Writing South Africa Now 2014 – Photos from York

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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".
"An Inexplicable Present": Thando Njovane (University of York) on post-apartheid subjectivity in Vladislavi?’s city. Read her paper here.
“An Endless Drama of Domicile and Challenge”: Graham Riach (University of Cambridge) on Henrietta Rose-Innes and the politics of space.
“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.

Panel 1, “Writing Home”: Graham Riach, Sanja Nivesjö, Thando Njovane and Erica Lombard.

“The Case of Marikana”: Alice Meyer (University of Cambridge) on poetry and protest in post-apartheid South Africa.
Jennifer Upton (University of Cambridge) on the idea of the vulnerable body in Antjie Krog’s non-fiction.

“Literary Trials”: Anneke Rautenbach (University of Cape Town) on Janet Malcolm, narrative journalism and the courtroom in South Africa and the USA. Read her paper here.

Panel 2, “Writing ‘Reality’”: Jennifer Upton, Alice Meyer, panel chair Ed Charlton and Anneke Rautenbach.

Other Cultures Goes Global”: Asha Rogers (University of Oxford) gets Panel 3, “Transnational Writing”, under way by explaining her research on readings of Tatamkhulu Afrika’s "Nothing’s Changed" from Devon to Cape Town.

“Provincial, yet Major?” Robert Kusek (Jagiellonian University, Krakow) on Damon Galgut’s Arctic Summer and the transnationalism of biographical fiction.

Panel 4, “Staging, Drawing, Laughing”: Panel chair Sarah Pett and speakers Dominic Davies, Christopher Davis and Esthie Hugo.

“Sinister Surfaces”: Esthie Hugo (University of Cape Town) on contemporary South African horror, on stage and off. Read her paper here.

“Drawing South Africa Now”: Dominic Davies (University of Oxford) on writing urban environments in the graphic novel form. Read his paper here.

“Dey Say Laughter is the Best Medicine, Ja”: Christopher Davis (University of Warwick) on the place of stand-up comedy in South Africa.

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.

Derek Attridge and David Attwell, editors of The Cambridge History of South African Literature (2012)

Head of York’s English Department, David Attwell
Derek Attridge co-edited Writing South Africa: Literature, Apartheid, and Democracy, 1970–1995 (1998), the collection from which the colloquium drew its title.

Michelle Kelly

Jennifer Upton and Erica Lombard (seen left), Graham Riach (centre) and Fai Suthipinittharm (right) at the colloquium dinner in York’s city centre.

Mandisa Malinga with Janet Remmington, David Attwell, Chris Warnes and Michelle Kelly in the background
Asha Rogers and the chair of Panel 3, Rebekah Cumpsty
Rachel Knighton and Derek Attridge
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.

Anneke Rautenbach and Rebecca Duncan

Back: Derek Attridge, Michela Borzaga and Fai Suthipinittharm
Front: Alice Meyer and Thando Njovane

Thanks to the Spanish restaurant El Piano, York’s vegan and organic food haven.

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.

 

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