CLASSICS RESEARCH COLLOQUIUM DATE: Thursday, 29 September 2016 TIME: 14:10 - 15:45 VENUE: Committee Room, Classics Department, Room GO 12A, Ground Floor, MTB, Howard College Campus SPEAKER: Lloyd William Parker (Classics, UKZN) TOPIC: Neo-Latin for a New South Africa ABSTRACT: Currently within South African universities, there is a national call for a transformation and decolonisation of the curricula. For many this means a questioning and re-evaluation of Classical Studies’ purpose and direction in South African universities. Therefore, there is a pressing need both to define the place of Classics as a discipline in the University of KwaZulu-Natal and to support the study of the Classical languages. My Honours project, which is a survey and catalogue of Neo-Latin documents housed in the libraries and archives of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, aims to argue that the study of Neo-Latin within South African universities not only has great potential as an avenue for novel research on account of the presence of these documents which largely not been accessed but also that Neo-Latin has a legitimate space in the Classics departments of contemporary South Africa. Neo-Latin Studies was first defined as a field by the late Jozef IJewijn and the first edition of his Companion to Neo-Latin Studies published in 1977. The second edition, which appeared in two volumes in 1990 and 1998, shows how exponentially interest in the field had grown and how much more material had then been added to the corpus of Neo-Latin literature. This development has far from reached an end and South African Classicists have a unique opportunity to contribute by assessing and engaging with the Neo-Latin documents that are in the possession of our universities and national archives. Since most research in the field is generally localised, there are no other Latinists other than South Africans who have the opportunity and responsibility to bring these documents to light. This paper will outline the research objectives of my survey and introduce the benefits and objectives that the field of Neo-Latin has in the South African context. This will be achieved by analysing the parameters of Library Science defined by S.R. Ranganathan in his The Five Laws of Library Science published in 1931 which led the imperialist library systems of his day away from their preservationist and elitist objectives towards a more democratic and inclusive age. These five laws underpin what this study hopes to achieve and bring Neo-Latin successfully into the new South Africa. ALL STAFF AND GRADUATE STUDENTS ARE WELCOME! For further information please contact: Dr Elke Steinmeyer Classics Programme University of KwaZulu-Natal 4041 Durban South Africa Tel: 0027312601306 Fax: 0027312602698 Email: steinmeyere1@ukzn.ac.za