MEMOS: New Encounters Conference - Day 3

MEMOS: New Encounters Conference - Day 3

Friday, 13 December 2025

Location: 116 AC Jordan Building, University of Cape Town, Upper Campus 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 purposes, please register in-person attendance by 7 December 2025.

Day 3 Programme (Draft):

8.30 - 8:45am

Arrival, Tea and Coffee

8:45 - 10:20

Panel 11 - Writing Routes: Early Modern Travel and Encounter Across Asia

Dr Unita Ahdifard (Kwantlen Polytechnic University),'"The Pleasure of Knowing Things Remote”: William Daniel’s Travels from England to Surat'

William Perry (University College Dublin), 'The Possibilities of Encounter: Travel and Space in Early Modern English Accounts of Isfahan'

Dr Nia Deliana (Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia), 'Sailing through Multipolar Waters:

Archipelagic Actors in Forrest 1792 Account'

10:30 - 11:45

Panel 12 - Religious Intersections: Race, Gender and Disability in Premodern Literary Narratives

Bárbara P A Lima (Independent), 'Imagined Encounters: The role of Muslim women in creating a cross-cultural Chanson de Geste'

Prof Catherine Anne Addison (University of Zululand), 'Islamic Women Characters in Ariosto’s and Tasso’s Epic Romances'

Prof Jonathan Hsy (George Washington University), 'Margery Kempe’s Saracens: Race and Disability in Transit'

11:45 - 1:00pm

Panel 13 - Adapting Othello: Difference and Desire

Dr Önder Çakırtaş (Bingöl Universit), 'Matter and Meaning: Objects, Race, and Islam in Richard Twyman’s Othello'

Dr Aisha Hussain (University of Salford), '“These moors are unchangeable in their wills” (Othello, I.iii): Reframing the Racialization of Islam and Muslims in Ola Ince’s Othello' (2024)

1:00 - 1:45pm

Lunch

1:45 - 3:15pm

Panel 14 - The Premodern Now: Contemporary Receptions and Classrooms

Dr Eva Momtaz (University of Birmingham), Between Fiction and Faith: Paradise Lost in the Hands of the Modern Muslimah

Emma Sacco (University of Cape Town), The Pedagogic Possibilities of One Thousand and One Nights in Southern Africa

Thalén Rogers (Univeristy of Cape Town), 'Teaching 1001 Nights to radicalise literary education in South African universities'

Caroline Fleischauer (University of the Free State), 'Difference, Ignorance, and Teaching Beyond Dichotomy: Methods for Examining Islam as the “Dark Foil” to Christianity in The Song of Roland'

OR

1:45 - 3:15pm

Workshop 1 - Play the Knave, Virtual Shakespeare Game Demo and Teaching Workshop

Lauren Bates (Educasions)

3:15pm - 4:30pm

Gender, Power and Cutlural Representations of Royalty

Chandini Jaswal (Independent), 'Revisiting the Mughal Zenana— As It Was: Challenging the Narrative of the Space of the Mughal Harem by Analysing Visual and Material Culture'

Niyanta Sangal (University of Maryland), 'Tracing Gendered Third Spaces in Dryden's Aureng-zebe through Mughal Art'

Kirsten Vitale Engel (University of Connecticut), 'Performing Monarchy through Magnificence'

OR

3:15pm - 4:30pm

Workshop 2 - Play the Knave, Virtual Shakespeare Game Demo and Teaching Workshop

Lauren Bates (Educasions)