Speakers

Keynote Address | Michael Gray, Critic and Writer

Michael Gray is regarded as a leading authority on the work of Bob Dylan and has written extensively about popular music. In 1972, Gray published the first critical study of Dylan's work; he is the author of the massively expanded Song & Dance Man III: The Art Of Bob Dylan (1999) and the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia (2006, 2008). Further information about Michael Gray can be accessed at www.michealgray.net.

Opening Address | Daniel Karlin, Winterstoke Professor of English, Bristol University

Daniel Karlin is known particularly for his work on the poetry of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. His first book, The Courtship of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett (1985), brought about a decisive shift in the way the ‘myth’ of the two poets’ courtship was viewed, and is cited as a standard work in almost every subsequent biography and critical study. Browning’s Hatreds (1993) exemplifies his critical practice, based on the close reading of literary works, richly contextualised by reference to biography and to literary and linguistic history. Professor Karlin reviewed Robert Shelton's No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan for The London Review of Books and has previously nominated Bob Dylan for the Nobel Prize. He delivered the Professorial Lecture at the University of Sheffield on 'Bob Dylan and Allen Ginsberg - At Kerouac's Grave and Beyond' in 2010, and contributed the chapter, 'Bob Dylan's Names', to 'Do You Mr. Jones?': Bob Dylan Among the Poets and Professors (2002). His forthcoming book, The Figure of the Singer, will include a chapter on Dylan.

Academic Speakers

David Boucher, Chair of Political Philosophy and International Relations, Cardiff University

David Boucher is Professor of Political Theory and Head of School, School of European Studies, Cardiff University. He is Adjunct Professor of International Relations at The University of the Sunshine Coast, and Director of the Collingwood and British Idealism Centre at Cardiff. His most recent books are Theories of International Relations from Thucydides the Present (1998), British Idealism and Political Theory (with Andrew Vincent, 2001) and The Limits of Ethics in International Relations (2009). In addition, he is the author of Dylan and Cohen: Poets of Rock and Roll (2004), and the editor of The Political Art of Bob Dylan (with Gary Browning, 2004 and 2009).

Richard Brown, Reader in Modern Literature, University of Leeds

Richard Brown is Reader in Modern Literature at in the School of English at the University of Leeds. He is the author of several books on Joyce including James Joyce: A Post-culturalist Perspective (1992), founding co-editor of the James Joyce Broadsheet, and has contributed chapters to three collections of essays on Dylan: “Highway 61 and other American States of the Mind” in Do You Mr. Jones? (2003) and “Bob Dylan’s Critique of Judgement: Thinkin’ About the Law” in The Political Art of Bob Dylan (2004 and 2009) and “ ‘I Want You’: Enigma and Kerygma in the Love Lyrics of Bob Dylan” which appeared in American Declarations of Love (1990). Café Wha? an experimental play in which Dylan meets the ghost of James Joyce was produced in the Workshop Theatre of the University of Leeds in 2008.

Neil Corcoran, Emeritus Professor of English Literature, University of Liverpool

Neil Corcoran was King Alfred Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool until 2010. His books include a critical study of Seamus Heaney (revised edn, 1998), as well as Elizabeth Bowen: The Enforced Return (2004) and Shakespeare and the Modern Poet (2010), and he is editor of The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century English Poetry (2007). He also edited the collection Do You, Mr Jones? Bob Dylan with the Poets and Professors (2002).

Aidan Day, Professor of English, University of Dundee

Before joining the English Department at Dundee, Aidan Day was Professor of British Literature and Culture at the University of Aarhus, Denmark and Professor of Nineteenth Century and Contemporary Literature at the University of Edinburgh. Professor Day's research specialisms are in Nineteenth Century British Literature and in Post-1945 Literatures in English. His critical books are Tennyson's Scepticism (2005), Angela Carter: The Rational Glass (1998), Romanticism (1996) and Jokerman: Reading the Lyrics of Bob Dylan (1988). He is co-editor of a 31 volume annotated facsimile edition of Tennyson's poetical manuscripts, The Tennyson Archive (1987-93). His most recent essay on Dylan’s songs is ‘Satan Whispers: Bob Dylan and Paradise Lost’ in The Cambridge Quarterly, Vol. 39, No.3, September 2010, pp. 260-80.

Mark Ford, Poet, Essayist and Author

Mark Ford has published two collections of poetry, Landlocked (1991) and Soft Sift (2001), as well as a biography of the French writer Raymond Roussel, and a collection of essays, A Driftwood Altar. He is a regular contributor to the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. He has been a judge of the National Poetry Prize and a member of the board of the Poetry Book Society. Mark Ford is Professor of English at University College London and has given numerous lectures and poetry readings at literary festivals and universities in Britain, America, and Japan. Mark Ford's chapter, '"Trust Yourself": Emerson and Dylan," appeared in 'Do You Mr. Jones?': Bob Dylan Among the Poets and Professors (2002) and he delivered the keynote lecture for the 2010 Symposium of American Literature and Culture at the University of Cambridge on 'Bob Dylan's Caribbean Wind'.

Lavinia Greenlaw, Writer

Lavinia Greenlaw has published three books of poems, Night Photograph (1993), A World Where News Travelled Slowly (1997) and Minsk (2003), which was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot, Forward and Whitbread Poetry Prizes. A fourth collection, The Casual Perfect, appears in September. Her two novels are Mary George of Allnorthover (2001), which won France’s Prix du Premier Roman Etranger, and An Irresponsible Age (2006). She has published two works of non-fiction, The Importance of Music to Girl,s (2007) and Questions of Travel: William Morris and Iceland (2011). She has held residencies at the Science Museum and the Royal Society of Medicine. Her work for radio includes programmes about the Arctic, the Baltic, Emily Dickinson and Elizabeth Bishop, and she has also written song texts and libretti. Lavinia Greenlaw is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her essay, '"Big Brass Bed": Bob Dylan and Delay', appeared in 'Do You Mr. Jones?': Bob Dylan Among the Poets and Professors in 2002.

Philip Horne, Professor of English, University College London

Philip Horne's central interest is Henry James; he has served as the President of the International Henry James Society, and delivered the Henry James lecture at the Rye Festival. He has worked a good deal in US archives, and has also taught two semesters at Dartmouth College. He has a strong interest in film as well as in literature, an interest which takes many forms, but has included a sustained effort to restore the reputation of the neglected British film director Thorold Dickinson. He organised a centenary conference in 2003, and seasons at the British Film Institute and the Barbican Centre; in 2008 he introduced Dickinson films in New York and at Yale. He has interviewed many filmmakers including Martin Scorsese, director of the Dylan documentary films The Last Waltz (1978) and No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005). He writes on literature and film for newspapers and magazines, including regular reviews of films on DVD for the Daily Telegraph.

David Punter, Professor of English, University of Bristol

David Punter's earliest published work was on Gothic fiction from the eighteenth century to the present day, and this remains a a strong interest. Professor Punter has also published on romantic writing, especially the poetry of Blake, as well as the fiction and poetry of the last twenty years. More recently, he has become particularly concerned with contemporary postcolonial writing, with the descriptions of modernity, and with the politics of virtual reality. Each of Professor Punter's interests demonstrate a concern for critical theory, and especially the many forms of psychoanalysis and their application in cultural contexts. The work of Bob Dylan features in a number of books by Professor Punter, including: The Literature of Terror: The Modern Gothic (1996), The Gothic (2004), Metaphor (2007), Rapture: Literature, Addiction, Secrecy (2009).

Katherine Peddie, Research Postgraduate in English, University of Kent

Katherine Peddie is a PhD student in the Department of English at the University of Kent. She works on Robert Lowell.

Craig Savage, Research Postgraduate in English, University of Bristol

Craig Savage is a first year PhD student in the Department of English at the University of Bristol. His doctoral thesis is provisionally entitled 'I got the blood of the land in my voice': American Landscapes in the Lyrics of Bob Dylan.

Supported by the Bristol Institute for Research in the Humanities and Arts (BIRTHA)
with the Department of English and the Office for Public Events