MEMOS: New Encounters Conference - Day 2

MEMOS: New Encounters Conference - Day 2

Friday, 12 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 2 Programme:

8:30 - 9:00am

Tea and Coffee

9:00 - 10:15am

Panel 6 - Cross-cultural Inheritance: Arabic Texts and Objects in Europe

Dr Rhema Hokama (University of Washington), 'Protestantism in the Global Renaissance: How a late medieval Arabic tale came to colonial America and the Dutch Republic'

Prof Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas (University of Caen Normandie), 'Translations and adaptations in Europe of the Maxims and Wise Sayings of the Egyptian Mubaššir ibn Fatik'

Dr Shazia Jagot (University of York), 'Astrolabe as archive and an archive of astrolabes: Chaucer’s astrolabe and its Islamic affordances'

10:30 - 11:45am

Panel 7 - Patterns in Performance: The Ottomans on Stage

Dr Munire Zeyneb Maksudoglu (University of Sussex), 'Safe-conduct letters as the emblem of global order and sovereignty'

Dr. Murat Öğütcü (Adıyaman University), 'Shakespeare’s Contemporaries in Ottoman Türkiye'

Dr Philip Goldfarb Styrt (Ambrose University), 'The Ottomans as a Normal Empire in Christopher Marlowe'

12:00- 1:pm

Panel 8 - Epistemic Encounters: European Pasts, Islamic Methodologies

Riley Jones (Independent, Archaeologist) Money and Mundanity: Intersections of Islamic Perspectives and Archaeology on Non-metallic Money

Safaa Falah Hasan Alsaragna (Istanbul Gelisim University, Karabuk University), Ibn Khaldun's Asabiyya and Cyclical History in the Rise and Fall of Powers: The Case in Shakespeare's Macbeth

1:00 - 1:45pm

Lunch

1:45 - 3:00pm

Panel 9 - Turkish Islam in Print: Travel, Form, and Faith

Dr Thomas Matthew Vozar (University of Florida), 'Isaac Barrow on the Turkish Religion: A Latin Poem about Islam from Ottoman Istanbul'

Dr Ataberk Cetinkaya (Middle East Technical University), 'The Rhetorical Framing of Islam in George Sandys’ A Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610'

Dr Gökhan Albayrak (Ankara University), Sema and Ney in the Diaries of John Covel: An English Clergyman’s Fascination and Scepticism towards the Whirling Dervishes

3:10 - 4:00pm

Panel 10 - Dynasty and Dominion: Imperial Relations, Rule and Resistance I

Rabia Demir (Izmir Katip Celebi University, University of Birmingham), 'Shaping Power in the Mediterranean: The Barbary-British Treaties and the Ottoman Authority'

Prof George Sanikidze (Ilia State University), 'The Religious Policy of Shah Abbas I and his Successors Towards: Armenians and Georgians'

4:10 - 5:pm

Panel 10 - Dynasty and Dominion: Imperial Relations, Rule and Resistance II

Georgine Watson (University of Manchester), 'New Political Landscape: The Florentine-Lebanese Mediterranean of the early seventeenth century'

Timur Khan (Universiteit Leiden), 'European understandings of the Afghans before British colonial rule'

5:00 - 5:30pm

Tea Break

5:30 - 6:30pm

Keynote Address

Prof Ambereen Dadabhoy

7pm

Watch Party of Khayaal Theatre Company's Jesus Christ, A Muslim Nativity (Online Only)