Presented By: Center for Southeast Asian Studies
CSEAS Lecture Series. From the “Bloody Crown” to space travel: Comparing the social imaginaries of Malay and English language novels in Brunei Darussalam
Kathrina Daud, Universiti Brunei Darussalam
The first Malay language novel in Brunei can be traced back to 1951. Despite a high level of literacy and widespread proficiency in English, it was only in 2009 that the first Bruneian novel in English was published. This lecture will offer a brief overview of Bruneian literature from its origins to the present, exploring the different literary and development trajectories taken by Malay language and Anglophone literature in Brunei. Using Driscoll, Fletcher, and Wilkins’ notion of genre worlds (2022) to map out the social, textual, and industrial conventions that govern the production of literature in Brunei, this lecture will then offer some reflections on how contemporary Bruneian novels in Malay and English have developed diverging social imaginaries about Bruneian identity.
In particular, this lecture will consider how contemporary literature in Malay and English has been influenced by an awareness of representations of Brunei from outside the country and discuss the various narrative and paratextual tactics that have been employed in engagement with the claims of the global imaginary.
Speaker Bio:
Kathrina Mohd Daud is an assistant professor in creative writing and literature in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Manchester (2011), and her research focuses on the intersections of popular fiction, Bruneian fiction, and representations of religion in literature. She co-edited The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back: Gender, Identity and Nation in the Literatures of Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines (Springer, 2017), and her work has appeared in volumes published by Routledge and Springer, as well as in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature and World Englishes. Her debut novel, The Fisherman King (2020), was shortlisted for the 2020 Epigram Books Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The Witch Doctor’s Daughter, was published in 2022.
Register here: http://myumi.ch/84pgZ
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If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact cseas@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
In particular, this lecture will consider how contemporary literature in Malay and English has been influenced by an awareness of representations of Brunei from outside the country and discuss the various narrative and paratextual tactics that have been employed in engagement with the claims of the global imaginary.
Speaker Bio:
Kathrina Mohd Daud is an assistant professor in creative writing and literature in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She holds a PhD in creative writing from the University of Manchester (2011), and her research focuses on the intersections of popular fiction, Bruneian fiction, and representations of religion in literature. She co-edited The Southeast Asian Woman Writes Back: Gender, Identity and Nation in the Literatures of Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines (Springer, 2017), and her work has appeared in volumes published by Routledge and Springer, as well as in the Journal of Commonwealth Literature and World Englishes. Her debut novel, The Fisherman King (2020), was shortlisted for the 2020 Epigram Books Fiction Prize. Her second novel, The Witch Doctor’s Daughter, was published in 2022.
Register here: http://myumi.ch/84pgZ
---
If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact cseas@umich.edu. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
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