Professor Jeanette Winterson will hold her first lecture as Visiting Professor of Creative Media on 'The Word-Zoo: Language in the time of Tabloids, TikTok, Conspiracy Cults, Brexit, and AI. Evolution? Conservation? Extinction?'
‘When I use a word’, Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’ The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’ ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all’
Jeanette Winterson CBE is a British writer. Her first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published in 1985, when she was 24. She later scripted it into a BBC Bafta winning drama. Twenty-seven years she returned to that material in her 2011 memoir Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? She has written more than 20 books of fiction and non-fiction, including a collaboration with the sculptor Antony Gormley: LAND. Her latest book is a collection of essays on AI: 12 Bytes at AI – How we got here and where we might go next. Her work is published in 27 countries.
The Visiting Professorship of Creative Media was established in 1996, as part of a generous benefaction from Rupert Murdoch. It is an annual appointment and the Professor will give a series of lectures during the academic year.
Admission is free. No booking required; seats will be allocated on a first come, first served basis.
Image credit: University of Salford Press Office, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons