Sam Cooper | Research Blog | Avant-Garde Literature and Visual Culture

There’s a very thorough reading of my article “The Peculiar Romanticism of the English Situationists” over on the blog Reading and Walking. You can read the review article here (apologies, Reading and Walking author, if you see this — I can’t find a name!). I’m very glad that the article is still being read three … Continue reading The Peculiar Romanticism of the English Situationists – a review

Psychogeography Today: Aimless Wandering as Creative Practice I’ll be dusting off my old lecture notes to lead a discussion at Jinny Blom’s design studio as part of the fabulous Jinny’s Tonic salon. More info on Jinny Blom’s website. And tickets available on EventBrite. The evening will be focussed on discussion. I’ll give a brief introduction, … Continue reading Jinny’s Tonic #6

I was asked by the art group Alt Går Bra for permission to reproduce an excerpt from my book in a publication connected with the exhibition and conference “The Art of the Mimeograph,” detailed below.  The text that they will be using will be “Seeds of Social Destruction” on Charlie Radcliffe and his (mimeographed) Heatwave … Continue reading The Art of the Mimeograph exhibition and conference

There is currently a free exhibition at Tate Britain to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the events of May and June 1968. While those dates are most often associated with the general strike, the occupations and the barricades in France, particularly Paris, there were related upheavals in London. A room in Tate Britain focuses on the occupation of … Continue reading London 1968 (Tate Britain)

The collection Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture, edited by my erstwhile colleague Pam Thurschwell, has been published by Palgrave. It includes my chapter ‘Heatwave: Mod, Cultural Studies, and the Counterculture’.  The book is available via the publisher and on Google Books.   Continue reading Quadrophenia and Mod(ern) Culture

Here are the slides for the talk I gave on the Situationist International at Oxford Brookes University (December 2016). Please contact me if you would like to read the accompanying notes.   Continue reading The Situationist International – slides (Oxford Brookes, December 2016)

In lieu of a review proper, here are some thoughts on the Paul Nash exhibition at Tate Britain, which I visited in early November 2016. ‘[Is it] possible to “go modern” and still “be British”? […] The battle lines have been drawn up: internationalism versus an indigenous culture; renovation versus conservatism; the industrial versus the … Continue reading Notes on Nash

I’ve had a couple of book reviews published in Radical Philosophy recently. In issue 192 (July/Aug 2015) there’s one titled ‘Surplus Poetics’, which considers Frances Stracey’s Constructed Situations; in 190 (Mar/Apr 2015) there’s another, titled ‘Fun and Games’, in relation to Richard Barbrook’s Class Wargames. *UPDATE 1/12/2015* I’ve just been told that a scan of … Continue reading Radical Philosophy Reviews

I’m not sure for how long, but Cambridge Quarterly have my article ‘The Peculiar Romanticism of the English Situationists’ available for free. You can find it here. Continue reading The Peculiar Romanticism of the English Situationists

The talk below was given at ‘Local Modernisms: 1890-1950’ in Birmingham, though it’s really an abridged version of a lecture I gave at the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne.  In her book Romantic Moderns, Alexandra Harris documents what she describes as ‘a modern English renaissance’ that took place in the late 1930s, when English artists, writers and … Continue reading Sussex Surrealism (Towner Gallery, Eastbourne, May 2015)