The 11th Literature & Ecology Colloquium will take place on 11 and 12 September at Oxwagon Lodge, Hartbeespoort Dam.
This year, we invite papers exploring the relationship between words and our inland waters: rivers, dams, rains, pipleines, taps, irrigation schemes, floods, droughts.
While the colloquium particularly encourages papers on southern African literatures, explorations of other areas of the world are also welcome. Comparative perspectives can be especially enlightening.
Suggested, but by no means exhaustive, topics might include the following:
۞Waters in indigenous oral literatures (eg. rains in San cosmology; spiritual significance of pools in Xhosa writing)
۞ Rivers as barriers/goals/conveyances in travelogues
۞ Water, rains, droughts and floods in the farm novel (plaasroman)
۞ Water-dwelling animal presences in literature (fish, crocodiles, hippos etc.)
۞ Water distribution, class and race in urban settings
۞ Polluting water
۞ Swimming, fishing, drinking as tropes
۞ Dam-building as iconic of control and belonging
۞ Water, history, and national consciousness
۞ Science writing and public discourses on water
۞ Language, law and water justice
Send abstracts pr porposals by 17 June 2014 to Erika Lemmer (lemmee@unisa.ac.za) or Alan Northover (northra@unisa.ac.za).
For more information, please download the flyer here.
