During term time, the School of Languages and Literatures runs a regular research seminar series. In addition to talks by visiting scholars and established academics, the School encourages presentations of work in progress by postgraduate students and early-career researchers as part of this series. 

2024 Seminars

Translating Jericho Brown's The Tradition into Italian. A poetic journey

Dr Raphael D'Abdon (University of South Africa)
Thursday 17 October
Beattie 115 17h00

Hearing voices: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s African inquiry and legacy

A/Prof. Gian Maria Annovi (University of Southern California)
Wednesday 16 October
Beattie 115 17h00

"Kalika kuloo ndawo”: Representation of black (Isixhosa) identities through language in SuperSport’s Isixhosa rugby commentary

Dr Wanga Gambushe (African Languages and Literatures)
Thursday 10 October
Beattie 115 17h00

Exploring the Unity and Diversity of Bantu Languages: A Comparative Study

Mr Madinda N. Kanyiki (Independent Linguist and Language Researcher)
Thursday 26 September
Beattie 115 17h00

Theorizing ubulungisa and umthetho at the precipices of crisis and change: A thickly layered reading of justice and law in iTyala Lamawele

Sanele kaNtshingana (African Languages and Literatures)
Thursday 12 September
Beattie 115 17h00

The Italian language (and culture) in the Cape Town linguistic landscape. The case of the restaurant names

A/Prof. Alessandro Aresti (Università di Cagliari)
Thursday 29 August
Beattie 115 17h00

Literature as a space for identity negotiation

Paulina Chiziane (Portuguese Language and Literature)
Wednesday 28 August
Beattie LT 13h00

Classical Historiography in Context(s): Appian of Alexandria and the Late Roman Republic

Professor Tanja Itgenshorst (Fribourg)
Thursday 15 August
Beattie 115 17h00

Salomon Grumbach (1884-1952), an intellectual biography between France and Germany, war and peace, journalism and politics

Professor Fritz Taubert (Université de Bourgogne)
Thursday 8 August
Beattie 115 17h00

Decolonial approaches to teaching German as a foreign language in a South African context

Dr Gesa Singer (UCT)
Wednesday 22 May
GEOL SIM 17h00

Zulé Revé's journey: Exploring Gagá and Cross-Border Dynamics Between Haiti and the Dominican Republic

Dr Katia De La Cruz (UCT)
Thursday 9 May
Beattie 115 17h00

Creative Spirit and Writing. A Seminar on the Writer's Craft

Carmen Garcia (UCT)
Thursday 2 May
HUM LT1A 13h00

Texts in Migration. Circulation of African Verbal Arts in the first half of the 20^th Century

Dr Jehanne Denogent (UCT)
Tuesday 23 April
Beattie 115 17h00

The Ectopic Insider. Exploring the Interstices of Travel Writing, Memory and History in M. G. Vassanji’s And Home Was Kariakoo

Dr Felicity Hand (Universitat Autonoma, Barcelona) and Dr Esther Pujolràs-Noguer (Universitat de Lleida)
Wednesday 10 April
Beattie 114 17h00

Shaaban Robert: Toward an Ecopoetics of Kiswahili Language

Prof. Xavier Garnier (Francophone and African Literature, Paris 3 – Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Thursday 4 April
Beattie 115 17h00

Past Seminars

The Italian Diaspora in South Africa

Prof. Maria Chiara Marchetti-Mercer and A/Prof. Anita Virga
Tuesday 31 October
Hum LT 1A

Translation and storytelling in the era of social and new media

Mr Massimo Gardella
Thursday 19 October
Beattie 115 17h00

A Panorama of Contemporary Mozambican Literature

Mr Lucílio Manjate
Tuesday 3 October
Beattie LT 13h00

‘Call Me by My Name’: Portrayal of Albinism in Swahili Literature [Fasihi ya Kiswahili]

Dr Elizabeth Godwin Mahenge (UCT)
Thursday 28 September
Beattie 114 13h00

Necropolitics and Forms of Life: Writings of Dispersion in Contemporary Francophone African Novels

Dr Karel Plaiche (UCT)
Thursday 14 September
Beattie 115 17h00

Mapping Linguistic Logic and Syntactic Structures: Contrastive Linguistics as a Key to Activating Learners’ Linguistic Awareness of Chinese

Associate Professor Yang Zeng (UCT)
Thursday 31 August
Beatte LT 13h00

Disturbed graves and disturbing afterlives: Reimagining the remains of Hendrik Witbooi and Sitting Bull

Dr Sonja Loots (UCT)
Thursday 17 August 
Beattie LT 13h00

Roman Noses, and the sense of smell in antiquity

Professor Mark Bradley (Nottingham)
Thursday 3 August
Beattie 115 17h00
2023 Mezzabotta Memorial Lecture

Speaking in Tongues: the Creative Transformation of Jhumpa Lahiri

Dr Mara Boccaccio (UCT)
Thursday 11 May
Robert Leslie 2D 17h00

Re-reading the Literary Representation of Child-Animal Interactions

Dr Anita de Melo (UCT)
Wednesday 26 April
Robert Leslie 2D 16h00

Horace in The Natal Mercury

Dr Jeffrey Murray (UCT)
Thursday 13 April
Beattie 114 17h00

Cohesion in second language writing and in translation: A case for research into varioversals

Professor Carola Strobl (Antwerp)
Thursday 23 March
Beattie 114 17h00

May we always do what we can do? Discourse ethics for science and technology

Professor Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich (UCT)
Thursday 9 March
Beattie 114 17h00

Colonial Utopias and Dystopias in Bourbon and Mauritius during the 19th Century

Professor Françoise Sylvos (Réunion)
Thursday 02 March
Beattie 114 17h00