Dr Clair Schwarz

Qualifications:

PhD

Position:

Associate Director

Department:

College of Arts, Technology and EnvironmentFaculty of Arts, Creative Industries, and Education (ACE)School of Arts

Telephone:

+441173281766

Email:

Clair2.Schwarz@uwe.ac.uk

About me

Clair is the Associate Director for English Language and Linguistics, Film Studies, and History in the School of Arts.

Clair is a member of the Visual and Material Practices Research Group (VAMP); Humanities Research Group (HRG); and Screen Research Group.

Her research interests broadly involve feminist inquiry into the human experience, whether through relationships to land and/or the sensory, especially touch as a phenomenological experience and as represented, most especially in visual art and film.

Current research projects include:

Eyedrops: A Monoculogue published in the Special Issue of The Journal of Writing in Creative Practice Dec 2022. The film can be viewed here: Eyedrops

The Pastoral Turn. Utilising a discursive, interdisciplinary theoretical framework, the research explores the combinations of humour and challenges to wellness formed through the ludic sensibilities of recent British comedy, asking questions of the extent to which the educative imperatives within the diegesis of the storyline emphasise the pastoral and whether this can be considered a 'pastoral turn'. The Pastoral Turn

Wrens of the Curragh. This extensive research concerns the community of women and children living on The Curragh of County Kildare in 19th Century Ireland. This research as practice work seeks to bridge the gap between academic study and creative work.

Fledglings Exhibition

Fledglings is a small collection of formative work/maquettes belonging to a larger undertaking: The Wrens Project, an umbrella of activities centred around the ‘Wrens’ - a community of women and children living in 19th century Ireland, on the grounds of the Curragh military camp.  Existing as a community for some 40 years in a supportive, non-hierarchical, all female group, where possessions, living spaces, work, and childcare was shared – the generations of marginalised people moving in and out of the space they occupied as social outcasts, speaks of now, as much as then. Fledglings is responsive work which describes, re-presents, and ‘archives’ the stories and lives of the Wrens with a strategic methodology of deliberate romanticisation. Academic work rightly resists making their story a romantic one, yet the generosity of the community which welcomed and supported those who had been spurned by those without, invites a celebration of the spirit of those within. Fledglings knowingly attempts this through a combination of the humble and the luxurious, using aesthetics from folk art and religious iconography. Inspiration from contemporaneous accounts are combined with folklore to uncouple the stories of the Wrens from that of fallen women, reframing the narrative to describe instead those who rose up in sisterhood and mutuality.

Publications

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