Fall 2018:
October 24th (3-4 PM): Conversations with Christopher Ouma (Department of English, University of Cape Town)
October 31, 2018 (2-4 PM): Workshop on writing by South African author Shubnum Khan
Bio: Shubnum Khan is a South African author. Her first novel, Onion Tears about three generations of Indian Muslim women living in South Africa was shortlisted for the Penguin Prize for African Writing and the University of Johannesburg Debut Fiction Prize. She has a Masters degree in English from the University of KwaZulu-Natal under the supervision of South African poet, Kobus Moolman. She was on the Mail & Guardian’s list for 200 young South Africans. She is a writing fellow at ART OMI in New York and the Swatch Art Peace Hotel in Shanghai. She has written for Huffington Post South Africa, The Sunday Times, O the Oprah magazine amongst other titles. She had published fiction in the UK’s Flash the Short Story magazine, Vietnam’s Literary Journal, Ajar, Nigeria’s Saraba magazine and in South Africa’s literary journal, New Contrast. In 2018 she won the Octavia Butler Fellowship at the Jack Jones Literary Retreat in Taos, New Mexico. She is currently working on a new novel of magical realism set in Durban and a collection of micro memoirs.
Spring 2019:
April 5-6, 2019: Global Asias 5 Conference
The Indian Ocean Research Group was invited to organize a roundtable and two panels at the respected Global Asias 5 Conference at Penn State.
Roundtable on “Ocean of Artistry: Rendering the Indian Ocean Through Arts and Literatures”
Two panels exploring Afrasian and Indian Ocean connections called “Colored Waters, Fluid Geographies: On Afro-Asian Connections” and “Sino-African Encounters: Re-spatialization, Consumption, and New Media.”
Organized with the generous support of Asian Studies and the Global Asias 5
See: https://sites.psu.edu/vergeglobalasias/2018/11/02/98/
Participants include nine junior and senior scholars from the United States, United Kingdom, China, and India who will present their work and participate in the dialogue on Indian Ocean epistemologies.
April 17, 2019 (2.30 PM): Talk by Mauritian artist Djuneid Dulloo at the Palmer Museum
April 18-19, 2019: Anthropocene Storytelling: Ecological Writing and Pedagogies of Planetary Change
Academic and Creative Writing Workshop with Kirk B. Sides (University of Bristol) and Tjawangwa (TJ) Dema (winner, of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poetry). This multidisciplinary two-day series will include a lecture (Sides, 04.18.2019), poetry reading (Dema, 04.19.2019), and two workshops (Sides and Dema, 04.19.2019). For a full schedule, see: https://sites.psu.edu/anthropocenestorytelling/poster/