The Making of the Humanities VIII Conference
21-23 November 2019, University of Cape Town
“Decentralizing the History of the Humanities”
Venue: The Huma seminar Room, Neville Alexander Building, Upper Campus,
University of Cape Town
PROGRAM
Day 1, 21 November 2019
8.45-9.15: Registration
9.15-9.30: Opening of the conference by Shamil Jeppie (UCT) and Rens Bod (President of the Society)
9.30-10.30: Keynote Lecture by Elisio Macamo, Centre for African Studies, University of Basel
Unmaking Africa – The Humanities and the study of what?
Chair: Shamil Jeppie, UCT
10.30-11.00: Coffee
11.00-12.30: History of the Humanities in South Africa
Chair: TBA
11.00-11.30: Menan du Plessis, Stellenbosch University
The 19th century rise—and 21st century perpetuation—of Khoisan studies as a compromised field in the context of colonial and post-colonial southern Africa.
11.30-12.00: Bronwyn Strydom, University of Pretoria
Reflections on writing a centenary history for the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Pretoria
12.00-12.30: Reingard Nethersole, University Wits and visiting scholar University of Richmond
Textwebs 1829: Weimar, Capetown, Craigenputtock
12.30-13.30: Lunch
13.30-15.30: The History of Theory (panel)
Chair: David Shumway, Carnegie Mellon University
Premesh Lalu, University of the Western Cape
The Humanities in the Wake of Slavery
John Higgins, University of Cape Town
The Identity of Theory: Some Observations on Literary Theory in South Africa
Ulrike Kistner, University of Pretoria
(Un)Doing Critical Theory in Pretoria, 1981-1987
David Shumway, Carnegie Mellon University
Theory Journals and the Rise of Theory in Literary Studies in the U.S.
15.30-16.00 Coffee, tea
16.00-18.00: The Arts and Historiography
Chair: Rens Bod, University of Amsterdam
16.00-16.30: Petra van Langen, University of Groningen
Pioneers in musicology. National trends in the development of musicology as an academic discipline.
16.30-17.00: J. Kirk Irwin, The University of Edinburgh
Decentralized Histories of Architectural Space: Panofsky and Le Corbusier
17.00-17.30 : Daniela Merolla, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Paris
Co-Authorship and Subversion of Humanities: Amazigh/Berber Literary and Historical Studies
17.30-18.00: Maria Teresa Costa, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin
The Transnational Formation of Art History through its First International Conferences
18.15-20.00: Reception with finger food at the Irma Stern Museum (http://www.irmastern.co.za/). Shuttle will be provided.
Day 2, 22 November 2019
9.30-10.30: Keynote lecture by Martin Scherzinger, New York University
African Music in the Humanities: A Critique (and a Speculation)
Chair: Rens Bod, University of Amsterdam
10.30-11.00: Coffee
11.00-12.30: History and Ethnography
Chair: Shamil Jeppie, UCT
11.00-11.30: Pieter Francois, University of Oxford
Reassessing the legacies of Henri Berr and Frederick Teggart in the context of the recent turn to global history and cultural evolution.
11.30-12.00: Zehra Tonbul, Istanbul Sehir University
The Web and the Angel of Weltverkehr
12.00-12.30: Eldar Salakhetdinov, Unisa
The Evolution of Khoisan Identity Narrative in South Africa: Discovering National Myth
12.30-13.30: Lunch
13.30-15.30: The South African academic journal: past, present and future as affective orientations (panel)
Chair: Rory du Plessis, University of Pretoria
Wemar Strydom, NWU
“Past” / Strategic encounters with whiteness: 1989 to 2001 in the Stilet archive
Siseko H. Kumalo, University of Pretoria
“Present” / An instantiation of the Black Archive
Thys Human, NWU
“Future” / So, what’s the (continued) use of publishing in Afrikaans? Notes on hopeful futurity,
Commentary: Deirdre Byrne, UNISA
15.30-16.00 Coffee, tea
16.00-18.00: Encounters
Chair: TBA
16.00-16.30: Andrew Hui, Yale-NUS College, Singapore
Confucius the Stoic: Matteo Ricci and the Encounter between Western and Chinese Philosophy
16.30-17.00: Jaap Maat, University of Amsterdam
Stoic logic, Ramist logic and a remarkable defence of Aristotle
17.00-17.30 : Floris Solleveld, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Language as a Specimen
17.30-18.00: Guillermo Navarro-Alvarado, University of Costa Rica
The ethnography of Edward Wilmot Blyden: from the discovery of Africas to the proposal of a Pan-African nation.
19.00: Conference dinner at Moyo Kirstenbosch (http://www.moyo.co.za). Shuttle will be provided. Dinner voucher (350 rand) must be paid at Conference Desk on 21 November
Day 3, 23 November 2019
9.30-11.00: Decentralized Historiography
Chair: Jaap Maat, University of Amsterdam
9.30-10.00: Vera-Simone Schulz, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
The Swahili Coast in a Network of References to the Arab Peninsula, Persia, the Indian Ocean, the African Continent and Beyond: Polycentric Histories of Art in Coastal East Africa
10.00-10.30: Hampus Östh Gustafsson, Uppsala University
Embracing the Margins: The Challenge of 20th Century Democracy to the Scandinavian Humanities
10.30-11.00: Rens Bod, University of Amsterdam
Towards a Polycentric History of the Humanities
11.00-11.30: Coffee
11.30-13.00: The Humanities and the Digital
Chair: Rens Bod, University of Amsterdam
11.30-12.00: Menno van Zaanen, South African Centre for Digital Language Resources
Digital Humanities in South Africa
12.00-12.30: Douwe Zeldenrust, Meertens Instituut – Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences
Collections as networks, The deconstruction of information networks in the collections of the Meertens Instituut (KNAW)
12.30-13.00: Fabian Saptouw, University of Cape Town
The Digital transfiguration of the archive
13.00-14.00: Lunch
14.00-15.45: Round Table on History of Humanities Projects and Prospects
Organization and chair: Shamil Jeppie, UCT
- African Humanities Program
- Human Sciences Research Council
- Other Universals
- History Access
Participants: Crain Soudien (Human Sciences Research Council); Fred Hendricks (Rhodes University), Adigun Agbaje. (University of Ibadan) & Nomusa Makhubu (University of Cape Town) (African Humanities Programme); Ruchi Chatuverdi (Other Universals, University of Cape Town); Suren Pillay (University of the Western Cape, Centre for Humanities Research and Other Universals), Bodhi Kar (History Access, University of Cape Town).
15.45: Closing and farewell
