English Department

Conference Convenor: Dr Jeanne Ellis, Honours Coordinator jellis@sun.ac.za

Conference Committee 2024: Elle Fieggen (Hons), Lameez Hendricks (Hons), Lobke Minter (PhD), Annie Scholes (Hons), Julia Snyckers (MA), Danie Stander (Postdoc), Josephine Troost (MA), Linda van der Walt (Hons)

postgradconference2024@gmail.com

DAY 1 THURSDAY 3 OCTOBER

09:00-09:10	Arrival and Registration	Conference Committee
09:10-09:20	Welcome	Dr Dawid de Villiers
09:20-o9:30	Conference Housekeeping	Conference Committee

SESSION 1	CHAIR: Julia Snyckers
09:30 (20 min)	Siwongiwe Makupula (PhD) Struggle Credentials and Aspirational Figurations in Zuma’s Musical Presences
09:55 (15 min)	Linda van der Walt (Hons) Unconventional Crime Fiction: Analysing the More-Than-Human in Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City
10:15 (20 min)	Andile Cele (MA) African Spirituality and Healing in Mohale Mashigo’s The Yearning
10:40 (15 min)	Zikisani Mgijima (Hons) Literature as a Mirror of Reality: The Marginalization of Women in Literature as a Reflection of the Evolution of Gender Oppression
11:00-11:10	SESSION 1 PLENARY FOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION TEA BREAK 11:10-11:30
SESSION 2	CHAIR: Elle Fieggen
11:30 (20 min)	Lobke Minter (PhD) Thinking with Scars: Moving Beyond Trauma
11:55 (15 min)	Erica Beesley (Hons) The Solitude of Immortality: An Investigation of Loneliness in Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire
12:15 (15 min)	Pascalé Potgieter (Hons) Nightbitch, the Trans/Performative Power of (Maternal) Rage and Pleasure
12:35-12:45	SESSION 2 PLENARY FOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION

LUNCH BREAK 13:00-13:45

SESSION 3	CHAIR: Linda van der Walt
14:00 (20min)	Lara Alhadeff (PhD) Cueing Assimilation: Chronic Illness and the Need to Conform in Women’s Unconventional Narratives
14:25 (15min)	Annie Scholes (Hons) Whodunit: How Dissociative Identity Disorder is Portrayed in Gregory Hoblit’s Primal Fear and Akiva Goldsman’s The Crowded Room
14:45 (15min)	Hana Gammon (Hons) Boxed In: An Examination of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” Through a Lens of Otherness
15:05-15:15	SESSION 3 PLENARY FOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION TEA BREAK 15:15-15:35
SESSION 4	CHAIR: Annie Scholes
15:35 (20min)	Izelle Viljoen (MA) Survival of the Family: Analysing the Oikos in Bong Joon Ho’s The Host (2006), Snowpiercer (2013), and Parasite (2019)
16:00 (15min)	Elle Fieggen (Hons) “The Fallen Leaves Tell a Story”: An Ecocritical Perspective on the Catastrophic Narratives and Virtual Environments of the Video Game Elden Ring
16:20 (15min)	Kayla Marnitz (Hons) An Ecology of Intimacies: Thinking Interspecies Relationships Through Water
16:40-16:50	SESSION 4 PLENARY FOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION

DAY 2 FRIDAY 4 OCTOBER

SESSION 1	CHAIR: Danie Stander
09:00 (20min)	Bramwel Odari Lusala (PhD) Gendered Diasporic Mobility in Neema Shah’s Kololo Hill
09:25 (15min)	Michael Pieterse (Hons) An Alienation of One’s Humanity, Ladies and Gentlemen: An Exploration into Life Writing Emerging From 19^th and 20^th Century Atrocities
09:45 (15min)	Lameez Hendricks (Hons) “Its Suffering Was the Sole Property of Those Who Had Experienced It”: Victims and Victimhood in Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995
10:05-10:15	SESSION 1 PLENARY FOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION TEA BREAK 10:15-10:35
SESSION 2	CHAIR: Josephine Troost
10:40 (20min)	Stephanie Kambourakis (PhD) Canines, Courtship, and the Nineteenth-Century Novel
11:05 (15min)	Lané De Lange (Hons) Civility, Relationships and Social Conduct in Jane Austen’s Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice, and Sense and Sensibility
11:25-11:35	SESSION 2 PLENARY FOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION

SESSION 3	CHAIR: Lameez Hendricks
11:35 (20min)	Julia Snyckers (MA) “Into This Dim, Silent, Shadowy Room”: Salvaging the Voice of Ida Bauer in Sheila Kohler’s Dreaming for Freud (2014)
12:00 (15min)	Sumari Harmse (Hons) Neo-Victorian Biofiction and the Author Mother: Examining the State of the Children in A. S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book
12:20 (20min)	Josephine Troost (MA) Charles Dickens as an Abusive and Controlling Husband in Gaynor Arnold’s Girl in a Blue Dress (2008)
12:45-12:55	SESSION 3 PLENARY FOR FOLLOW-UP QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION
12:55-13:05	CONFERENCE CLOSING PLENARY Conference Convenor Dr Jeanne Ellis

On 15^th May, multi-award award winning South African author, Damon Galgut visited the English Department to speak to undergraduate students, enrolled for a course on Galgut’s works, about his writing career. He was invited by course convenor, Ass. Prof Tilla Slabbert. The lively, though-provoking conversation was spearheaded by director, dramatist, and designer Marthinus Basson, a friend of Galgut for more than 40 years. For a generous two hours, Galgut talked and responded to questions about the genesis, inspiration, conceptualization, processes and challenges of his writing journey; a career which resulted in several nominations and awards, e.g.: The Good Doctor (2003), shortlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize for Fiction and winner of the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region, Best Book); In A Strange Room, shortlisted (2010), and Arctic Summer longlisted (2014) for the Booker Prize; and The Promise, winner of the Booker Prize for 2021. Postgraduate students and staff also attended, and the audience conceded, it was a truly inspiring, provocative literary event.