks
Gilane Tawadros, Stuart Hall Foundation Vice-Chair

17.10: Musical improvisation *
Elaine Mitchener, Mark Sanders and Neil Charles
* Acoustic performance—not recorded.

17.30: Event finishes

Image: Willie Doherty, At the Border IV (The Invisible Line), 1995. Image courtesy the artist and Kerlin Gallery.

Conway Hall 2019

Second Annual Public Conversation: Stuart Hall & the Future of Public Space

We may condemn tyrants and abhor serial killers, but we are obsessed with evil and violence. Are we fascinated by evil, violent characters because they make life more exciting? Or because they express our real nature? Should we look to end this morbid obsession, or accept it as a feature of humanity? In this episode of Philosophy for our Times, cultural critic Terry Eagleton, author of Evil in Modern Thought Susan Neiman and philosopher Stephen de Wijze get to the bottom of evil's strange allure.

The Fascination With Evil | Terry Eagleton, Susan Neiman, Stephen de Wijze

Inspired by the life and work of Professor Stuart Hall, the Stuart Hall Foundation is committed to public education, addressing urgent questions of race and inequality in culture and society through talks and events, and building a network of SHF scholars and artists in residence.