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| 15.12.2016 |
| Time: | 2-3 March 2017 |
| Place: | University of Liège, Belgium |
| Theme: | Illuminating Lives. The Biographical Impulse in Postcolonial Literatures |
CEREP (Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherche en Etudes Postcoloniales – Centre for Teaching and Research in Postcolonial Studies) is organizing a symposium in Liège, Belgium in March 2017.
The theme of the symposium is "Illuminating Lives. The Biographical Impullse in Postcolonial Literatures".
On the symposium website, it reads among other things:
Biographical fiction – which can broadly be defined as creative writing based on the life of a real person, whether famous or not – has become an increasingly prominent genre in recent decades. The field of postcolonial literatures has been no exception to this trend, as evidenced by the publication in the last few years of numerous biographical novels, short stories, poems and plays. Among the many examples of works centring on historical figures and other individuals who have actually lived (featured under real or borrowed names) are Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), J.M. Coetzee's The Master of Petersburg (1994), Jackie Kay's Trumpet (1998), Caryl Phillips's Dancing in the Dark (2005), Foreigners (2007), and The Lost Child (2015), Vikram Seth's Two Lives (2005), and Derek Walcott's Tiepolo’s Hound (2000) and O Starry Starry Night (2013).
If (auto)biography has already been the subject of extensive criticism, the scholarly focus on the specific generic features of biographical fiction, poetry and drama appears to be a more recent phenomenon. This is especially true in the postcolonial field, where creative writers’ engagement with the biographical genre has often been subordinated to other critical concerns, even in analyses of works such as those mentioned above. As a result, many questions about the nature and scope of biographical creative writing by postcolonial authors still need to be addressed.
Keynote speakers are: Caryl Phillips, Chika Unigwe and Michael Lackey.
For more information, please visit the conference website.
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