Writing South Africa Now: Twenty Years On – a colloquium
Back row (from left): Gabriella Craparo, Esthie Hugo, Dominic Davies, David Attwell, Erica Lombard, Janet Remmington, Jennifer Upton, Mandisa Malinga, Michael Springer, Ed Charlton, Michelle Kelly, Graham Riach, Alice Meyer, Ruth Ramsden-Karelse, Rosemary Phizackerley, Ed Grande, Cora Lynch, Christopher Davis, Sanja Nivesjö, Andy Law and Chris Warnes.
Front row: Asha Rogers, Anneke Rautenbach, Gráinne O'Connell, Rebekah Cumpsty, Sarah Pett, Rachel Knighton, Fai Suthipinittharm, Thando Njovane, Imke van Heerden, Robert Kusek and Derek Attridge.
The 20th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy offers timely cause for reflection on the complex changes and continuities concerning South African literature and literary studies. On Saturday, June 7th 2014, postgraduate students and early career researchers from as far afield as Cape Town and Krakow gathered at the University of York for Writing South Africa Now: Twenty Years On, a one-day colloquium on South African literature.
Responding to a Call for Papers which foregrounded the role of literature in the post-apartheid era, upcoming scholars engaged with literary texts by Damon Galgut, Phaswane Mpe, Henrietta Rose-Innes and Antjie Krog, among others. Four panels – “Writing Home”, “Writing ‘Reality’”, “Transnational Writing” and “Staging, Drawing, Laughing” – covered genres ranging from South African poetry and creative non-fiction to stand-up comedy and the graphic novel. A selection of abridged papers has been made available on LitNet and all abstracts are provided in the full conference programme.
The event is the second in a series of annual colloquia initiated by the University of Cambridge, aimed at making new critical voices from within the UK and elsewhere heard.
Erica Lombard (University of Oxford) chaired the first panel of the day, "Writing Home".
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"An Inexplicable Present": Thando Njovane (University of York) on post-apartheid subjectivity in Vladislavi?’s city. Read her paper here.
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“An Endless Drama of Domicile and Challenge”: Graham Riach (University of Cambridge) on Henrietta Rose-Innes and the politics of space.
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“Queer Movements”: Sanja Nivesjö (Stockholm University) on sexual desire, space and home in Damon Galgut’s In a Strange Room and Phaswane Mpe's Welcome to Our Hillbrow.
Read her paper here. |
“The Case of Marikana”: Alice Meyer (University of Cambridge) on poetry and protest in post-apartheid South Africa.
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Jennifer Upton (University of Cambridge) on the idea of the vulnerable body in Antjie Krog’s non-fiction.
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A generous amount of time was allocated to discussion.
Fai Suthipinittharm and three of York’s doctoral researchers from South Africa: Janet Remmington, Thando Njovane and Mandisa Malinga.
Fai Suthipinittharm introduces the final event of the day, encouraging further discussion on the conference theme as a whole.
Fai co-convened the colloquium with Imke van Heerden (photographer). Both are PhD students specialising in South Africa literature at the University of York. |
Michelle Kelly, a lecturer at the University of Oxford, chaired the concluding session, which featured an interview with Derek Attridge and David Attwell from York’s English Department.
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Head of York’s English Department, David Attwell
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Derek Attridge co-edited Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970–1995 (1998), the collection from which the colloquium drew its title.
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Mandisa Malinga with Janet Remmington, David Attwell, Chris Warnes and Michelle Kelly in the background
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Asha Rogers and the chair of Panel 3, Rebekah Cumpsty
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Rachel Knighton and Derek Attridge
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David Attwell in conversation with Chris Warnes and Michelle Kelly. A lecturer in African Literatures and Cultures, Chris Warnes supervised the inaugural colloquium at the University of Cambridge last year.
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Front: Alice Meyer and Thando Njovane
Based in the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge, Writing South Africa Now is a new collective of research students and scholars dedicated to discovering and celebrating the South African literary landscape. They aim to bring together a range of diverse and divergent voices into one online space in which debate and discussion can flourish.
The collective initiated a series of annual colloquia, the first of which was held at the University of Cambridge in July 2013. The second event took place in June 2014 at the University of York. Continuing the ambition to forge new critical directions for the South African literary field, Writing South Africa Now will be held at Cambridge every second year, and on other campuses in the intervening years, strengthening ties between universities in the United Kingdom.
- A selection of abridged papers has been made available on LitNet.
- Previous South African events at the University of York include the UK launch of The Cambridge History of South African Literature and the international conference, Zoë Wicomb and the Translocal.
- Waar staan die Afrikaanse letterkunde 20 jaar ná demokrasie? Volg ons aanlyn kongres, Poolshoogte.