Keynote Address (11:45 – 12:45)

Dr Rita Sakr (Maynooth University): On Siege Starvation and More-than-Realist Aesthetics in Samar Yazbek’s Planet of Clay

The talk will address Samar Yazbek’s novel Planet of Clay (2021, translation of Al-Mashshā’a [The Walker], 2017), especially its articulation of the affective, physiological and forensic parameters of civilians’ (im)mobilities in Syria, specifically in the besieged Eastern Ghouta suburb of Damascus. The analysis will focus on the imagination and non-time-space of its central child-adult main character Rima who grows up at the edge of a Damascene camp inhabited by Palestinian refugees. Rima challenges conditions of forced (im)mobilisation amidst checkpoints, enforced disappearances, siege, chemical attacks and gender-inflected harm. Rima’s intermedial re-imaginings of fantastical literature in tandem with visual (surrealist) art as the representational space of the Syrian necroscape is central to Yazbek’s interconnected aesthetic and political interventions with respect to reconceptualising the links between the right to embodied resistance and the power of the imagination that challenges the limitations of testimonial narrative. The talk analyses the affect of fear and the psychosomatic expression of hunger in relation to what I call the ‘more- than-realist aesthetics of uncontainability’, mediated in the experimental deployment of the narrative correlatives of a visually inspired imaginary of hauntological planetary enchantment against the political geography of encirclement.

Lebanese-born Rita Sakr is Assistant Professor in postcolonial and global literatures at Maynooth University. Among various publications, she is the author of two monographs, co- editor of several volumes, co-director/co-producer of a documentary film on Beirut, and author of many articles and chapters especially engaging with migration, Arab literary and cultural production, decoloniality, and the environmental humanities. Co-chair of MU Sanctuary and co-founder of the Irish Network for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, Rita teaches, researches, and serves on public engagement initiatives and funded research projects focused particularly on forced displacement. She is a previous judge of the Dublin Literary Award and currently a member of the jury of the Rooney prize for Irish Literature. Rita’s monograph Arab Displacements: Experimental Literature, Necropolitics, and Decolonial Hauntology is under contract with Edinburgh University Press.

Panel 1 – Marginal? (10:45 – 11:45)

Lara Sammut: Do Women Really Talk More Than Men?

Nothing is as unnatural as a talkative man or a quiet woman (Scottish proverb). The North Sea will sooner be found wanting in water than a woman at a loss for words (Jutlandic proverb).

My study ‘Post-Secondary Students’ Use of Genderlects: Power Relations in Spoken Interactions – A Sociolinguistic Perspective’ is concerned with the use of language styles and features, which are also known as genderlects, by post-secondary students. One of the features it explores is volubility and loquaciousness. Many people seem to think that women talk more than men. However, is this opinion based on stereotypes or facts? In this paper, this question will be explored in detail. First, an overview of the available literature on volubility and loquaciousness will be presented, followed by the data obtained from 500 questionnaires filled in by post-secondary students. These post-secondary students were asked about their thoughts on volubility and loquaciousness, among other topics. This will then be compared to the students’ own volubility and loquaciousness through an analysis of their participation in six focus groups, each made up of four students out of a total cohort of eight, four male and four female. An analysis of the number of words spoken by each participant and the number of turns taken in each focus group will be presented. The data will then be compared to the post-secondary students’ thoughts on volubility and loquaciousness, obtained from the questionnaires. This will help the researcher obtain an answer to the question: is the opinion that women talk more than men based on stereotypes or facts?

Lara Sammut has been in the teaching profession for more than 20 years. She teaches English at Advanced and Intermediate levels in one of the Maltese sixth forms. She is a part-time PhD student and her area of research is Language and Gender. Her study is titled: ‘Post-Secondary Students’ Use of Genderlects: Power Relations in Spoken Interactions – A Sociolinguistic Perspective’. Lara Sammut previously read for a BA (Hons) in English, a PGCE and an MA at the University of Malta. She is now in her final year of studies.

Emma Cassar: Retellings – Useful or Over-Hyped?

Young Adult Literature (Y.A.) is a genre which allows youths to experience the world around them through texts. Not only does this genre give readers an opportunity to see themselves in the works they read but it also aims at showing the experiences of others. In recent years, retellings have come to form an integral part of the Y.A. genre; despite this, they have received backlash for lacking originality and taking away from the original source work. Thus, the following questions arise: Are retellings simply copies of original source texts or do they contribute something new which can allow them to be called a work in their own right? And in the broader context of the world we live in, do retellings allow for proper representation of marginalised groups? This paper argues that retellings, in the context of Y.A. literature, allow for beloved stories to be retold in a way that lets contemporary readers feel seen. More specifically, it argues that retellings by authors of diverse races, ethnicities, and backgrounds serve as very effective mediums to write about a marginalised person’s experience, representing them through the use of familiar tropes or stories in a world where they are easily overlooked simply because they are different. In order to answer the questions above, this paper analyses Malorie Blackman’s young adult fiction novel Noughts and Crosses (2001) with reference to the Shakespearean classic play which it retells, Romeo and Juliet, published in 1597. The use of Romeo and Juliet demonstrates how a work written in the 1590s, aimed towards a white, English audience, and focusing on the themes of love and family feuds, can be reworked into an original text by an American woman of colour in the 21st century in order to subvert and defamiliarise readers’ expectations by placing black people (Crosses) as the governing race, thus expanding on issues of race and suffering whilst also retaining Shakespeare’s concepts of the star-crossed lovers and warring factions.

Emma Cassar is a student at the University of Malta. Having finished her BA (Hons) in English, she is currently reading for an MA in English Literary Studies. Her areas of interest include literature in comics and video games, queer theory, feminist theory, and literature and mythology. Her current research focuses on the value of retellings in literature in relation to marginalised groups.

Kayleigh Frostick: Gender Dykenamics: What’s Up With Lesbian Gender Nonconformity?

‘Who was I now—woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices.’

This paper seeks to counterbalance the contemporary trend of commodifying aspects of queer culture to cater to the consumption of cis-hetero outsiders. I argue that much of queer history has been filtered through an outsider’s perspective, and therefore a deeper dig into queer history is required for authentic queer voices to be heard. Central to this discussion is the intrinsic link between the lesbian experience and the broad spectrum of gender nonconformity, encompassing butch, nonbinary, transmasculine, and transgender male experiences as well as the intersection between them. To do this, I discuss excerpts from seminal works such as Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues, Halberstam’s Female Masculinity and Transgender Butch, Bornstein’s Gender Workbook, and Butler’s Gender Trouble, through these seeking to elaborate on the nuanced complexities of lesbian identity and experience, challenging conventional binaries and fixed categorisations. Whilst not comprehensive by any means, this paper seeks to assert the importance of centring queer voices and experiences in discussions of queer history that are not sanitised for mainstream consumption. Ultimately, this paper advocates for a more inclusive and nuanced approach to understanding dykehood that celebrates its gender nonconformity.

Kayleigh Frostick recently earned her BA (Hons) in Classics with Sociology from the University of Malta and is now pursuing an MA in English Literary Studies. Her main fields of interest typically include queer theory, gender studies, and feminism. Currently, her research focuses on gender identity and performance within lesbian spaces, ranging from the traditional butch-femme spectrum to transmasculine and nonbinary identities.

Panel 2 – Whose Voice? (10:45 – 11:45)

Jasmine Bajada: If a Snowdrop Could Speak…

If a snowdrop could speak, what would it say? From Rachel Carson’s classic work of environmental science Silent Spring (1962) to Jonathan Bate’s more recent text of literary ecocriticism The Song of the Earth (2000), writers have posited the presence of nonhuman ‘voices’ in the natural soundscape, voices that are, at times, inaudible to our all-too-human ears. Nonhuman voices are often acknowledged on a figurative plane to express ecocide in terms of a world on the brink of being silenced. However, attributing voice to nature is not simply a metaphor used to galvanise it into vitality with the aim of awakening humanity to the need for an environmental ethic. For David Abram, who demonstrates an animate earth in his widely influential work The Spell of the Sensuous (1997), nature is multi-voiced and human language is one of its myriad ‘styles of speech’. Latent in the spoken and written word, therefore, is the possibility of re-wilding human language to re-enchant the muted earth. And as Jane Bennett argues in The Enchantment of Modern Life (2001), ‘[t]he experience of enchantment is […] an essential component of an ethical, ecologically aware life’. Drawing from the eco-philosophical work of new materialists David Abram and Jane Bennett, this paper proposes to consider a flower — the snowdrop — and its literary representation by two contemporary poets, Louise Glück in The Wild Iris (1992) and Alice Oswald in Weeds and Wild Flowers (2009), to explore how the human voice can be modulated to speak about or for a nonhuman subject with the sensibility needed to bring its otherness closer to our own.

Jasmine Bajada graduated from the University of Malta with a BA (Hons) degree in English and an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Criticism. Her research interests include nature writing, ecopoetics, and philosophical approaches to ecocriticism. Some peer-reviewed journals that have published her work include CounterText (Edinburgh University Press) and Fourth Genre (Michigan State University Press). She is also a poet and her debut poetry collection, ilsien selvaġġ, was published last year by Horizons. Her poetry in English translation has been featured in Modern Poetry in Translation.

Jeremy Cauchi: Spectral Hauntings and Uncanniness in Edgar Allan Poe’s Ligeia and Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca

In Ligeia and Rebecca, Edgar Allan Poe and Daphne du Maurier’s unreliable narrators recall vivid accounts of significant episodes in their lives. Both narratives centre around the figure of a deceased wife who continues to haunt and plague the memories of the characters that survive her. The texts expertly blend the boundaries between life and death, invoking spectral imagery and relying on the power of memory to such an extent that the deceased’s presence continues to be felt even beyond the grave. By using Tzvetan Todorov’s notion of the uncanny as that event which initially appears to be supernatural but is ultimately grounded in logic and revealed to have plausible explanations, this paper will look at how Poe and du Maurier carefully straddle the lines between reality and delusion. Through the gothic elements that heavily dominate both texts, and which contribute to an atmosphere of uncertainty, narrator and reader alike find themselves questioning the nature of what they are experiencing, and whether it is real or merely the working of a troubled mind. Ultimately, this paper will look to answer why the two writers decided to depict characters haunted by figures from the past, and to show how the use of spectral hauntings and the uncanny contribute to the complex processes of grief and guilt that the characters undergo.

Jeremy Cauchi is a student at the University of Malta, who is currently pursuing an MA in English Literary Studies after being awarded a BA in English with first class honours. His primary areas of interest in literary theory include ecocriticism, post-colonialism, and Marxist criticism. Most of the work and research he has done in literary studies has centred around the short story genre, gothic fiction, modernism, and experimentation in literature, particularly in the way that these have developed and gained importance within an American context.

Melissa Mawdsley: The Impact of AI Authorship on Today’s Readers and Literary Critics

With the recent rise of Artificial Intelligence, more specifically, of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Gemini, which can generate millions of words of text within minutes, the way the literary community has defined and understood certain ideas and roles has changed. Placing its focus on our experience as readers and critics of AI-generated texts, this paper asks the overlying question: How does knowing that a text was written by AI affect our reading experience and our approach in critiquing it? The paper focuses on three aspects of this issue: how does knowing that the text was written by a nonhuman agent affect our relationship with the text and its characters? How does it change how we interpret the text linguistically? And how do we critique such a text? The first question revolves around the traditionally shared human connection between reader and author, which assumes that the two agents inherently share a set of understandings about the world, both socially and physically. The second focuses on the linguistic aspect of generative text, highlighting how meaning-making for machines differs from that of humans based on their own umwelt of linguistic representations. The third underlines how an AI-generated text may be critically approached by outlining N. Katherine Hayles’ four approaches to critiquing such a text, all of which take the fact that AI is the author into consideration, and thus questions whether the author’s mechanical nature should/will always be central to this discussion. The paper will close off by questioning the very premise of the initial research question, that is: can sole authorship of a text even be attributed to AI? How much of authorship is the conceptualisation of a text and how much is the execution? And what does AI-authorship mean for the future of literary and art communities?

Melissa Mawdsley is a literary researcher with a BA (Hons) in English and an MA in English (Modern and Contemporary Literature and Criticism), both from the University of Malta. Her research interests include electronic literature, digital humanities, poststructuralism, posthumanism, and feminist theory.

Panel 3 – Famous Much? (13:45 – 14:45)

Daniel Cini: Reading Emma Watson: The Construction of a Bookish Persona

What level of agency do celebrities have in the way the public perceives them? How do they navigate their persona? And what affective power does their identity have on social transformation? These are some of the questions this paper addresses in relation to Emma Watson – actor, celebrity, book advocate, feminist-activist, and storyteller. I discuss how, across the trajectory of her acting career, she has embodied the bookish characters she has performed, and utilised her celebrity status to initiate a process of social critique, while actively engaging with her audience and followers. This case study takes its point of departure from Jackie Stacey’s two modes of celebrity identification – cinematic and extra-cinematic – and builds on theories of popular culture, cross-platform perspectives, and the presentation and perception of self. The first section of the paper discusses Watson’s casting and portrayal of the literary characters Hermione Granger from the film adaptations of the Harry Potter series, Belle from Disney’s live-action musical adaptation Beauty and the Beast, and Meg March from the film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic Little Women. I consider Watson’s (re)interpretation of these seminal roles through her performance as well as her reflections during promotional interviews. I further evaluate the formative influence both Hermione and Belle had in developing her feminist voice and stance. The second part of the paper considers Watson’s engagement with books primarily through her online book club, Our Shared Shelf, as well as her collaboration with the Book Fairies initiative that promotes reading through the sharing of books in public spaces. I discuss how celebrity book clubs render an alternative approach to reading culture by offering a more intimate and non-academic mode of literary consumption (Collins, 2010). Finally, I look at Watson’s 2022 directorial debut of the advertisement promoting the refillable fragrance Paradoxe by Prada. This short film, starring Watson herself as eight different women, is interpreted as the culmination of her taking ownership of the narrative surrounding her persona, and leads me to question: has Emma Watson finally reclaimed her story?

Daniel Cini holds an MA in English and is a PhD candidate with the Department of English at the University of Malta. His research interests include fairy tales, storytelling, storyworlds, persona, and the interplay between literature, media, and culture. Daniel is a Senior Manager with the National Literacy Agency, under the Ministry for Education, Sport, Youth, Research and Innovation, where he develops and coordinates educational programmes, initiatives, and campaigns that promote reading and writing among children and young adults. Daniel is the author of the children’s books Lejl fit-Teatru (2019) and Il-Patt tal-Prinċep (2023).

Nikolai Zammit: From Gods to GOATs: Tracing the Shift from Myth to Metric in Sports Hero Worship

This paper investigates the evolution of sports hero worship, primarily focusing on Diego Maradona’s ascent to a mythologised figure – D10S – and the transition to the contemporary emphasis on statistical assessment, exemplified by Lionel Messi. The discussion seeks to highlight a broader societal shift in defining sports greatness by analysing the transition from narrative-driven adulation to a data-focused appraisal. Central to this inquiry is Maradona’s ‘Hand of God’ goal, a moment that encapsulates the zenith of mythological adulation (or condemnation) in football. Read against Barthesian ideas of myth, this research posits that the myth of Maradona stands as one deeply rooted in the masses. Over time, the tale of Maradona has transcended sports to echo the timeless narratives of defiance, signifying the chance to disrupt established myths. On the other hand, while Messi’s greatness is undoubted, is there (and can there be) the myth of Messi? Largely regarded as the ‘GOAT’ (Greatest of All Time), Messi’s esteemed status is primarily attributed to fans and media, who draw comparisons to other players, notably Cristiano Ronaldo. This recognition, however, is grounded in the quantification of records. Thus, while unforgettable moments and quasi-religious reverence build Maradona’s legend, discussions often frame Messi’s status in terms of awards and statistical achievements. By examining these contrasting narratives, this paper suggests a shift in sports culture, fandom, and the perception of athletic greatness.

Nikolai Zammit graduated from the University of Malta with a BA (Hons) degree in English and is currently reading for an MA English Literary Studies. His research interests typically include Classical and Modern Drama, post-structuralism, phenomenology, and masculinities. He is currently reading and exploring how representations of the body and bodily action can serve as metaphors for conceptualising ideas in rhetoric and literature.

Valentina Astarita: How Can a Memoir Be Utilised to Reframe a Famous Female Subject’s Story in the Public Eye?

Famous females are often vilified and demonised by the public sphere, often due to false and damaging narratives which are carelessly spread. A figure who was subjected to such harassment was the former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, who was universally criticised and ostracised for commencing an affair with the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton. Lewinsky was silenced, deprived of her own voice, and deemed a homewrecker by many. This was until Lewinsky utilised a biographer, Andrew Morton, to mediate her voice and reframe her reputation with a common public that had previously eaten her alive. Through the reading of certain narrative and feminist texts, this paper sets out to figure out exactly how Morton was able to mediate Lewinsky’s story to the world and, therefore, transform her whorish reputation into one that could ultimately be understood and respected.

Valentina Astarita recently completed a BA in English and Linguistics and is currently reading for an MA in English Literary Studies at the University of Malta. Her research interests are mainly concerned with Cultural Studies, theories regarding intersectionality and feminism, and a slight dabble in Anglo-Italian studies.

Panel 4 – Speculation? (13:45 – 14:45)

Katya Mangion: Magical Realism in the Post-Literary

Magical realism is a style of writing that uses a realistic setting but adds certain magical elements to the narrative, while never explaining where these elements come from or why they exist. This allows the text to be left open for the varying interpretations of the readers of this style of work. Over the years, the use of this writing style has increased, and more contemporary authors are employing it in their writing to explore situations that vary from the political and social to even the personal. It is also well known as a genre that constantly goes against established notions of literature, ever since it gained popularity with Latin American authors such as Gabriel García Márquez after the 1950s. One way it does so is through the relationship between fiction and its representation of reality, and the notion that it has become increasingly harder for fiction to add up to what is experienced in real life. However, through its close attention to even the most subtle details of real life, this genre can explore certain things that other genres cannot. It also operates at a higher level than just a critique of real life, often offering a more nuanced exploration of reality than most realist novels. In this presentation, I will be looking at how magical realism can challenge traditional notions of literature as a counter-textual strategy. I will be exploring what prompted this move through different examples taken from the history of the genre and also the changes the genre went through in order to explore how it can survive in a ‘post-literary’ age. Ultimately, I will explore if authors who employ magical realism in their writing are successful in what they aim to do, and what it means in general for this literature in the future.

Katya Mangion studies at the University of Malta and is now reading for an MA in English Literary Studies. Her research interests are many, but currently focus on contemporary literature, feminist theory and gender theory, as well as literary genres such as speculative fiction and horror. She is currently researching magical realism and its contemporary implications.

Martina Vella: Wings of the Past Weaving the Future: Exploring Dragons in Medieval and Contemporary Literature

How have the depictions of dragons in literature evolved from medieval to contemporary times? And what does this evolution reveal about the changing perceptions of political power and social structures in these two periods? Whether consciously or not, the genre of fantasy has always had a close link to politics, due to its habit of adapting social or political structures in whatever way the author saw fit. A narrative world built on separating activities based on gender, such as fighting for men and reading for women, would explore different social commentary than a fictional world that differentiates people based on their eye colour. Woven within a plethora of fantasy literature, the mythical creature of the dragon carries with it certain perceptions and myths. With the help of texts like Chaucer’s The Legend of Good Women and Rosaria Munda’s Fireborne, this paper seeks to uncover whether the figure of the dragon in medieval literature and contemporary literature perpetuate the same myths, or whether perhaps the different time periods utilise the figure of the dragon for differing reasons. Why has the common medieval trope of slaying dragons for glory turned into the contemporary notion of riding upon them in order to gain power? The research will cover a mixture of textual analysis – as the importance of how the author writes the dragon within their fictional world affects how it is ultimately perceived by the reader – and an analysis of the overarching symbolic meaning of the text and figure as a whole. Is there a change in the way dragons are used within literature, or as they are perceived as a whole, or has our perception of these winged beasts remained the same after centuries of change?

Martina Vella is currently reading for an MA in English Literary Studies after graduating from the University of Malta with a BA (Hons) in English. Her main research interests include medieval literature, modernism, gender studies, and formalism, among others. Currently, she is interested in the way medieval texts might influence contemporary fantasy narratives.

Nicole Pisani: Goth is Good? Bodies of Violence, Preacher-Hillbillies, and the Southern Gothic Grotesque

The purpose of this ‘inquiry’ is to examine the extent to which violence, as it features in Southern Gothic literature, establishes an intersectional relation between the human body, religious spirituality, and environmental determinism. Through reference to what Steven Bruhm (1994) identifies as ‘the politics of pain’ underlying the grotesque origins of Gothicism, it is possible to configure human nature as being at inherent odds with the capacity for spiritual transcendence. By lurching the human body to the fore against a landscape of visceral trauma, Southern Gothicism contemplates the failures of both rationality and spirituality, exposing the ‘real’ to be an inescapable ecological plateau. However, in juxtaposing Gothic notions of the sublime with the religious sites of the Deep South and Appalachia, liminal spaces afflicted by violent transgressions against the body (Street and Crow, 2016), Southern authors call into question the very existence of an im/material divide, tying transcendence not to the human mind but to the lay of the land. An analysis of the Southern preacher—those human-ish figures of authority whose ‘enlightenment’ tasks them with man’s salvation—may explicate these issues. For instance, by illustrating the convoluted relationship that exists between power, spiritual community, and the violent lengths individuals can push themselves towards for the sake of redemption, Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood (1952) outlines a vision of reality where haunting is not a fantastical occurrence, but rather one that takes shape only in the process of being inscribed upon the body. A second, more culturally elusive character type comes into play through the disquieting presence of the hillbilly. Here, Cormac McCarthy’s Child of God (1973) further de-hierarchises body and soul by depicting their degradation as necessarily occurring in parallel. Viewing the two tropes together as manifestations of what Kelly Hurley (1996) terms the ‘abhuman’ may hence lend credence to an understanding of the human condition that is, paradoxically, closest to its essence when it is at its most violent, even within the confines of civility.

Nicole Pisani is a student currently reading for an MA in English Literary Studies after graduating with a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Malta. Her research interests include depictions of ‘the human’ in such genres as science fiction and gothic horror, the desirability of queer/grotesque bodies, and the ‘working-class’ aesthetics of popular/online culture. Her chosen frameworks primarily tend to foreground Marxist and post-structuralist worldviews. She hopes to pursue both critical and traditional creative writing endeavours, with the understanding that literature, through language’s political complexities, continues to maintain relevance in the scrutiny of contemporary contexts.

Panel 5 – What Answers? (15:00 – 16:00)

Jeremy Gatt: I Prefer Not To!? Responding to Bartleby’s Question

Who has not dealt with Herman Melville’s ‘Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street’, or, rather, with Bartleby’s ‘I prefer not to’? Blanchot, Derrida, Hardt, Negri, Deleuze, Agamben, Zizek, Byung-Chul Han, and Deleuze have all made something of him. And so has Thomas Pynchon. In ‘The Deadly Sins/Sloth; Nearer, My Couch, to Thee’, Pynchon provides a brief (ironic) genealogy of Sloth, from sin against God (à la Hamlet), to sin against Capital (à la Bartleby). In short, Sloth and Resistance. That is, Resistance and the ‘mavens of sloth’ (Authors). That is, Resistance and Vita Activa, Vita In-Activa, and a Vita Contemplativa which may (or may not) grace either of the two. But Hamlet and Bartleby? What do we make of this relation? Pynchon proliferates – Kafka, Musil, Hemmingway, Sartre. He names them all and, we imagine, proffers his own creations: Oedipa Maas; Tyrone Slothrop; Benny Profane and Herbert Stencil; Mason (Stargazer) & Dixon (Surveyor)? Perhaps Hamlet and Horatio? No, Hamlet and the Ghost? Therefore, Bartleby and his Employer – Lawyer and Narrator? A connection only Deleuze appears to consider. In Deleuze’s Bartleby; or The Formula, it is a question of a Melvillian relation between primary and secondary nature. That is, primary wilful demons (i.e., Moby Dick’s Ahab), primary will-less innocents (i.e., Bartleby), and ‘the one on the side of the Law, guardian of the divine and human laws of secondary nature: the prophet’. That is, ‘Ishmael and the Attorney’: ‘Witnesses, narrators, [and] interpreters’. Those who are privy to the world of demons and innocents, but only through the law, thus only through betrayal. Is this the demonic betrayal that Deleuze identifies in On the Superiority of Anglo-American Literature as the mark of said supremacy? More importantly, what does it question us to do? This paper will survey this constellation and proffer an interpretation on the basis of Bernard Stiegler’s tragic promethean stance. That is, a certain affectivity of the one called to think and care [penser et panser] by the question.

Jeremy Gatt is a graduate of the University of Malta with an MA in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Criticism. He is currently reading for an MA in Philosophy.

Kathleen Vella: The Question? What? When? How? Why? Where?

Most academic trajectories tend to start with a defined question which one aims to answer. After six and a half years of doctoral research, my research question has proliferated into many questions and the net result is nothing short of fascinating. The question I posed at the start of my doctoral research was whether Art was an influence on the work of D. H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf, specifically in their novels, Women in Love and To the Lighthouse respectively. The research developed in such a fashion that the study was immediately re-directed to a revision of the question itself. Was Art an influence? Is the question itself correct? As the research ensued, the question about the question indicated that it had to be reconfigured, redefined, and challenged. Art, it transpired, was much more than an influence. It was at this precise realisation that the question transformed itself into a tunnelling inquiry. So what did Art really mean to Lawrence and Woolf? How far back can the influence, or presence of Art be traced? How did it affect their work? Did it affect them before it affected their work? How did it affect them? Were they art lovers, art critics, or artists in their own right? Or were they aesthetes? What kind of aesthetes? How? Why? The resurgence of new questions seemed to indicate newly found territory. The study aspires to end, just for this project, with a few answers, which in reality are nothing but questions. This paper seeks to share an academic experience and an account of a journey, which involved an element of important decision making; an experience which is characteristic of most academic endeavours and applicable to most academic scenarios. The paper aims to disclose some important lessons learnt and a brief overview of the trajectory undertaken.

Kathleen Vella is a Lawrentian scholar whose area of specialisation is the influence of Art on the work of D. H. Lawrence and on modernist literatures. She has presented papers at several D. H. Lawrence conferences and events and has published peer-reviewed articles in Lawrentian publications, also writing for the D. H. Lawrence Society of Great Britain Website and Newsletter and serving on the Executive Board of the D. H. Lawrence Society of North America. Her essay titled ‘Insights into D. H. Lawrence’s Sardinia’ was published in 2022 in a monograph by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Kathleen holds a BA (Hons) and an MA in English Literature and is in the final stages of her doctoral studies at the University of Malta. She is the Language Area Leader for English Studies and teaches at St. Martin’s College, Swatar.

Panel 6 – Post-New? (15:00 – 16:00)

Marcon De Giorgio: Meme-ingful Resistance: An Exploration of the Meme as a Tool for Activism

Memes are cultural artefacts. According to Limor Shifman, they reflect both the offline world and the online world. Through the act of sharing, creating, and posting a meme, one is able to express feelings of either disagreement or acceptance to the message present. Shifman states that memes are an effective means of persuasion and a mode of expression in public discussions. This means that memes can be used to express ideas of activism and resistance, but also of prejudice and oppression. ‘Palestine’s Watermelon Movement’ is an example of memes being used for activism. Originally used in 1967, the Watermelon was a symbol of Palestine, due to the fact that the colours, red, green, white and black, coincide with the flag. Since the use of the flag emoji was leading to repression online, internet users were quick to use the watermelon to show their support. Artists implemented this iconography in their artworks, resulting in an art meme. The art depicted characters from popular franchises holding the Palestinian flag, eating or holding a watermelon, or both. This portrayal is by far the most popular as it allows netizens to show solidarity and express their opinion on the situation while bypassing censorship. Apart from offering solidarity with Palestine, their aim is to also show Palestinian children that people are fighting for them. As such, a lot of the characters depicted in these art memes were from cartoons typically enjoyed by the younger generations. This brings us to the penultimate question: Why are Memes used for activism? Due to their nature, specifically their long lives and fast replication, memes have become an effective tool to spread a message quickly. Moreover, their ability to simplify an argument allows them to easily convince the audience. Thus, they become a powerful tool for any movement.

Marcon De Giorgio, a University of Malta alumna, has completed a BA and an MA degree in English. Her MA thesis was on ‘The Rhetoric of Misogynistic Memes’. She hopes to soon continue her academic journey and tackle a PhD. Her interests lie in the discursive power of memes, digital culture, the implications of generative AI, and online discourse.

Jessica Meli: To Study, or Not to Study Shakespeare Still? THAT Is the Question

‘Why do we have to study Shakespeare?’ is a question I am often asked by Gen Z readers. Initially, the answer seemed clear to me, but upon delving deeper into the rationale behind this question, multiple others arose. The present generation of young readers has witnessed the rise of electronic literature (eLit), adding popularity to hyper-fiction, interactive fiction (IF), as well as short-short stories (such as text novels). Thus, one cannot help but wonder how even after the recent changes made in English Literature curricula, teens in Maltese secondary schools are still required to study (and not only familiarise themselves with) William Shakespeare. Undoubtedly, the playwright is held in high esteem in the literary field, but having a 400-year-old writer occupy such a permanent position in newly designed curricula, with no presence of contemporary texts, makes it seem like a message is being transmitted: the idea of what we consider to be valuable literature. Are shorter texts with a less conventional structure, more colloquial language, and relatively simplified plots not attributed equal literary value, or do they go disregarded simply because they are more concise, thus making length a determining criterion for the literary? Why are we making an effort to force young readers with very short attention spans, most of whom are used to compact and interactive texts, to read older, longer, printed texts, when the same objectives can be met with texts whose form they are naturally drawn to, texts with content they are effortlessly interested in, contemporary texts which mirror the evolution of literature in the digital age they have been born and raised in? By no means does this deem Shakespeare irrelevant or meritless to contemporary society, but as literary agents who should be introducing and drawing screenagers to the literary world, rather than pushing them away by a choice of texts that in their eyes seems rather distant and detached from reality, are we doing justice to the overall canon? Seemingly, these questions are all pointing in the same direction. We are stuck. Shakespeare is not passé, we are.

Jessica Meli is a part-time student currently reading for an MA in English Literary Studies following a BA (Hons) in English and a Master’s in Teaching and Learning. Her ever-present passion for English literature drove her towards her chosen career path, in the hope of instilling her adolescent students with the same love for literature. While she is particularly drawn to modern texts, an area which she delved into in her first dissertation, she is now broadening her focus to combine her personal interest in literature with the teaching profession. Her research thus looks into alternative, more contemporary texts to teach literary skills in a manner that resonates better with students, while still aligning with the learning objectives set by English Literature curricula.

Ulaş Ersezen: The How and Why of Sally Rooney’s Post-Internet Style: Speculations on the Post-Internet Style and Aesthetic in Beautiful World, Where Are You

Post-internet is the term coined by Marisa Olson to describe an aesthetic in the fine arts which reflected influences of cyberculture without necessarily incorporating elements of cyberculture in their content. Although it is a term utilised mainly in fine arts, a post-internet aesthetic and style can, also, be observed in contemporary literature. This phenomenon in contemporary literature may have important implications regarding the study of digital humanities and the post-literary. Thus, asking the questions of how post-internet literature came to be and what could be the techniques that create a post-internet style and aesthetic can provide a base for future research on the subject. This paper examines Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You in the context of post-internet literature. The study speculates on three elements that reflect the post-internet: the prevalence of meta-modernist ideas and literary techniques in terms of the work’s content and style; the incorporation of language associated with cyberculture into the literary work; and stylistic choices that create ‘medium glitches’. To elaborate: meta-modernism’s presence is directly associated with the post-internet since, as explained further in this paper, the post-internet is an aspect of meta-modernism; the incorporation of language that stems from cyberculture refers to the use of internet slang and cyber terminology; and, lastly, ‘medium glitch’ is used to refer to the techniques used in a literary work that create a sense that what is being consumed is another media (e.g. social media content, cinema, emails, etc.), thus, creating a ‘medium glitch’ which, arguably, could be understood as a more abstract post-literary concept. By analysing these aspects of the novel, the paper aims to question the how and why behind the post-internet style and aesthetic in contemporary literature.

Ulaş Ersezen acquired his BA in English Language and Literature from Yaşar University in 2022. During his undergraduate he presented several of his academic papers at Yaşar University and Pamukkale University. He has worked in publishing and translated the books Meditations in an Emergency by Frank O’Hara and Philosophy in Education: Questioning and Dialogue in Schools by Jana Mohr Lone and Michael D. Burroughs. Currently, he is in the MA in English programme at the University of Malta. His research interests are digital humanities, cyberculture, new media, post-internet literature, meta-modernism, the post-literary and stylistics.