Professor Waddell to Speak on “Orwell’s Bullies” on October 8th

Join us on October 8th for a talk by Professor Nathan Waddell on “Orwell’s Bullies”! This event will take place at 5:00 PM in ZSR Library Room 404, and will be free and open to the public.

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Readers everywhere know George Orwell as a scourge of totalitarianism, a reputation stemming from his most famous books: Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). These texts criticize tyrannical systems from the ground up—from the perspective of the ordinary everyday. Yet Orwell thought about power with his stomach to the ground throughout the 1930s and 1940s: in his social-realist novels and in his various works of reportage and reminiscence. Bullies loom large in these texts: the everyday enemies who make others feel small by trying to make themselves seem big. In this talk, Nathan Waddell will take another look at Orwell’s bullies in order to show how Orwell detected the authoritarian impulse everywhere: in the grand rooms and buildings of power, yes, but also in canteens, corridors, breakfast rooms, and relaxation spots.

Dr. Nathan Waddell is a Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature in the Department of English Literature at the University of Birmingham. He began his career at Birmingham (2008-2012), before working for five years in the School of English at the University of Nottingham. He returned to Birmingham in 2017.

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National Endowment for the Humanities Policy Statement:

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this talk do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.