School of English Evening Lecture Series 2011: Reading the 1950s
January 25th -March 29th
This course will survey selected literary texts, films and visual artists from the 1950s. The course will introduce some well known and less well known names from Samuel Beckett to Elvis Presley and will also cover the postwar decade and its literary and cultural legacies.
January 25th, Introduction: Thomas Kilroy: ‘A Memoir of the Fifties’
February 1st, Nicholas Grene: ‘Samuel Beckett: Waiting for the End’
February 8th, Darryl Jones: ‘Dylan Thomas Under Milk Wood’
February 15th, Sam Slote: ‘Elvis Presley: The ‘Sun’ King’
February 22nd, John Scattergood: ‘Surviving the Fifties: Some “Movement” Poets’
March 1st, Eoin O’Brien: ‘Nevill Johnson (1911-1999): an artist adrift in “Baggotonia” in Fifties Dublin
March 8th, Bernice Murphy: ‘Welcome to Zombieville: The Invasion of The Body Snatchers’
March 15th, Helen Conrad O’Briain: ‘Finding the Right Register: the serious American comedies of Phyllis McGinley and Jean Kerr’
March 22nd, Edwina Keown: ‘Colin MacInnes Absolute Beginners: Mods and Rockers'
March 29th, Gerald Dawe: ‘From Ginger Man and Borstal Boy to Kitty Stobling: A brief look back at the Fifties’.