Schedule
The provisional schedule for the SOAS CCLPS Postgraduate Conference is included below. Please note that the schedule is subject to change. A PDF version of the schedule is available here.
The provisional schedule for the SOAS CCLPS Postgraduate Conference is included below. Please note that the conference schedule is subject to change. A PDF version of the schedule is available here.
Day 1 – Monday 18 June 2018
Room B102, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London
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9:30am-9:45am
Registration, tea and coffee
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9:45am-10:00am
Welcome remarks
Professor Francesca Orsini (SOAS), chair of CCLPS
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10:00am-11:30am
Keynote address – Dr Carolyn Pedwell (University of Kent)
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Chair – Annie Webster (SOAS)
Title – Decolonising Empathy: Thinking Affect Transnationally
Dr Carolyn Pedwell is Associate Professor in Cultural Studies at the University of Kent. She is the author of two research monographs: Affective Relations: The Transnational Politics of Empathy (Palgrave: 2014) and Feminism, Culture and Embodied Practice: The Rhetorics of Comparison (Routledge: 2010). Her third monograph, Transforming Habit: Revolution, Routine and Social Change, is under contract with McGill-Queens University Press.
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11:30am-11:45am – Break
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11:45am-1:15pm
Panel 1 – Trading Stories
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Chair – Dr Sara Marzagora (SOAS)
Lida Amiri (University of Liverpool) – Stripping the reader of his/her prejudice: How to empathise with the anonymous fundamentalist in Atiq Rahimi’s Syngué Sabour. Pierre de patience
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Christie Cheng (SOAS, University of London) – Empathetic morality for Singapore's working class in Jack Neo's Money No Enough
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Walaa Said (University of Marburg) – Negotiating Empathy in Dystopian Worlds: JM Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarian (1980) and Ahmad Khaled Towfeek’s Utopia (2008)
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1:15pm-2:00pm – Lunch
A sandwich buffet will be provided for conference participants; tea and coffee
2:00pm-3:30pm
Panel 2 – (Re)Cognising Empathy
Chair – James Rakoczi (King’s College London)
Xi Liu (University of Sheffield) – Schizoanalysis: Charting Empathy in Filmic Affects
Mary Goody (Goldsmiths, University of London) – Lending one’s body to the other? Figurative sculpture, mirror-touch synaesthesia and physical empathy
Alexander Aston (University of Oxford) – Where the Rising Ape Meets the Falling Angel: An Archaeology of Empathy
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3:30pm-4:00pm – Break
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4:00pm-5:30pm
Panel 3 – Beyond the Human
Chair – TBC
Cathryn Ladd (University of Sheffield): Sensing the Feminist Empathetic Researcher
Aya ElBably (British University in Egypt): An Ecocritical Reading of Nature’s Empathetic Representation in Popular Culture
Hira Nabi (independent filmmaker): All That Perishes on the Edge of Land
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5:30pm-7:00pm – Conference reception
Day 2 – Tuesday 19 June 2018
Room B102, Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London
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9:30am-10:00am
Registration, tea and coffee
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10:00am-11:30am
Keynote panel – Empathy in Practice
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Chair – Jack Clift (SOAS)
The keynote panel brings together representatives from the worlds of activism and the arts to discuss the practical uses – and limitations – of empathy in their work. Speakers will include:
Patrick Page – Public Law Caseworker, Duncan Lewis Solicitors
Juliet Mabey – Founder, Oneworld Publications
David Francis – PhD candidate, University College London & British Museum
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11:30am-11:45am – Break
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11:45am-1:15pm
Panel 4 – Curating Empathy
Chair – Fuchsia Hart (University of Oxford, Victoria & Albert Museum)
Katherine Quinn (University of Warwick) – The body in the library: capturing ordinary empathy through doodling library space
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Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay (Edinburgh College of Art) – The museum audioguide as a tool for empathies and opacities
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Rakesh Sengupta (SOAS, University of London) – The Death of the Author in Pyaasa
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1:15pm-2:00pm – Lunch
A sandwich buffet will be provided for conference participants; tea and coffee
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2:00pm-3:45pm
Panel 5 – Memory, Mourning and Materiality
Chair – Hana Sandhu (SOAS)
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Tristam Vivian Adams (Goldsmiths, University of London) – Selfish Altruism: Exploring the Moral Status of Empathic Reaction
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Allison Needels (SOAS, University of London) – Expressions of Postmemory in Contemporary Korean Literature
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Aman Gupta (University of Oxford) – The Commemoration of Slavery: Dominant and Counter-Narratives in Bristol
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Pau Cata (University of Edinburgh) – BQT_Beyond Qafila Thania: On empathy, embodiment and curatorial phenomenology
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3:45pm-4:00pm – Break
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4:00pm-5:00pm – Plenary
Chairs – Annie Webster (SOAS) & Jack Clift (SOAS)
In the plenary panel, we will explore how empathy manifests itself in cultural institutions, and debate the uses and limits of empathy in attempts at liberation and decolonisation in universities such as SOAS. Discussants will include:
Halimo Hussain – SOAS Student Union, Co-President for Equality and Liberation
Frances Grahl – SOAS, University of London; co-organiser, Decolonising the Cultural Institution? A Critical Intervention into Discourses of Decolonisation in the Cultural Sphere, CCLPS Postgraduate Conference 2017
Other discussants TBA
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