MEMOS: New Encounters Conference - Day 1

MEMOS: New Encounters Conference - Day 1

Thursday, 11 December 2025

Location: Tafel Venue, The Homecoming Centre, District Six, Cape Town and Online, via Zoom

Description: Sign-Up for Day 1 of the Medieval and Early Modern Orients: New Encounters Conference, which is co-hosted by the research collective Medieval and Early Modern Orients (MEMOs), the UCT Department of English Literary Studies, Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa, as well as The Tsikinya-Chaka Centre (University of Witwatersrand).

For more information on the conference, visit the conference site here.

This event is FREE for all students, researchers, and educators, based at South African universities, colleges, schools, and other secondary and tertiary institutions.

For catering puproses, please register in-person attendance by 7 December 2025.

Day 1 Draft Programme:

7:00 - 8.45am

Conference Registration and Refreshments

8:45 - 9:00am

Welcome

9:00 - 10:00am

Keynote Address

Prof Su Fang Ng (Virginia Tech), 'Entertaining Asia in Midsummer Night's Dream'

10:00 - 11:15am

Panel 1 - Race, Religion, and Material Culture in Premodern English Literature

Dr Nour El Gazzaz (American University Dubai), 'The Objects of Marlowe's Orientalised Women'

Dr Arul Kumaran (St Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan), 'Othello and the Anxiety of the Moor: An Orientalist Reading of Shakespeare and Cinthio'

Nicolas McKelvie (New York University), 'The Text of Islamic Textiles in Medieval England: Using Material Culture to Define the Other in The King of Tars'

11:30am - 12:45pm

Panel 2 - Colonial Logics in Premodern English Literature and its Afterlives

Dr Eduardo Ramos (Arizona State University), 'Richard I’s territorial ambition in Robert Mannyng of Brune’s Chronicle'

Dr Nora Galland (University of Bretagne Occidentale), 'Specters of Race, Coloniality, and Resistance in Enter Ghost and Hamlet'

Amelia Ali (Emory University), '"Blue Veins”: Orientalism, Blackness, & the Geography of Shakespeare's Imperial Lovers'

12.45 - 1.30pm

Lunch

1:30 - 2:45pm

Panel 3 - Dramatising Islam: Perspectives on Race, Gender, and Nation

Dr Zainab Cheema (Florida Gulf Coast University), 'Englishing the Reconquista: Translating Iberian Islam in John Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada'

Dr Iman Sheeha (Brunel University London), 'Shrewish Women and Emasculated Men: Percy’s Mahomet and his Heaven and Early Modern Mythologies of Islam'

Soumaya Boughanmi (University of Tunis), 'Whiteness and Conversion in Philip Massinger's The Renegado'

3:00pm - 4.15pm

Panel 4 - Environmental Encounters: Creating and Disrupting Difference

Dr Wendy Lennon (ShakeRacePedagogy), 'Eco-ShakeRacePedgagoy: Invasive Species'

Alya Hussain (Independent), Ecophobia, Environmental Toxicity, and the Migrant ‘Other’ in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Tempest

Dr Frances Ringwood (University of Zululand), Visions of healing: tracing the influence of hallucinogenic substances from the Near-and Middle-East on Medieval dream narratives

4:30 - 5.45pm

Panel 5 - Oceanic Worlds: Political, Religious, and Economic Currents

Imthinan M (Independent Researcher) and Lija Mary Kambakkaran Joseph (University of Leiden), 'Crossroads of Conflict: Islam, Trade, and Resistance in 16th-Century Calicut'

Prof Salim Ayduz (Sophia Academy), 'The Ottoman State’s Struggle with Europeans in the Indian Ocean in the Sixteenth Century'

Dr Emily Soon (Singapore Management University), 'Trading Faith: Re-shaping Malukan religion in John Fletcher’s The Island Princess (ca. 1621)'

6:00 - 7:00pm

Plenary: Poetry Reading with Dr Gabeba Baderoon