** Event registration closes at 5pm on the 20th May. A Zoom link and passcode will be sent to registered attendees via Eventbrite email **

aww-struck adj. the state of being overcome, surrounded or inspired by cuteness; to be filled with wonder at cute persons, nonhuman animals or objects (often edible); rendered speechless; unable to resist the impulse to coo or to stroke (sometimes leading to feelings of cute aggression).

Why is Hello Kitty missing a mouth? What makes us turn to videos of cuddly bunnies to ‘wash out our eyes’ after a stressful experience? Why does it sound disparaging to label something ‘cute’ and how might cuteness be reclaimed and reimagined?

Sianne Ngai explains in her landmark work, Our Aesthetic Categories, how a ‘surprisingly wide spectrum of feelings, ranging from tenderness to aggression’ can be provoked by such ‘unthreatening commodities’ as a squishy frog-shaped sponge. While cuteness might be understood as affiliated with pop culture, the emerging field of Cute Studies has challenged the distinction by exploring representations in art and literature. Attentive to its associations with ‘intimate address (lyric)...[and] unusually small, lapidary, object-like texts’, Ngai suggests avant-garde poetry might be theorised as an embodiment of cuteness. Elsewhere, Lori Merish has explored revealing intersections between cuteness, race and class in Toni Morrison’s novel The Bluest Eye. While some scholars have drawn attention to the problems of cuteness, others have outlined opportunities for productively widening our kinship circles to include nonhumans (Kalnay) or employing the concept in analysing pre-industrial-era works (Boyle and Kau).

We warmly invite you to a virtual day seminar which aims to advance and expand this field through creative and critical presentations and discussion. AWW-STRUCK will run alongside an online exhibition of object and visual poems hosted by Poem Atlas, and the launch of a print publication bringing together these exhibits and work shared in the seminar. Please take a look at the seminar programme below and register here on Eventbrite.

For more information and updates follow @cutestudies on Twitter and visit our website: awwstruckseminar.wordpress.com.

We look forward to seeing and hearing from you.

Isabel and Caroline

Friday 21 May. All times are shown in BST.10:00-10:30am -- Welcome and Introduction from Dr Isabel Galleymore and Caroline Harris with opening remarks from Professor Redell Olsen and Dr Megan Cavell

10:30–11.30am -- Panel 1: Kawaii

Dr Joshua Paul Dale (Tokyo Gakugei University)‘The Poetics of Kawaii’; Professor Lesley Millar (University for the Creative Arts) ‘Kawaii: A View’; Vik Shirley (University of Birmingham)‘Kitty Ring: a sequence of poems exploring Japanese cuteness and horror’

11:30-11:45am Break

11:45-12:55pm Panel 2: Human/Nonhuman Kin

Briony Hughes (Royal Holloway, University of London)‘Lopped’; Dr Catherine Lester (University of Birmingham)‘“It’s just a harmless little bunny”: Watership Down and the cultural faces of the rabbit’; Sarah Cave (Royal Holloway, University of London)‘“All her process lost”: the death of Moominmamma and the cuteness of grief’; Maria Darwish (Örebro University)‘Cuteness in ecofascist propaganda’

12:55-13:40pm -- Lunch

13:40-13:50pm -- Film screening

Dr Sharlene Teo (University of Kent)Essential Animal

13:50-15:00pm -- Panel 3: Society and Gender

Dr Jenna Clake (Teeside University)‘I’m in the Museum of Ice Cream: Cuteness and (Dis)Connection'; Tese Uhomoibhi (Royal Holloway, University of London)‘Hush: A Critical Paper on How Cuteness Can be Used to Control and Evoke Fear’; Matt Collyer (Royal Holloway, University of London)‘The Awe/Aww-Struck’; Fiona Glen (Independent scholar and creative practitioner)‘Slimy Sticky Sweet’

15:00-15:35pm Break-out rooms for informal discussion and networking

15:35-15:45pm Launch of the Poem Atlas ‘AWW-STRUCK’ exhibition

15:45-16:00pm Closing words

This event is supported by Royal Holloway’s Humanities and Arts Research Institute and the Animal Studies reading group at the University of Birmingham.