bbin宝盈集团

Thursday 10th April
Professor Arthur Mukenge
‘Pays Sans Chapeau by Dany Laferrière, an Autobiography, Autofiction or a Memory?’

Abstract
This presentation will explore the complexities of identity and narrative in Dany Laferrière's “Pays Sans Chapeau”. By analysing its themes, I will investigate whether the work aligns more closely with Autobiography, Autofiction or the Realm of Memory. Examining Laferrière's narrative style and the interplay of personal experience, I will seek to uncover how these categories inform and enrich reader’s understanding of his personal journey. Ultimately, the presentation aims to enhance appreciation of Laferrière’s significant contributions to contemporary literature. 

Thursday 31 st July
Dr Obert Bernard Mlambo
‘Classics, Speed, Distance and Time: Towards a Physical Concept of History’

Abstract
In this paper, I explore the medium in which the Classical and the contemporary can interact. It is a medium of action that is structured by interterrestrial space and discourse. A medium where a battle, for example, or an act of violence can take place in a discursive context, the medium in which action and teleaction, the surface of the earth and the reportage of such through the archive of history, are inextricably related to one another. This discursive context allows contemporary beings to experience past action at a distance of space and time. We need to grasp, as Paul Virilio says, the ‘place of the no-place’. It is precisely this medium that allows for ancient Roman veterans’ actions to be experienced as contemporary with military veterans of a society 12 000 km away and more than 2000 years apart, as I will show in this paper. I draw on Jacques Derrida’s theory of the archive, and Virilio’s theory of speed (dromology), which is by no means reducible to physical motion or literal acceleration. It's a theory of presence without movement, of action at a distance, and of the transformation of perception and politics under the conditions of real-time connectivity. And in this sense, it opens a crucial space for thinking about how the Classical past is made present in postcolonial African contexts — not through physical travel or temporal proximity, but through technologies of citation, reception, and cultural transmission.

Thursday 14th August
Dr Natasha Engelbrecht
'Situating affect and assessment at the center of self-regulated (language) learning practices'

Abstract:
Drawing on findings from a study on a German foreign language (GFL) curriculum at a South African university, this paper examines the role of the affective domain in student approaches to learning. A lack of self-regulation constitutes a significant barrier to learning in the first-year German Studies course under investigation and students view assessment as a stimulus for learning. Most of the students’ (non-)self-regulatory learning practices stem from their emotional responses (anxiety, boredom, enjoyment) and performance approaches to tasks and feedback. Problems with independent and sustained learning efforts among South African students in general are well-cited in higher education literature and are often ascribed to students’ unpreparedness to meet the demands of university-level teaching and learning. For this reason, academic and disciplinary literacy interventions are widely implemented at institutions of higher learning. Employing German foreign language learning as an example, this paper argues that students’ ability to manage their emotional experience toward their studies form a central part of their academic and disciplinary literacy and should thus be integrated in literacy interventions. While an increased meta-affective and behavioural awareness might encourage students to be less deterred by uncomfortable emotions linked to their learning practices, the importance that students attach to summative assessment cannot be ignored. If students are motivated by marks, assessment practices should be structured to incentivise various areas of self-regulation.

Thursday 28th August
Dr Claire Cordell
'(Re)making the Virgin Mary in Marie Ndiaye's Rosie Carpe'

Abstract:
The Blessed Virgin Mary is a somewhat contradictory figure who is synonymous with purity, perfection, eternal youth, but also motherhood. She is an icon of global culture whose iconography is instantly recognisable, whether it be as the Mother of God, the grieving mother of the crucified Jesus or as the Queen of Heaven, and she is revered all over the world.  In this paper I will be looking at the history of the myth of the Virgin Mary and then comparing it to the way in which it is interpreted by the eponymous protagonist, Rosie, in Marie Ndiaye’s novel Rosie Carpe.  Firstly, I will consider the effect created by the projection of this myth of perfection on a less than perfect heroine, and then I will focus on the ways in which the myth of the Blessed Virgin Mary is remade, recontextualized and perhaps even revitalized by Ndiaye’s appropriation of it.