SU English teachers present papers in int’l confab on literary studies

Silliman University Department of English and Literature faculty members presented their individual papers at the 11th Literary Studies Conference, October 3-4, 2023 in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

With the theme, “Geopolitics and Literature: Reimagining the Past, Present, and Future,” the conference gathered students, scholars, and researchers from various disciplines to discuss the current geopolitical reality and its long-term implications.

SU Literature and Creative Writing teachers Angela Fabunan, Rina Fernandez Hill, Lady Flor Partosa Koenig, and Kaycee Melon presented four papers on various topics in literary studies.

Fabunan put forward a theory of form as boundary, where form is an invitation for poets across time and space to inhabit a space of response and meditation.

Fernandez Hill examined the significance of Tagalog Romance novels to the literature classroom and to the Romance readers’ lives.

Partosa Koenig focused on the Paghimamat 2019, which is part of her dissertation project, situating it in the struggle to navigate aspirations/desires to be globally visible and locally grounded to the traditions created and celebrated through “mugna,” the Visayan word for “create.”

Melon explored the construction and reconstruction of historical narratives in Eric Gamalinda’s novel titled, “Empire of Memory” using Historiographic Metafiction.

The conference was organized by the English Letters Department and English Language Studies at Universitas Sanata Dharma in collaboration with Ateneo de Manila University and the universities and institutions under the Critical Island Studies Consortium.