Writing Meritocracy: Figurations of a Concept Across Literary History and Contexts of Literary Production cover image
9:30–10:00

Registration & Coffee

10:00-10:30

Opening / Welcome

10:30-12:00

Panel 1

RANK & GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN AGE

Xiao Wang

Debating the Source of Gentlemanly Honour in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida

Paul Arblaster

“Raised to Offices and Dignities by their Lawful Lord”: Recognition of Merit in the Journalistic Rhetoric of Early Seventeenth-Century Antwerp

Andrew Hiscock

“All sprang but from one woman and one man, Then how doth Gentry come to rise and fall?”: Aemilia Lanyer and the Textual Politics of Recognition in Jacobean England

12:00-13:30

 Lunch

13:30-14:30

Keynote: Cathy Shrank

"The Making of New Gentlemen": Social Mobility and Ambivalence in Early Modern England

Cathy L. Shrank picture
Cathy L. Shrank
14:30-14:45

Coffee break

14:45-15:45

Panel 2

INDIVIDUAL AGENCY AND THE COMMON GOOD: MOVING IN(TO) MODERN PARADIGMS

Thomas Rommel

"…the Best of all Improvers": Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations as a Narrative on Meritocratic Entitlement

Carolin Gebauer

Writing against Male Narratives of (Social) Mobility: Feminist Voices from Wollstonecraft to Woolf

15:45-16:00

Coffee break

16:00-17:30

Panel 3

BEYOND EUROPE: THRESHOLDS TO THE GLOBAL MODERN

Ehsan Zivaralam

From Stage to State: The Role of Early Iranian Playwriting in Shaping Meritocracy

Kingsley Brempong Ohene Adu

Indigenous Meritocracies and Colonial Hierarchies: Rethinking Social Mobility in Casely-Hayford’s Ethiopia Unbound and Sekyi’s The Anglo-Fanti

Ekaterina Morozova

Inventing the Poet: Mayakovsky, Intermediality, and the Meritocratic Spirit of the Russian Avant-Garde

10:00-10:30

 Coffee

10:30-12:00

Panel 4 

BETWEEN/WITHIN/BEYOND THE COLONIAL LOGIC OF MERIT

Nina Aidam

Meritocracy and Cultural Disruption in Ngugi wa Thongo’s The River Between

Asante Lucy Mtenje

“Sikusinja’s Success deserves all the Praise?!”: Examining the Myth of Meritocracy in J.W. Gwengwe’s Sikusinja ndi Gwenembe

Angelique Golding

From ATCAL to Wasafiri: Challenging Meritocratic Narratives in British Education and Literature

12:00-13:30

 Lunch

13:30-14:30

Keynote: Madhu Krishnan

Meritocracy and the Asymmetry of Literary Capital: “Independent” Publishing and African Writing in the “World Republic of Letters”

Madhu Krishnan picture
Madhu Krishnan
14:30-14:45

Coffee

14:45-15:45

Panel 5

RESISTING DOMINANT PARADIGMS

Aida Banakar

Staging Meritocracy: Gender, Power, and Resistance in Bahram Beyzaei’s Theater

Samantha Wharton

Black Women Writing against the Grain: Migration, Subjectivity, and Literary Recognition

10:00-10:30

Coffee

10:30-12:00

Panel 6

PATHWAYS THROUGH THE MERITOCRACY: CONFORMING, RESISTING, SURPASSING NORMS?

Marie Rose Arong

Collaboration and Complicity as Pathways to Merit in Anglophone Filipino Novels

Yiyi He

Confessions of a Model Minority: Meritocratic Complicity and Resistance in Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer (2015)

Uhuru Phalafala

Political and Spiritual Dimensions of Play in 21st Century Black Feminist Poetry

12:00-13:30

Lunch

13:30-15:00

Panel 7

UP OR OUT: MERITOCRACY AS A SPACE OF OPPORTUNITY OR CULTURAL TRAP

Sabine Hillen

Le Mérite et les Passions Tristes: Edouard Louis’s Engagement with Meritocratic Ideas

Iga Nowicz

Derailing Meritocracy: Ein schönes Ausländerkind by Toxische Pommes (2024)

Michaela Oberwinkler

Meritocracy, AI, and the Ethics of Creation: Rethinking the Power of Language in Rie Qudan’s Sympathy Tower Tokyo (2024)

15:00-15:30

Closing panel