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The Colonial and Postcolonial Lives of the Book 17652005: Reaching The Margins
Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London.
3-5 November 2005
Conference Schedule
Please Note: This schedule is as final as is currently possible, but we reserve the right
to make further changes as necessary.
Thursday, 3rd November
10-11am Registration and Coffee (Main Foyer)
11-11.15am Conference Welcome: Warwick Gould (Director, Institute of
English Studies, UK) and Susheila Nasta (Open University, UK) (Chancellor’s Hall)
11.15-12.30pm Keynote (Chancellor’s Hall)
‘Books Without Borders: the Transnational Turn in Book History’
Sydney Shep (Victoria University of Wellington, NZ)
Chair: Robert Fraser (Open University, UK)
12.30-1.30pm Lunch (Provided in Common Room for the day’s speakers; others
own arrangements)
1.30-3.30pm Parallel Sessions
1/ European Classics, Colonial Diffusion (Room 329/30) Chair: Bob Owens
(Open University, UK)
Bill Bell (University of Edinburgh, Scotland): “St Jerome in Antarctica: ReInventing the Colonial Reader”.
Shafquat Towheed (IES, University of London, UK): ‘Two Paradigms of
Literary Production: a brief comparison of the production, circulation and legal status
of Rudyard Kipling’s Departmental Ditties (1886) and Indian Railway Library Texts.’
Patricia May B. Jurilla (SOAS, University of London, UK): ‘A New
Demand for Old Texts: Philippine metrical romances in the early twentieth century.’
Rashni Mooneram (University of Central England): ‘Shakespeare in Africa’.
2/ Process, Image, Text (Room 349/50) Chair: John Spiers, Founder HarvesterWheatsheaf, Professor of Book History, University of Glamorgan, UK
David Finkelstein (Queen Margaret University College, Edinburgh,
Scotland): ‘Paper and Press: Using Victorian media and sources for Colonial Book
History Studies.’
Ana Cláudia Suriani da Silva (Wolfson College, Oxford, UK): ‘Imperial
Ideas Adrift: German illustrations in the late nineteenth century Brazilian magazine A
Estação.’
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Sarah Brouillette (Syracuse University, USA): ‘Northern Irish Publishing
and “struggle tourism.”’
Lynda Prescott (Open University, UK): ‘Greene, Waugh and Economies of
Travel’
3.30-4pm Tea (Common Room)
4-6pm Parallel Sessions
3/ Print Cultures in India (Room 329/30) Chair: Javed Majeed (Queen Mary,
University of London, UK)
Hemjyoti Medhi (Tezpur University, Assam, India): ‘Mission Impossible!
Anglicization or Sanskritization: missionary writings and self-fashioning of Assamese
Cultural Nationalism in Colonial India”
Victoria Condie (University of London, UK): ‘Thacker, Spink and Company:
bookselling and publishing in mid-nineteenth century Calcutta.’
Susheila Nasta (Open University, UK): ‘Between Bloomsbury, Gandhi and
Transcultural Modernities: the publication and reception of Mulk Raj Anand’s
Untouchable (1935).’
Ruvani Ranasinha (Brunel University, UK): ‘Talking to India: The Literary
Production and Consumption of South Asian Writing in Britain and the USA (1940s1950s).’
4/ Literary Reception in Africa (Room 349/50) Chair: James Gibbs (University of
the West of England, UK)
Mpalive-Hangson Msiska (Birkbeck College and IES, University of
London): ‘Missionaries and the Beginnings of Popular Literature in Africa.’
James Currey (Former Editorial Director, Heinemann African Writer’s
Series, Founder, James Currey Publishing, UK): ‘Africa Writes Back.’
Gail Low (University of Dundee, Scotland): ‘The Making(s) of a Tradition:
Heinemann’s African Writers Series, 1962-7.’
Melissa R. Root (University of Denver, USA): ‘ “Insiders and Outsiders”:
The Publication of Dambudzo Marechera’.
6.30-7.30pm Wine reception and Private View of Conference Exhibition (DurningLawrence Room and Members’ Hall, Senate House Library, 4th Floor) Sponsored by
the Africa Book Centre
7.30pm Dinner (own arrangements)
Friday, 4th November
10-11am Keynote (Chancellor’s Hall)
‘Print Colonialism: Precolonial Grantha, Colonial Book, Postcolonial
Booker.’
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Harish Trivedi (University of Delhi, India)
Chair: Susheila Nasta (Open University, UK)
11-11.30am Coffee (Common Room)
11.30-1pm Parallel Sessions
1/ Empire and Education (Room 329/330) Chair: Mary Hammond
(Open University, UK)
Robert Fraser (Open University, UK) ‘School Readers in the Empire and the
Creation of Postcolonial Taste.’
Patrick Buckridge (Griffith University, Australia): ‘Appreciating the Empire:
George C. Harrap and Sons and the Australian Connection.’
Sani Abba Aliyu (Gombe State University, Nigeria): ‘Literature, Reading and
the Book in Colonial Nigeria 1886-1960.’
2/ Poetry and Print (Room 349/50) Chair: Becky Ayebia Clarke
Kitty Scoular Datta (Open University, UK): ‘Editions and Translations of the
Persian Poet Hafiz in India and England 1770-1897.’
Gemma Robinson (University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK): ‘ “A narrower
road”?: poetry and local publishing in the former British West Indies.’
Stewart Brown (Centre for West African Studies, University of Birmingham,
UK): ‘Anthologising in and for the Caribbean’.
1-2pm Lunch (provided in the Common Room for the day’s speakers; others own
arrangements)
2-4pm Round Table: Burning Issues in African Publishing (Chancellor’s
Hall)
Chair: Simon Gikandi (Princeton University, USA)
Matt Kibble, (Chadwyck-Healey African Writers Series Online Project, UK)
James Gibbs (University of the West of England, UK)
Malcolm Hacksley (Director, National English Literary Museum,
Grahamstown, South Africa).
Becky Ayebia Clarke (Former Commissioning Editor, African Writers
Series.)
4-4.30pm Tea (Common Room)
4.30-6.30pm Parallel Sessions
3/ Print in North America (Room 329/30) Chair: Sarah Brouillette
(Syracuse University, USA)
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Lily Santoro (University of Delaware, USA): ‘British and American
Almanacs in the Era of American Independence.’
Christina Pruett (Michigan State University, USA): ‘Spectres of Race and
Nation: criminal narrative in British Colonial America, 1674-1860.’
Francoise Le Jeune (Centre International des Langues, France): ‘From the
Margins of Empire: the colonial life of the first woman’s narrative of Canada –
Catherine Parr Traill, The Backwoods of Canada and the Society for the Propagation
of Useful Knowledge (1836).’
4/ Print in West Africa (Room 349/50) Chair: Robert Fraser (Open
University, UK)
Stephanie Newell and David Pratten (University of Sussex, UK): ‘News,
Networks and Nationalism: Notes Towards the Social History of the African-owned
Press.’
James Gibbs (University of the West of England, UK): ‘To Bury and to
Praise: an examination of Ghanaian funeral brochures and their place in contemporary
local publishing.’
Rebekah Hurt (Southern Methodist University, Dallas, USA): ‘Historic and
contemporary impacts of religiously-affiliated publishers in Ghana.’
6.45-8.15pm Drinks Reception (Common Room, 3rd Floor)
7.00 Launch of the African Writers Series Online
7.30 Launch of Africa issue of Wasafiri (No. 46), with readings by Brian
Chikwava (Winner of the 2004 Caine Prize for African Writing) and Chika
Unigwe (Commonwealth and BBC short story winner, shortlisted for 2004
Caine Prize for African Writing)
Sponsored by Wasafiri and Chadwyck-Healey
8.15pm Dinner (own arrangements)
Saturday, 5th November
10-11am Keynote (Chancellor’s Hall)
‘The Magic of Print: Africa and the Book’
Simon Gikandi (Princeton University, USA)
Chair: Mpalive-Hangson Msiska (Birkbeck College and IES, University of London)
11-11.30am Coffee (Common Room)
11.30-1pm Parallel Sessions
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1/ Censorship, Copyright and Resistance (Room 329/30) Chair:
Shafquat Towheed (IES, University of London, UK)
Matthew Gibson (University of Surrey, UK): ‘Publishing under the yoke: a
short history of the Bulgarian book from Paisy of Hilendar to Yavorov.’
Nourdin Bejjit (Open University, UK): ‘The Role of Copyright Law in
Morocco.’
Rachel Matteau (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South
Africa): ‘The Readership of Banned Literature in Apartheid South Africa.’
2/ Missionaries As Publishers (Room 349/50) Chair: Ian Willison
(Former Rare Books Librarian, The British Library; Institute of English Studies, UK)
Uoldelul Chelati Dirar (University of Bologna, Italy): ‘Printing Old Words
and Impressing New Identities: missionary publishing activity in Eritrea (18671941).’
Ivan Page (Society of Missionaries, Rome, Italy): ‘Origin and Growth of the
“White Fathers’ Printing Press” at Bukalasa, Uganda.’
Pier M. Larson (Johns Hopkins University, USA): ‘Reading the Book in
Madagascar: Habits of Vernacular Literacy in Imerina, 1820-1840.’
1-2pm Lunch (provided in the Common Room for the day’s speakers; others own
arrangements)
2-3.15pm Plenary on India: (Chancellor’s Hall)
‘From Empire to Globalization: the Social Lives of Institutions.’
Priya Joshi (Temple University, USA):
Chair and Respondent: Graham Shaw (Head of Asian, African and Pacific Books,
The British Library, UK)
3.15-3.45pm Tea (Chancellor’s Foyer)
3.45-5.15pm Double Plenary on South Africa (Chancellor’s Hall) Chair: Dennis
Walder (Open University, UK)
Francis Galloway (University of Pretoria): ‘Lives of the Book in the South of
Africa: from Shaman “printers”, inscribing spiritual visions on rock faces, to the
challenge of publishing books in eleven official languages in post-apartheid South
Africa.’
Andrew van der Vlies (University of Sheffield): ‘Publishing South African
Protest in the 1960s: the politics and economics of “marginal” cultural production.’
5.15-6pm Summing Up from Robert Fraser (Chancellor’s Hall)
6pm. Conference Ends