January 28-29, 2027
PROGRAMME
Thursday 28 January 2027
Université Gustave Eiffel · Bâtiment Bienvenüe
14–20 boulevard Newton, Champs-sur-Marne
08:30–09:00 Welcome and registration
09:00–09:15 Opening remarks — Jaine CHEMMACHERY (Sorbonne Université / VALE) and Sandrine SOUKAÏ (Université Gustave Eiffel / LISAA)
09:15–10:30 Keynote Lecture 1 — Rashmi VARMA (Warwick University)
The Costs of Peace: Social Reproduction in Times of War
Chair: TBC
10:30–11:00 Coffee break
11:00–12:30 PANEL 1 — Imperial Imaginaries and the Paradoxes of Coexistence
Chair: Cédric COURTOIS (Université de Lille)
1. Tiare METLICA (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) — “Christianity, Commerce, and Civilization”: The Frictions of Peace in Livingstone’s Imagination of Africa
2. Faezeh BARGHI OLIAEE (Université Catholique de Lille) — F(r)iction before War: Free Trade and the Limits of Commercial Peace in Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke
3. Ella GILANI (Université Lumière Lyon 2) — Frictional Narratives and Uneasy Encounters: Finding Space for Repair in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s By the Sea
112:30–14:00 Lunch break
14:00–15:30 PANEL 2 — The Uneasy Terms of Belonging
Chair: Fiona MCCANN (Sorbonne Université)
1. Alizée GORON (Université de Lille) — What Does Peace Entail for Muslims in Britain? Negotiations and Denunciations of Makeshift Harmony in Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan’s Poetry
2. Jessica SMALL-GUISO (Université Grenoble Alpes) — Staging Deradicalisation through Comedy: F(r)ictions of Peacebuilding in Nussaibah Younis’s Fundamentally
3. Maurice CRONIN (Université Paris Dauphine) — The UK as a “[Re-]Imagined Community” in Contemporary Fiction
15:30–16:00 Coffee break
16:00–17:30 PANEL 3 — Paradises Unmade: Landscapes of Slow Violence
Chair: TBC
1. Pauline AMY DE LA BRETEQUE (Nîmes Université) — “The Missing Peace” in Holiday Paradises: Water Pollution, Exploitation, and Environmental Degradation in Edwidge Danticat’s “Machandiz” and Zadie Smith’s “The Lazy River”
2. Alexandra SAVARD-CHAMBARD (Sorbonne Université) — No Rest for Peace: Legacies of Violence and Impossible Closures in Kei Miller’s In Nearby Bushes
3. Reia ANQUET (Sciences Po Grenoble) — A Catastrophe Without an Event: Rising Seas and the Deferral of Peace in Oceania
Friday 29 January 2027
Sorbonne Université · Maison de la Recherche
28 rue Serpente, Paris 6e
09:00–10:15 Keynote Lecture 2 — Stef CRAPS (Ghent University)
After the War on Nature: Ecological Mourning as Peacework
Chair: Kerry-Jane WALLART (Université d’Orléans)
10:15–10:45 Coffee break
10:45–12:15 PANEL 4 — Unsettling Settler Peace: Indigenous Imaginaries
Chair: Laura SINGEOT (Université de Tours)
1. Anne-Sophie LETESSIER (Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne) — Sharing the Land: Frictions of Diplomacy in Kent Monkman and Gisele Gordon’s The Memoirs of Miss Chief Eagle Testickle (2023)
2. Marjorie ANTOINE (Université de Perpignan Via Domitia) — No Peace with the Dead: Settler Extraction, Pākehā Māori Coexistence, and the Politics of Friction in The Piano and Mārama
3. Sonia FÉLIX-NAIX (Université d’Angers) — Reinventing the Polynesian Identity in 21st-Century New Zealand Literature: Cultural Repatriation in Patricia Grace’s Chappy
12:15–13:45 Lunch break
13:45–15:35 PANEL 5 — Fractured Histories, Reparative Aesthetics
Chair: Vanessa GUIGNERY (ENS de Lyon)
1. Nandini DHAR (Adamas University, Kolkota) — “Whether One is a Hindu girl or a Muslim one…”: The Troubled, Gendered Terrain of Coexistence and Post-Partition Nationalism in Amrita Pritam’s novel Pinjar (The Skeleton)
2. Inès ET-TAOUI (Université de Strasbourg) — Intermedial Frictions and Imaginaries of Peace in Sabba Khan’s The Roles We Play
3. Aurore MONTHEIL (Bordeaux INSPE/ Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès) — Aesthetic Resistance and Narrative Repair in Mirza Waheed’s The Book of Gold Leaves
15:35–16:05 Coffee break
16:05–17:35 PANEL 6 — Narrating Unfinished Reconciliations
Chair: Sandeep BAKSHI (Université Paris Cité)
1. Alexandra POULAIN (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) — An Archaeology of Violence: Nadia Davids’ What Remains
2. Neela CATHELAIN (Université Côte d’Azur) — A Mist of Peace: Collective Grief and Amnesia in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant
3. Christine LORRE (Université de Caen Normandie) — Managing Loss in the Friction of Encounter: Madeleine Thien’s The Book of Record (2025)
17:35–17:45 Closing remarks
Please note that this programme is subject to minor adjustments.
There is no conference registration fee. However, online registration will be required, and attendees must be up to date with their SEPC membership.
