Biofiction as world literature, KU Leuven
Day 1 (15 September): Genre and gender
Day 2 (16 September): Genealogies and precursors
Day 3 (17 September): Truth and representation
Day 4 (18 September): Politics, oppression, negotiation
WEDNESDAY, 15 SEPTEMBER (DAY 1 – GENRE AND GENDER)
12:15 – 12:30
Welcome words (Laura Cernat and Ortwin de Graef)
12:30 – 13:30
Keynote 1 – Lucia Boldrini (Goldsmiths, University of London): Lives, Places, Worlds
Session chair: Hedwig Schwall, KU Leuven
13:30 – 14:00
Break
14:00 – 15:30
Plenary Panel 1: Gendering Biofiction as World Literature
Panel convener: Julia Lajta-Novak, University of Vienna
- Silvia Salino (University of Vienna): Anchee Min’s Signature: Gendered Diaspora in Becoming Madame Mao (2000) and The Last Empress (2007)
- Ingibjörg Ágústsdóttir (University of Iceland): Re-Imagined ‘Hersagas’: The Portrayal of Auður the Deepminded and Guðríður the Far Traveller in Novels by Vilborg Davíðsdóttir and Margaret Elphinstone
- Kim-Nicola Hofschröer (University of Bremen): Narrating White Masculinity in David Leavitt’s The Indian Clerk (2007)
15:30 – 16:00
Break
16:00 – 17:30
Plenary Panel 2: Biofictions, entre frontières génériques et genrées
Session chair: Beatrijs Vanacker, KU Leuven
- Hélène Barthelmebs-Raguin (University of Luxembourg): Écriture de vie(s) : pour une approche des biofictions féminines postcoloniales
- Laurence Perron (Université du Québec à Montréal): Performer la biofiction d’enquête : lecture croisée de Schaeffer et Butler
- Charline Pluvinet (Université Rennes 2): L’intimité apocryphe des autrices dans le roman contemporain
17:30 – 18:00
Break
18:00 – 19:30
Plenary Panel 3: Virginia Woolf in Contemporary Biofiction – Transnational Perspectives
Session chair: Todd Avery, University of Massachusets Lowell
- Monica Latham (Université de Lorraine): Virginia Woolf in the French Imagination
- Elisabetta Varalda (Sapienza University of Rome): I Possess My Soul: Virginia Woolf in Italy
- Nicole Xuan Chen (University of Endinburgh): “The Insane View of Life Has Much to Be Said for It”: Biofictional Illness Narratives Featuring “the Mad Genius” Virginia Woolf
THURSDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER (DAY 2 – GENEALOGIES AND PRECURSORS)
12:00 – 13:30
Plenary Panel 4: Modernist Echoes and Connections
Session chair: Elke D’hoker, KU Leuven
- Elles Rees (University of Oslo): Embodying Ibsen: Biofiction on Stage
- Ronan Crowley (Aarhus University): Gonne Girl: Representing Maud in the 1930s roman á clef
- Alexandre Bies (Independent Scholar): Le motif biographique dans l’oeuvre de Walter Pater
13:30 – 14:00
Break
14:00 – 15:00
Keynote 2 – Alexandre Gefen (Université Paris 3 - Sorbonne nouvelle): La biofiction occidentale : une généalogie
Session chair: Nidesh Lawtoo, KU Leuven
15:00 - 15:30
Break
15:30 - 17:00
Plenary Panel 5: Authorizing Early Modern European Women
Panel convener: James Fitzmaurice, Northern Arizona University
- Sheila Cavanagh (Emory University): Taking Back Her Time: Artemisia Gentileschi on Stage and Page
- Naomi J. Miller (Smith College): Imagining Shakespeare’s Sisters: Fictionalizing Mary Sidney and Mary Wroth
- Sara Read (Loughborough University): Drawing on Jane Sharp and Sarah Stone to Create The Gossips’ Choice
17:00 - 17:30
Break
17:30 - 19:00
Plenary Panel 6: The World of the Visual Artist in Biofiction
Panel convener: Julia Dabbs, University of Minnesota, Morris
- Catherine Padmore (La Trobe University): Rendering the Stranger: Biofictional Representations of Border-Crossing Artists in Tudor England
- Sofie Behluli (University of Bern): Framing a Life as a Painting: Sackville’s Painter to the King (2018) and Cumming’s The Vanishing Man (2016)
- Kiera Lindsey (University of Technology Sydney): Ancient and Coterminous: Fact, Fiction and Wildflowers: The Lost Paintings and Forgotten Mediumship of Adelaide Ironside
FRIDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER (DAY 3 – TRUTH AND REPRESENTATION)
12:00 – 13:00
Keynote 3 – Ann Jefferson (University of Oxford): Fiction’s Biographers
Session chair: Anneleen Masschelein, KU Leuven
13:00 – 13:30
Break
13:30 – 15:00
Parallel sessions (Panels 7 and 8)
Panel 7: The Question of Limits: Biofiction Between Hagiography and Self-mythologization
Session chair: Pieter Vermeulen, KU Leuven
- Karen Ferreira-Meyers (University of Eswatini): Biofictions of Jesus-Christ
- Hicham Adiouani (Université Paris VIII): J.M. Coetzee from Biofiction to Autobiofiction
- Jan Ceuppens (KU Leuven): Identity Theft. Appropriation, expropriation, and restitution in W.G. Sebald
Panel 8: Thinking Alternatively: Biofiction as History’s Witness
Session chair: Brecht de Groote, Ghent University
- Laura Cernat (KU Leuven): Biofiction’s Melancholic Agency: Deep Time and the Return of History in the Works of Amin Maalouf and Colum McCann
- Rana Elbowety (KU Leuven and Cairo University): Alternate Lives and Reconfiguring History: Lessing’s Alfred and Emily
- Tom Kellner (MLU Halle-Wittenberg): Yoram Kaniuk’s 1948: An Israeli Auto-Biofiction as world literature?
15:00 –15:30
Break
15:30 –16:30
Keynote 4 – Robert Dion (Université du Québec à Montréal): Le biographique, la littérature et la présence au monde
Session chair: Ella Mingazova, KU Leuven & Liège University
16:30 –17:00
Break
17:00 –18:30
Plenary Panel 9: Who Killed Truth, and Can Biofiction Do Anything To Resuscitate It?
Panel Convener: Virginia Rademacher, Babson College
- Virginia Rademacher (Babson College): Biofiction’s Antidotes to Post-Truth Contagions
- Alison Gibbons (Sheffield Hallam University): Fictionality and Perceptions of Subjective Truth at the Intersections of Autofiction and Biofiction
- Todd Avery (University of Massachussets Lowell): Between the “strident streets of science” and the “open fields of fiction”: Lytton Strachey, Harold Nicolson, and the Art of the Case
18:30 –19:00
Break
19:00 –20:00
Keynote 5 – Michael Lackey (University of Minnesota, Morris): Postmodern Truth and the Rise of Biofiction
Session chair: Tom Toremans, KU Leuven
SATURDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER (DAY 4 – POLITICS, OPPRESSION, NEGOTIATION)
12:00 – 13:00
Parallel sessions (Panels 10 and 11)
Panel 10: Reclaiming Censored Histories
Session chair: Pieter Boulogne, KU Leuven
- Ksenia Shmydkaya (Tallinn University): Biofiction as Soviet literature? On The Crazy Ship and its passengers
- Andrada Fătu-Tutoveanu (Babeș-Bolyai University): Becoming Carol I. Discovering Biofiction in Romanian Contemporary Literature
Panel 11: Biofiction as Collective Reflection
Session chair: Beatrijs Vanacker, KU Leuven
- Ligia Tudurachi (Institut « Sextil Puscariu » de l’Académie Roumaine): Les vies des écrivains comme objet contemporain d’une biofiction en formule improvisée
- Gleya Maatallah (Université de Manouba): Annie Ernaux et l’auto-socio-biographie
13:00 – 13:30
Break
13:30 – 15:00
Parallel sessions (Panels 12 and 13)
Panel 12: Weighing the Colonial Shadow: Introducing Nuance in Postcolonial Biofiction
Session chair: Núria Codina, KU Leuven
- Daria Tunca (University of Liège): Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Modernist” Biofiction: Postcolonial or World Literature?
- Rebecca Romdhani (University of Liège): Anticolonial Resistance Reverberating across Time and Space in Kei Miller’s Augustown
- Elaine Hudson (Independent Scholar): Storytelling Borders in Stevenson Under the Palm Trees
Panel 13: Resilient Fictions: Remembering Europe at the Crossroads
Session chair: Carole Guesse, KU Leuven
- Marleen Rensen (University of Amsterdam): Messages for Europe and the world: Re-imagining the legacies of George Orwell and Stefan Zweig
- Marjolein Corjanus (Independent Scholar): Entre témoignage et fiction: récits biofictionnels et le passage de témoin de l'Holocauste dans les romans de Tournier, Binet, Haenel et Guez
- Camélia Paquette (Université de Sherbrooke): Le personnage historique nazi sous la plume contemporaine française
15:00 –15:30
Break
15:30 –17:00
Plenary Panel 14: Unsettling the Colonial Frontier of Knowledge
Panel convener: Vilashini Cooppan, University of California at Santa Cruz
- Vilashini Cooppan (University of California at Santa Cruz): Biofiction’s Biofabulative Edges
- Marie-Christine Leps & Lesley Higgins (York University): Those “flash existences, those poem-lives”: the biofictions of Foucault and Ondaatje
- Kelly Gardiner & Catherine Padmore (La Trobe University): The voyage out: Exploring wives in Australian biographical fictions
17:00 –17:30
Break
17:30 –18:30
Closing keynote event with Colum McCann
Session chair: Ortwin de Graef, KU Leuven
18:30 –19:00
Final remarks
Registration
Registration is now open. Please click on this link to access the form: https://icts.kuleuven.be/apps/onebutton/registrations/9894
Please note that, unless you are a KU Leuven member, you will need to make a payment to complete your registration.
Registration fee: € 60.
Reduced rate for junior researchers: € 30.
Rate for non-presenters: € 15.
Registration will stay open until August 15th, 23:30 CEST. Please register at your earliest convenience.
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
- Laura Cernat (KU Leuven)
- Núria Codina (KU Leuven)
- Ronan Crowley (University of Antwerp)
- Ortwin de Graef (KU Leuven)
- Brecht de Groote (University of Ghent)
- Ilaria de Seta (KU Leuven)
- Elke D’hoker (KU Leuven, MDRN)
- David Martens (KU Leuven, MDRN)
- Anneleen Masschelein (KU Leuven)
- Ella Mingazova (KU Leuven)
- Beatrijs Vanacker (KU Leuven)
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
- Gert Buelens (University of Ghent)
- Laura Cernat (KU Leuven)
- Núria Codina Solà (KU Leuven)
- Ronan Crowley (University of Antwerp)
- Ortwin de Graef (KU Leuven)
- Brecht de Groote (University of Ghent)
- Elke D’hoker (KU Leuven, MDRN)
- David Martens (KU Leuven, MDRN)
- Anneleen Masschelein (KU Leuven)
- Beatrijs Vanacker (KU Leuven)
- Dirk van Hulle (University of Antwerp)