Imke van Heerden wins PhD Research Spotlight Competition, YorkTalks 2016

Posted on 11 January 2016

The Department of English and Related Literature is proud to announce that Imke van Heerden has won the PhD Research Spotlight Competition in the 2016 YorkTalks.

Imke's research was chosen from amongst six finalists nominated by the Faculties of Arts and Humanities, Social Science, and Science.

Imke took her BA, BA (Honours), and MA by research degrees at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa before coming to York as a Commonwealth Scholar. Her research on the vulnerable body in South African literature was supervised by Professor Derek Attridge, who with David Attwell is the co-editor of The Cambridge History of South African Literature.

Imke's project was on "The Body in Pain: South African Literature Today."

After South African writers helped bring apartheid to its knees, they wondered: What now? Can we still matter? The new democracy answered "yes", bringing with it an unfortunate host of problems: high rates of HIV/AIDS, violent crime, poverty, and enduring racism and sexism. Twenty-two years since the end of apartheid, it is still the body in pain that lies at the heart of the country’s politics – and also its literature. Imke's research is text-based and looks at ways in which the body in pain is portrayed in South African writing after 2000. Five chapters – “Sex”, “Skin”, “Blood”, “Taste”, and “Tongue” – study understandings of rape, race, HIV/AIDS, social inequality, and language in the country today. The thesis tackles social issues head-on in response to the notion that literature is elite and detached from the challenges faced by developing countries.

Imke's competition entry consisted of a conference poster The Body in Pain: South African Literature Today (PDF , 996kb), 996kb)‌, and a YouTube video, "10 Things You Need to Know about South African Literature", which she shot on location in South Africa.

A fellow-finalist, co-supervised in the Department by Claire Chambers, was Hannah Kershaw with her project on British Muslim Fiction.