MEMOS: New Encounters Conference

MEMOS: New Encounters Conference

In the context of wider postcolonial and decolonial shifts that have taken place in both scholarship and popular thought over the past decades, we have seen growing interest in recovering and recentering histories of Islamic civilizations and their shaping influence on knowledge, systems, and technologies that we now associate with the modern world.

Whether recognized as the powerful authorities that transformed trade, belief, politics, science, and art in the premodern world, or as the ‘other’ necessary for Western colonial self-fashioning, there is no denying that Muslims and Islamicate societies hold a fundamental place in our (global) past.

Join us for a 3-day conference that explores these complex dynamics in the cultural histories and literatures of medieval and early modern (500-1750 CE) interactions between Europeans, especially the English, and the Muslim world across Africa, Asia, and Europe.

Co-hosted with the Department of English Literary Studies at UCT and the Shakespeare Society of Southern Africa, this event has a special focus on Muslims in Shakespeare’s worlds.

Dates and Venues:

Day 1: Thursday, 11 December 2025 - Tafel Venue, The Homecoming Centre, District Six, Cape Town, and Online, via Zoom

Day 2: Friday, 12 December 2025 - Tafel Venue, The Homecoming Centre, District Six, Cape Town, and Online, via Zoom

Day 3: Saturday, 13 December 2025 - 116 AC Jordan Building, University of Cape Town, Upper Campus

View the full programme here

You can also download the full programme here

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 8 December 2025.

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