In 2012 the Literature & Ecology Colloquium focussed on coastal littorals and literatures of South Africa's seas. This year, we invite papers exploring the relationship between words and our inland waters: rivers, dams, rains, pipelines, taps, irrigation schemes, floods, droughts. South Africa's water situation is dire, with over-use and extensive pollution now exacerbated by climate change.
What role does literature play in shaping ideas and reflecting on the role of water in the national or sub-continental consciousness? How do literary genres like poetry and fiction articulate with non-fiction such as travelogues and scientific works? The colloquium, therefore, particularly encourages offerings of a transdisciplinary nature and the involvement of practitioners in pragmatic disciplines relating to water health, conservation and distribution, as well as historians and anthropologists.
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
Papers with a broader focus in the subdiscipline of environmental literature
will also be considered. Send abstracts or proposals by 17 June 2014 to:
Erika Lemmer, Department of Afrikaans and Theory of Literature, University
of South Africa (lemmee@unisa.ac.za) or Alan Northover, Department of
Afrikaans and Theory of Literature, UNISA (northra@unisa.ac.za). E-mail
submissions should be sent as MS Word attachments. Consult the website of
the Literature and Ecology Colloquium on the website of the Department of
English (Rhodes University) for information on previous conference
proceedings