Olive Schreiner Centenary Workshop, an online roundtable and discussion hosted by the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, on Monday 14 December 2020, 14:00-15:30 (GMT) / 16:00-17:30 (SAST)

On 11 December 1920, the South African writer, novelist and intellectual Olive Schreiner, aged 65, died in her sleep in the historic port city of Cape Town. Buried in the former mining town of Kimberley, Schreiner was later to be exhumed and buried atop Buffelskop Mountain near Cradock—where she wrote at least a significant part of her most widely known work of literary fiction, The Story of an African Farm (1883). Her name has lived on through generations of readers and scholars attributing to Schreiner a rich and varied legacy: whether as the founding antecedent of a South African novel-writing tradition, a formative voice for twentieth-century feminism, or a robust critic of imperialism and capitalism. Reflecting on her enduring presence in the century after her death, how do we begin to locate Schreiner’s legacy today, and what might the horizon of Schreiner scholarship resemble going forward?

We are delighted to invite you to the Olive Schreiner Centenary Workshop, a virtual discussion hosted by the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge, on Monday 14 December 2020, 14:00-15:30 (GMT) / 16:00-17:30 (SAST). The conversation will be opened with a Roundtable with Elleke Boehmer (Oxford), Carolyn Burdett (Birkbeck), and Jade Munslow Ong (Salford), chaired by Christopher Warnes (Cambridge), followed by a Q&A and general discussion. We will also be joined by Caitlin Stobie, who will be reading some creative work inspired by her journey up Buffelskop Mountain. We look forward to an afternoon of lively discussion on one of southern Africa’s most prolific literary voices.

Please register for the Zoom link in advance on the Eventbrite page here.

For any further information, please contact the workshop organisers at jmw252@cam.ac.uk (Joe Shaughnessy) or bk412@cam.ac.uk (Benjamin Klein).

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