AARE Conference Panel on Remixing Social Theory and Popular Culture

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At the recent Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) Conference in Adelaide (27 Nov-1 Dec 2022), some of the authors who contributed to our edited collection Unlocking Social Theory with Popular Culture : Remixing Theoretical Influencers presented a panel session bringing the chapters into conversation, chaired by the editors Naomi Barnes and Alison Bedford.

I presented from my chapter on 5 Ways Hogwarts Helps Us Understand Foucault’s ‘Docile Bodies’, while other authors highlighted unexpected insights achieved by remixing Marx and Westworld, de Beauvoir and Orange is the New Black, or Pierce and The Third Man; as well as a reflection of the researcher identity formation that took place through the editing of the book.

Chapter published on Glory in Bach’s St John Passion

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On 7 December, a new edited collection was launched by Bishop Alison Taylor, The Enduring Impact of the Gospel of John, edited by Robert Derrenbacker, Dorothy Lee and Muriel Porter, published by Wipf and Stock, including a co-authored chapter with Andreas Loewe on the influence of Johannine concepts of ‘glory’ in Bach’s St John Passion. In both the source and the later work, ‘glory’ is a paradox of ‘high’ and ‘low’–explored through words, concepts and music.

Other chapters include explorations of first-century viticulture, Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Pasifika responses to climate change.

Martin Luther and the Arts published

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My new co-authored academic monograph, Martin Luther and the Arts: Music, Images, and Drama to Promote the Reformation is now published. The result of a decade of collaborative research with Andreas Loewe, the book explores Luther’s use of artistic forms, in popular and elite settings, to persuade, explain and promote his Reformation ideas.

Martin Luther was the architect and engineer of the Protestant Reformation, which transformed Germany five hundred years ago. In Martin Luther and the Arts, Andreas Loewe and Katherine Firth elucidate Luther’s theory and practice, demonstrating the breadth, flexibility and rigour of Luther’s use of the arts to reach audiences and convince them of his Reformation message using a range of strategies, including music, images and drama alongside sermons, polemical tracts, and his new translation of the Bible into German. 

Extensively based on German and English sources, including often neglected aspects of Luther’s own writings, Loewe and Firth offer a valuable survey for theologians, historians, art historians, musicologists and literary studies scholars interested in interdisciplinary comparisons of Luther’s work across the arts.

‘Bright flower breaks from charnel bough’: Commissioning the Arts of Peace for the 1953 Coronation

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This article was originally published as ‘“Bright flower breaks from charnel bough”: The arts of peace and the 1953 Coronation’, in The Finzi Journal (March, 2014), 90-118.

As it is not available online, I am hosting a copy here on my site.

The article will also consider some of the reasons for the works’ subsequent lack of success, including the commissioning purpose, the publication history and the contemporary and later reception. I will argue that the failures and ambivalences are both the result of the artists’ attitude to a prestigious but occasional commission, and the result of the difficult legacies of the Second World War, of austerity Britain and of the first Elizabethan age. In ‘Canzonet’, by the poet Louis MacNeice and composer Alan Rawsthorne, the difficult legacy is turned into an opportunity for a serious and complex negotiation between celebrating the ‘bright flower’ of a young queen born in the spring time, and simultaneously insisting on the dark background, the ‘charnel bough’.

Firth, 2014, p.91
finzi-journal-bright-flower-breaks-coronationDownload

Photo by David Brooke Martin on Unsplash

Paper, ‘Luther as Translator | Translating Luther’ delivered at the Moorhouse Symposium

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The 2022 Moorhouse Symposium brought together international and Melbourne-based to discuss the impacts of the 500 years of Martin Luther’s September Testament, 1522 on 13 August, 2022.

I presented material based on research I completed towards a 2018 article (Andreas Loewe and Katherine Firth. “Martin Luther’s” Mighty Fortress”.” Lutheran Quarterly 32, no. 2 (2018): 125-145. https://doi.org/10.1353/lut.2018.0029), with some new material. This article became a chapter in our forthcoming book Martin Luther and the Arts, due out in December 2022 from Brill of Leiden.

The entire symposium was recorded. You can watch the whole afternoon, or skip to 1hr35 for my talk. Immediately after my presentation, Andreas Loewe presents from another article that also became a chapter in our Luther book.

My paper starts at 1hr35mins in.

New Canticles ‘after Dietrich Bonhoeffer’ performed

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Words written drawing from, and inspired by, my new translations of some of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s letters and poems from prison, in the shape of the traditional evensong canticles, the Magnificat and the Nuns Dimittis, were set to music by regular collaborator Michael Leighton Jones, and performed by the Trinity College Chapel Choir, directed by Christopher Watson.

The work was initially produced in time for the 75th anniversary of Bonhoeffer’s death, in the last weeks of the Second World War. However, 2020 had other plans. It was exciting to hear the work performed in the presence of the composer and librettist on 7 August 2022.

The service was recorded, and you can watch the event below (or skip to the 20 minute mark for the first canticle, a reading and then the second canticle).

The music starts at about the 20 minute mark.

New anthem for 150th anniversary of Trinity College Melbourne performed

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I was in close-contact isolation, so joined the event via the livestream. Our new ‘Covid normal’ continues to be a strange time!

A new commission for the 150th anniversary of Trinity College, the oldest residential college in Australia, and where I have been tutor, Head of Academic Programs, SCR President, Council member, honorary Faculty and continue to be on the Academic Committee of the Theological School.

The words for the new anthem ‘O lux beata Trinitas’ weave together a Latin hymn by St Ambrose with newly written poetry by me, set to music by Michael Leighton Jones (former Director of Music and frequent collaborator). Performed by the Choir of Trinity College and conducted by Christopher Watson.

The work starts about 30-ish minutes into the video.

Download the service booklet for the full anthem textDownload

An honour to be involved, and thankful for modern technology!

Thinking about quitting your PhD? published in Times Higher Education

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Somewhere between 25–50% of candidates don’t complete their PhD. Sometimes not completing a PhD is the rational choice, and having open conversations around it helps stop people feeling isolated and uncertain, I argued in a recent article for the THE.

Supervisors, candidates and universities need to be more open to having conversations about quitting. Why do candidates choose to quit, how many people do so and what happens to them afterwards? It’s almost impossible to get detailed, accurate data about completion rates. People who quit leave the university and, therefore, we often don’t see what they do next. If we don’t talk openly about stopping, people who are considering it feel isolated and uncertain. But it isn’t rare, and supervisors are in a privileged position to recognise the signs early – and then, as appropriate, support their candidates as they successfully navigate away from the PhD.    

Read more at: Thinking about quitting your PhD? Maybe that’s the right decision

New hymn to commemorate the 175th anniversaries of the Anglican and Catholic Archdioceses of Melbourne

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On 6 March, the choir and congregation of St Paul’s Cathedral Melbourne premiered a new joint commission to commemorate the founding of both the Anglican and Catholic archdioceses of Melbourne. ‘Come Down to Earth’ is a six verse hymn, suitable for congregational use, with music by noted composer Christopher Wilcox SJ and words by Katherine Firth.

(L-R) Christopher Wilcocks SJ (composer), Dr Katherine Firth (lyricist),
The Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe (Dean of Melbourne), Mr Philip Nicholls (Director of Music)