2017 Conference CFP
Posted on July 31, 2016 by transcul in Events, Forthcoming Conferences, News
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Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research and UWC CREATES, University of the Western Cape, in collaboration with Lancaster University, UK.
At the University of the Western Cape, 27-29 March 2017.
Keynote speaker: Professor Antjie Krog, University of the Western Cape.
Call for Papers
This will be the second Writing for Liberty conference. Its aim will be to build upon and extend the dynamic debates and discussions begun during the first WFL Conference, hosted by Lancaster’s Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research in 2015. Once again it will seek to promote debate around fundamental issues of human liberty through the agency of creative and critical writings. We are now requesting academic papers and new creative writings for reading and performance. The Writing for Liberty Conference 2 will be a three-day conference that will focus on the relationship between forms of creative writing and questions of personal, artistic, social, and political liberty. Contributions may refer to any period in history and to any social, political or cultural context, though our main emphasis will be on contemporary writing practice and critical/theoretical response.
Topics for proposals may include, but are not limited to:
- Writing and questions of textual authority
- Writing and political authority
- Writing and artistic/personal/political freedom
- Writing as resistance
- Writing as liberation
- Writing and censorship
- Writing and the nation state
- Writing between and beyond national contexts
The Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research
The central brief of the Centre for Multilingualism and Diversities Research (CMDR) at the University of the Western Cape, is to embark on a project of intellectual re-orientation, namely a significant rethinking of multilingualism and the development of a new discourse with which to approach interdisciplinary work in the humanities and the education sciences. The brief involves interrogating contemporary and historical African intellectual heritage through a critical review of the role of language and multilingualism in the colonial archive, and in the light of critical framings of multilingualism and diversity.
The Centre seeks to provide an intellectual space to further a critical rethinking of what kinds of questions we should be asking of language, literary and cultural study, strengthening existing interdisciplinary projects or leading to new ones, and enabling challenging questions to be asked of the disciplines themselves in the reconstitution of post-apartheid humanities.
UWC CREATES
UWC Creates is a unique multilingual creative writing initiative located in the CMDR that was begun at the University of the Western Cape in 2009. It was the first creative writing programme in Southern African to work multilingually (isiXhosa, English and Afrikaans) and to offers student writers and their lecturers the rare opportunity to write and dialogue across languages and literary traditions. Why all this emphasis on diversity and hybridity? We at UWC CREATES believe very strongly that being a South African writer involves engaging with our society’s cultural complexities. And South Africa is a many-tongued nation. We possess eleven official languages and embody an interconnecting matrix of different races, cultures, religions and histories. Understanding ourselves and others, means negotiating the many competing, conflicting or harmonising voices which make up this place we call home. At UWC CREATES we encourage our writing students to engage with this complexity, to build bridges of creative and social empathy, and ultimately to draw upon this greater understanding for their work. Since its inception hundreds of aspiring student writers and outreach mentees have benefited from the programme and its approach, with many going on to be published and garner critical acclaim.
Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research, Lancaster, UK
The Centre for Transcultural Writing and Research (CTWR) links writers, academics and Lancaster University’s postgraduate student community to extensive research activity in creative writing and its impact on society. Our aim is to create a transnational and interdisciplinary environment. We are committed to promoting creative writing across cultures and to studying the work of writers from a wide range of social and cultural contexts. The Centre encompasses research-as-practice, action-research projects, study of historical and contemporary creative practice, the innovative application of information technology through e-science and the interrelationship between writing and social change. We promote critical, pedagogical and theoretical accounts of praxis with special emphasis on cultural exchange between practitioners and with social and political institutions.
Proposals
Proposals should include a 200 word abstract (for academic papers) or summary (for creative contributions) and a 100 word bio of the contributors. Panel proposals should include the panel title, abstracts or summaries and bios for all presenters. Presenters will be invited to speak for 20 minutes. Please mark your email clearly as WRITING FOR LIBERTY 2 PROPOSAL.
Email your proposal to Avril Grovers at agrovers@uwc.ac.za by Friday 11 November 2016.
