Lived
Experiences

International
PhD
Conference

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7–8 June 2024

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
and online

Keynote Speakers
Contacts
Conference Program
Location
Registration
This conference aims to create a platform for doctoral students specializing in literary studies, literary translation studies, and theatre studies to showcase their research and engage in discussions about the profound impact of personal narratives and lived experiences in shaping creative works.
About
We are pleased to invite you to Lived Experiences, the international two-day PhD conference.
It will take place in Brussels, Belgium, on June 7th, and online on June 8th, 2024.
It provides an excellent opportunity for emerging scholars to actively participate in scholarly dialogues, share their findings, and contribute to the broader academic discourse.
The conference is organized by the PhD students of CLIC, the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings at Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
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Download Presenter Bios 
Day 1: June 7
9:45–10:45, E.0.04
KEYNOTE LECTURE
Stories of Violence across Time, Space and Genre: How Translation and Translators Shape (Trans)Cultural Memory
Prof. Anneleen Spiessens, Ghent University
COFFEE BREAK (10:45–11:00)
11:00–12:30, E.0.04
PANEL 1A: Voices from the Margins
  • Mind the Gap? Neurodiversity in Memoirs and Literary Fiction (Liselotte Van der Gucht, Ghent University)

  • Reading Sedgwick Reading (Gwendoline Choi, University of Oxford)

  • Writing Life and Illness in Kuwait: A Close Reading of Shahd Alshammari’s Memoir Head Above Water (2022) (Alice Königstetter, University of Vienna/VUB)

  • The Therapeutic Value of the Autofictional Account in Elizabeth Chakrabarty’s Lessons in Love and Other Crimes (2021) (Sofie Vandepitte, VUB)
Chair: Elisabeth Bekers, VUB
11:00–12:30, E.0.08
PANEL 1B: Voices from the Archive: Personal Memory
  • Life Writing in Children’s Literature: Tracing Reimagined Memories in the Archive (Emma-Louise Silva, University of Antwerp)

  • Writing as a Religious: The Representations of Evil in the Ego-Documents of G. Matulaitis, T. Merton, and E. Varden (Augustė Žičkytė, Vilnius University)
Chair: Inge Arteel, VUB
LUNCH BREAK (12:30–13:45)
13:45–15:15, E.0.04
PANEL 2A: Trauma and Recovery
  • Du bist die Ruh: Music, Trauma, and Evil in Judith Mok’s Non/Fiction (Marie Jadot, University of Liège)

  • ‘Mental pictures [...] on my skull’s grey wall-spaces’: Blurring Fact and Fiction in Mr Emmanuel (Charlie Knight, University of Southampton)

  • The Literary Motif as an Indication of Primordial Trauma: Genotextual Analysis According to Julia Kristeva (Mieke Vulkers, Utrecht University)

  • Where Is Abel Thy Brother? Trauma, Healing, and Resilience in Contemporary English-Translated Russophone Poetry of Exile, (Inner) Emigration and Political Resistance in the Context of the Russo-Ukrainian War (Ilya Skokleenko, University of Basel)
Chair: Ioannis Tsitsovits, KU Leuven
13:45–15:15, E.0.08
PANEL 2B: Cultural Memory and Identity
  • Palestinian Return: Between Exile and Homeland (Amir Nassar, Tel Aviv University)

  • Translation for Reactivating Memory: A Case Study on Iris Zhang’s The Rape of Nanking and its Chinese Translation (Luomei Cui, VUB)

  • Terrorism, Post-Conflictual Narratives, and Polyphony: The Voices of ETA, the IRA, and Their Victims in Aramburu's Patria and Keefe's Say Nothing (Ana Fernández-Blázquez, Yale University)
Chair: Ann Peeters, VUB
COFFEE BREAK (15:15–15:45)
15:45–17:15, E.0.04
PANEL 3A: Life Writing and Mental Illness
  • The Material, Didactic, and Intermedial Dimensions of Schizophrenia as ‘Lived Experience’ in Clem and Olivier Martini’s Bitter Medicine (David Lombard, KU Leuven/ University of Liège)

  • A Dying Mind: Embodied Cognition in David Rudkin’s Radio Play The Haunting of Mahler (Lise van Acker, VUB)

  • The Vast Dark Land of Psychiatry: Auditory Life-Writing and Representation of Madness in Klaus Lindemann’s Radio Feature Ein weites dunkles Land (Iana Nikitenko, VUB)
Chair: Marcela Scibiorska, VUB
15:45–17:15, E.0.08
PANEL 3B: (Post)Colonial Encounters
  • The Sense of Healing: Tracing Residual Violence, Trauma, and Recovery in Tanaïs’s In Sensorium: Notes for My People (Apeksha Pareek, Ritik Garg, and Niraja Saraswat, Malaviya National Institute of Technology)

  • Intersectionality, Intermediality and Heterogeneity of Lived Experiences in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For (Yanrong Wang, VUB)
Chair: Bénédicte Ledent, VUB/ ULiège
COFFEE BREAK (17:15–17:30)
17:30–19:00, E.0.04
PANEL 4: Poetic Life Writing
  • Putting Silence into Words: Multimodal Representations of Deafness in the Poetry of Raymond Antrobus (Tara Brusselaers, VUB)

  • Pedro Pietri (And Nobody Else): Imagined Collaborations in a Diasporic New York (Alex Diaz-Hui, Princeton University)

  • Humorous Mythological Resignification in the Works of Heine and HaverSchmidt (Anthony Manu, VUB)
Chair: Eva Ulrike Pirker, VUB
CLOSING REMARKS (19:00–19:15)
DAY 2: June 8
10:15–11:15 CET
KEYNOTE LECTURE
Contemporary Poetry as Relational Life Writing and Historiographic Intervention
Prof. Nassim Balestrini, Karl-Franzens University Graz
COFFEE BREAK (11:15–11:30 CET)
11:30–13:00 CET
PANEL 1A: Voices from the Margins
  • The Pseudo-Memoir: (Dis)Embodying Mourning in Sigrid Nunez’s What Are You Going Through (Andreea Moise, University of Bucharest)

  • Auto/Biographical Pact as Political Performativity: Deconstructing Neo- Imperialist Discourses in Para Paheer’s Memoir The Power of Good People: Surviving the Sri Lankan Civil War (T. Jenisha, Central University of Tamil Nadu)

  • Which Holocaust Narratives Are Appropriate and Which Are Banned: Pajamification, Historical Uncanny, and Morality Tales Within Autobiographical, Non-Fiction, and Fiction Holocaust Texts (Aleksandra Socha, University of Warsaw)

  • Sounds Like Emigration: The Ethnographic Ear and Using Sound to Explore Loss and Newness When Writing about the Immigrant Experience (Kim Novick, Sydney University)
Chair: Cedric Van Dijck, VUB
11:30–13:00 CET
PANEL 1B: Potentialities of Literary Practices
  • Healing Haunting Matters: Material, Ecopolitical Wounding and Extractions of Colonialism Across the Atlantic (Kim Darbouze, Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies)

  • Self-Expression in Autocreation: The Complementary Role of Poetry and Fiction in Agnieszka Osiecka’s Autobiographical Writing (Katarzyna Hanik, University of Silesia in Katowice)

  • Colonization’s Violent Legacy and Creative Restoration in La Plus Secrète Mémoire des hommes by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (Hayat Boutarbouche, VUB)
Chair: Mathias Meert, VUB
LUNCH BREAK (13:00–14:00 CET)
14:00–15:30 CET
PANEL 2A: Representations of Trauma in Autobiographical Writing
  • Voices Unveiled: Lived Experience as Structural Violence in Contemporary Indian Autobiographical Narratives and Memoirs (Fauzia Javed, Jadavpur University)

  • Collaborative Autobiography of a Sex Worker: Who, What and Why of Collaboration (Ankita Ananyaa Gaya and Seemita Mohanty, National Institute of Technology Rourkela)

  • Autosomatography and Narrative Medicine: Extricating Insanity and Selfhood in Swadesh Deepak’s I Have Not Seen Mandu: A Fractured Soul-Memoir (Neha Singh, SRM University, AP)
Chair: Iana Nikitenko, VUB
14:00–15:30 CET
PANEL 2B: Feminist & Queer Narratives
  • “Do I Exist?”: Lesbian Intertextuality in Selected Auto/Biographical Works (Anna Klimek, Jagiellonian University)

  • Contemporary Feminist Life-Writing in Ireland: A Critical Analysis (Muriel Domínguez Viso, Universities of A Coruña, Santiago de Compostela and Vigo)

  • Feminist Autofiction, Authorship and Tradition in Meena Kandasamy’s When I Hit You (2017) (Smriti Verma, University of Oxford)

  • The Sexless Writer or the Good Mother? Performative Noncompliance and Unease in Rachel Cusk’s A Life’s Work (2001) (Sonja Trurnit, LMU Munich)
Chair: Cedric Van Dijck, VUB
COFFEE BREAK (15:30–16:00 CET)
16:00–17:30 CET
PANEL 3A: Translation Practices Across Memory & Culture
  • Translating Memories Across the Atlantic: The Contested Transmission of Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb (Marit van de Warenburg, Utrecht University)

  • Bridging Narratives: A Translator’s Journey with “Bheemaparvam” — Subverting Dominant Narratives and Amplifying Marginalized Experiences (Reneeta Anna Robert, National Institute of Technology Puducherry)

  • Exploring Núria Gómez Gabriel’s Traumacore: Translating Dissociation through Multiple Languages, Medias and Genres (Sandra Mora López, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)

  • Personal Dimensions of Postmemorial Translation Work in the Armenian-Turkish Context (Mikael Evdokimov, University of Vienna)
Chair: Arvi Sepp, VUB
16:00–17:30 CET
PANEL 3B: Images of the Self in Cinema & Graphic Narratives
  • Intermedial Narratives of Self: The Evolution of Indian Comics as Life Writing (Ritwik Balo, Jadavpur University)

  • Petra Costa's Cinema: Autobiographical Narratives about Political and Personal Hopes and Traumas (Daniel Velasco Leão, Federal University of Santa Catarina)

  • Diaries in Cinema and Literature (Memories and Personal Odyssey of Jonas Mekas) (Lika Glurjidze, Ilia State University)
Chair: Benoît Crucifix, KU Leuven
CLOSING REMARKS (17:30–17:45 CET)
Prof. Dr. Nassim W. Balestrini: Contemporary Poetry as Relational Life Writing and Historiographic Intervention
Keynote Speakers
Full Professor of American Studies and Intermediality,
University of Graz
Nassim Winnie Balestrini is full professor of American Studies and Intermediality at the University of Graz, Austria, where she also serves as director of the Centre for Intermediality Studies in Graz (CIMIG). In 2022/23, she served as Lorand Chair for Intermediality at the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossing at VUB. She has published monographs on Vladimir Nabokov and on opera adaptations of nineteenth-century American fiction, essays on hip-hop life writing and rap poetry (e.g., in Popular Music and Society and in the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music Studies), on intermediality theory and practice (e.g., a special issue on “Depicting Destitution Across Media” for the Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings), on American poetry, fiction, and drama, especially on climate change theater. She has edited collections on Adaptation and American Studies (Heidelberg: Winter, 2011) and on Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2018, with Ina Bergmann). Her current research focuses on contemporary poetry and on climate change theater.
Assistant Professor, Department of Translation, Interpreting, and Communication,
Ghent University
Anneleen Spiessens is an Assistant Professor at Ghent University. She is affiliated with the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, where she teaches both translation practice (French-Dutch) and theory. Her research focuses on ethical, political and mnemonic aspects of translation, and resulted in publications on museums, news translation and ideology, perpetrator testimony (Quand le bourreau prend la parole: témoignage et fiction, Droz, 2016), and testimonial literature more generally (including a chapter in Translating Memories of Violent Pasts, Routledge, 2023). Anneleen Spiessens is also co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Memory (2022, with Sharon Deane-Cox) which sets out to chart the intersections between translation and memory as they operate together in the reconstruction, transmission and repurposing of the past.
Prof. Dr. Anneleen Spiessens: Stories of Violence across Time, Space and Genre: How Translation and Translators Shape (Trans)Cultural Memory
Registration
Please register for the conference by clicking the button below and completing the Google form if you plan to attend one or both days. Please complete the form by June 3rd to confirm your registration for the conference.
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Location
The conference will be held at the VUB Main Campus in Etterbeek (Boulevard de la Plaine 2), Building E, rooms E.0.04 & E.0.08.
Practical Info
Directions
The VUB Main Campus in Etterbeek is within walking distance of the train station and is also easily accessible by bike, bus, tram and metro. You can reach the centre of Brussels, the capital of Europe, in less than 20 minutes by public transport.
More details ●
Suggested accommodations
Organising Team
The conference is organised by Alice Königstetter, Anthony Manu, Iana Nikitenko, Sofie Vandepitte and Tara Brusselaers, with the support of CLIC (Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings) and the VUB Doctoral School of Human Sciences.
For further inquiries or additional information, please contact us at lived.experiences2024@gmail.com
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