Thursday 26 June 2025
(Online)
Programme (Draft)
(All times are British Summer Time [GMT+1])
9.10-9.20 – Welcome
9.20-10.20 – Panel 1: Auto/Bio/Fictional (Counter-)Epics of the Nation
Ankana Bag (Visva-Bharati University, Shantiniketan, West Bengal, India), ‘Looking at the Zeitgeist through Bio-fiction: Sei Somoy [Those Days] by Sunil Gangopadhyay’
Chloe Green (Australian National University, Canberra, Australia), ‘“Another Epic Poem”: André Dao’s Autofictional Epic of Memory’
10.20-10.30 – Short Break
10.30- 11.30 – Panel 2: (Counter-)Epic Constructions of the Self
Dominique Faria (University of the Azores, Ponta Delgada, Portugal), ‘Unmaking the Hero: Counter-Epic Biofictions of the Father in Gwenaëlle Aubry’s Personne and Hélène Gaudy’s Archipels’
Paula Alexandra Guimarães (University of Minho, Braga, Portugal), ‘Myths and Shapes of the Self in the Nineteenth-Century Poetic/Epic Narrative: Auto-Fiction, Inter(para)textuality, and the (De)construction of Identity’
11.30-11.40 – Short break
11.40-12.40 – Panel 3: Auto/Bio/Fictional Embodiment and the Shape(lessness) of a Self
Stephanie Ng (UK), ‘Elided Selves and Discredited Speech: Gendered Politics of Self-Representation in Autofiction’
Sushree Routray (Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India), ‘Maternal Ambivalence and Matrescence in Zehra Naqvi’s The Reluctant Mother’
12.40-13.15 – Lunch break
13.15-15.15 – Keynote session
Barbara Carnevali (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France), “Oneself as Others. On Rachel Cusk’s Outline Trilogy”
Josh Cohen in Conversation with Rachel Cusk and Barbara Carnevali
15.15-15.25 – Short break
15.25- 16.15 – Panel 4: Auto/Bio/Fiction and the Digital Shapes of a Self
Annie Cheng (University of Cambridge, UK), ‘Journaling with “Shakespeare”: Self-Writing Practices in the AI-Assisted Journal’
Max Shirley (University of Westminster, London, UK), ‘Networks of Confession: Digitality and Self-Expression’
16.15-16.25 – Short Break
16.25-17.25 – Panel 5: Intersubjective, Intersemiotic, Intertextual Quests for the Self
Nesrin Koç (Bournemouth University, UK, and Mudanya University, Türkiye), “Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity: Olivia Laing’s Auto/Biofictionalization and Unfinalizability in Crudo”
Nerida Woodhams Bertozzi (University of Bologna, Italy), ‘“La regina del silenzio”: epic forms, ekphrasis and silent film in Melania Mazzucco’s Silenzio’
17.25.17.35 – Short break
17.35-18.35 – Panel 6: Transgenerational, Transnational, Transmigrant (Counter-)Epic Selves
Massimiliano Manni (University of Milan and University of Brescia, Italy), ‘The Unlikely Hero’s Autofictional Journey: Jonathan Safran Foer and Ocean Vuong’s Family, Self and Other in Language and Otherwise’
Vasiliki Petsa (University of Thessaly, Greece), ‘A Seventh Man and Industrial Woman as epic auto/bio/fictional narratives of the transmigrant transclass’
18.35-18.45 – Final discussion and concluding remarks
See the Abstracts and Biographies.
Back to the Symposium’s main page.
