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Mystères de l'Unil 2024 - Workshop on Ecopoetics

In May 2024, the English section proposed a highly successful workshop on ecopoetics during the Mystères de l’UNIL. Children from 4 to 16 learned about how poetry can give a voice to the earth and to make us feel more connected to the natural world that we are inherently a part of. Children read and analyzed a short poem and made a bracelet with colors representing the 4 elements (earth, water, air and fire) and a color for themselves, signifying their belonging and interconnectedness with the natural world. Over 450 children came to our workshop over the course of 4 days. A huge thanks to the team of MA and BA students who helped create and animate the workshop: Hélène Martin, William Flores, Donjeta Sokoli, Millie Andrews and Antonella Cimone. Organisers: Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet, Maxime Pellaton and Corey Heimlich.

UNIL-Lancaster collaboration 2024: a Student’s Account

The Lancaster Tales

The ‘Space and Environment in Late Medieval English Literature’ block-course, given in collaboration with colleagues and students from the University of Lancaster, is probably one of the more unique and interesting things to come across during one’s studies in the English department. Whereas most classes are presented as a purely intellectual matter, this course allows us the unusual luxury of thinking about textual material and their context in a decidedly physical and sensory way. First of all this experience is a journey: a sort of pseudo-pilgrimage to places connected in some way to literary history, and a literal journey outside of the usual confines of the university. This comes with the advantage of creating a sense of group and unity within the participants facing new, stimulating and unusual environments. Because of the material realities of spending most waking hours of the day with a relatively closed group of people, cooking, eating and sleeping with them, the usual classroom dynamics and their social constraints give way to a more free flowing space where ideas are shared in a convivial and fun atmosphere. The space created by the journey of ‘Space and Environment in Late Medieval English Literature’ is one that combines the aesthetics of Socratic teaching with the fun and creativity of a literary Salon. Each person coming from relatively different approaches and bringing different kinds of knowledge, and being able to share and comment on each other’s positions (without the inevitable inhibitions and heavy silence that seem to fall over a class when they are asked to share their thoughts freely) is one of the great strengths of this particular setup. To comment on the places we went is strangely different to do, because so much of the knowledge that derived from those experiences is not easily translatable into concrete facts. It is difficult to explain the smell of a church, or the way touching an ancient wall feels, or what one learns from looking out onto the sea, or whether a place gives your spine a warm tingle or a cold chill, but it is also strangely obvious, after having done these things, that they are terribly important and useful tools to approach literature with. This illuminates perhaps the greatest discomfort that this experience points towards: there is a great taboo, in the world of academia and higher education, about allowing oneself to look at a work of art through any other lens then reason. However, the exercises of reading and writing are almost always also necessarily physical, emotional, and sometimes spiritual moments. Thus, we find ourselves trapped, attempting to understand and analyse stories that we refuse to allow ourselves to experience fully, and that is why a journey such as the one we have undertaken can be so valuable. By being honest about the irrational, sensory, and deeply human nature of texts, we can now look at them from a renewed and enriched perspective.

                                                                                   Kyra Gedall