New Thinking: Light and Darkness

The impact of light bulbs on cities like New York and Paris at the turn of the twentieth century and the way modernist poets like Mina Loy and Lola Ridge depicted this, is at the heart of research being done by Dr Nicoletta Asciuto. For this New Thinking conversation hosted by Dr Sophie Coulombeau, she joins Dr Jaqueline Yallop, whose book Into the Dark looks at living in dark places and at experiences including "sundowning" - experienced by some people diagnosed with dementia, this is a change in behaviour that occurs in the evening, around dusk as darkness grows, causing agitation and anxiety. When Jacqueline Yallop’s father was diagnosed with dementia, he began experiencing exactly that, which prompted Jacqueline’s profound self-reflection on the world’s relationship to the dark.

Dr Jacqueline Yallop is an award-winning author of fiction and creative non-fiction, and her book Into the Dark explores darkness in science, literature, art, philosophy and history. She teaches creative writing at Aberystwyth University. Dr Nicoletta Asciuto is a Senior Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of York. She is currently working on her first monograph, Brilliant Modernism: Cultures of Light and Modernist Poetry, 1909-1930 which discusses the impact of new lighting technologies on the birth of new avant-garde and modernist poetics. Dr Sophie Coulombeau is an author and academic based at the University of York, and was chosen as a 2014 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and AHRC to put research on the radio.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find more on BBC Sounds and in a collection on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme website under the title New Research including conversations about music and disability, language learning, sign language, green thinking and neglected women artists.

Producer in Salford: Lola Grieve