James Harriman-Smith

Category: From my PhD

  • Metaphors for writing

    I’m busy writing the first draft of chapter one, and so have had neither time nor inclination to write much for this blog of late. That said, all my thesis-scribbling did inspire this post, for it occurred to me, as I sketched the umpteenth plan for spending this section’s allotted word count, that I now…

  • Millennium Actress (Sennen Joyû)

    Without a doubt, and for reasons that will soon become clear, Satoshi Kon’s 2001 masterpiece is one of my favourite animated films. The story is relatively simple: we watch a film journalist, Genya Tachibana, and his unnamed cameraman interview the famous retired actress Chiyoko Fujiwara about her life whilst a series of earthquakes shake the…

  • The Game

    Warning: spoilers I watched Ender’s Game last night, and, with only a vague memory of the novel by Orson Scott Card on which it is based, was newly struck by all the moral questions raised by the story. One or two of them – as with most things these days – seemed to connect with…

  • The Doppelganger

    I want to tell you today about a fear, common, I suspect, to every PhD student at one time or another. It is the worry that somewhere, out there in another university, another country, another continent, there is someone doing the same research as you. Your doppelganger. It may be even worse than this. It…

  • Syncopation

    I’ve been meaning to write this post ever since I went to a seminar on Stein’s idea of ‘syncopation’ in her essay ‘Plays’, and have decided to do it now, even if my memory of what happened is fast fading. Actually, the question of the temporality of response is one that fascinates Stein, so perhaps…

  • Editors and Actors: Malone

    This is the final, brief and incomplete summary of an editor whose works I am studying for the first chapter of my thesis. It’s taken me a long time to get here, Malone’s 1790 edition of The Plays and Poems of William Shakespeare, since setting out from a summary of Rowe‘s attitudes to actors I…

  • Charity and the end of an actress

    Not too long ago, I took my family to the Ashmolean in Oxford, where I stumbled upon this remarkable painting (click to enlarge). Joshua Reynolds painted this image of Elizabeth Linley as Charity as part of a 1777 commission to provide designs for new glass in the chapel of New College, Oxford. This painting, only…

  • The Lion

    One reason why this blog has become a bit less regular of late is that I am supervising this term. That said, supervising students this term is also one reason for me to discover and rediscover a lot of new material for this blog. Hence this post, which is born out of a little seminar…

  • Walking to a chair

    Earlier this week, I was lucky enough to participate in a read-through of the text that the RSC will be using for their production of Arden of Faversham later this year. The play, printed in 1592, tells of the various attempts made by Alice to kill her husband Arden so that she can be with…

  • Carpets

    I have a document on my computer where I jot down ideas for blog posts. In this place, my thoughts about Benedict Cumberbatch, Love, Death, and talking about my research languished until recently. Now, I have just two topics left. One involves carpets, the other is about a Japanese anime film. For all those who…