Program

9:30 | Doors open

10:00–10:15 | Olga Beloborodova & Reindert Dhondt (Universiteit Antwerpen): Welcome and introduction

10:15–12:15 | Panel 1: Objects as Carriers of Memories and Affects

• Lars Bernaerts (UGent): First Artifacts: Telling Objects in Prehistoric Fiction
• Laura Gandolfi (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya): When Objects Tell: Sensitive Things and the Material Imagination of Mexican modernismo
• Emma Bond (University of Oxford): Traveling Objects as Memorial Sites: Locating Italian Things in Contemporary Transnational Memoir
• Pieter Verstraeten (KU Leuven): Fire or floor mat? Charlotte van den Broeck’s Een Vlam Tasmaanse Tijgers (2024) as a challenge to object-oriented narration

12:15–13:15 | Lunch

13:15–15:15 | Panel 2: Stranger Things, Stranger Stories

• Carolin Gebauer (Universität Wuppertal): Material Objects and Plot Construction in Fantastic and Realist Fiction
• Gwennie Debergh (Universiteit Antwerpen): A Statue in Search of a Portrait: Narrative Agency in Herman Franke’s De verbeelding
• Hongri Wang (UGent): Objects in Focus: Rescaling Character Focalization in The Three-Body Problem and The Antidote
• Marco Caracciolo (UGent): Object Lessons in Time Loop Narratives

15:15–15:45 | Coffee break

15:45–17:15 | Panel 3: Telling Objects across Media

• Ben De Bruyn (UCLouvain): Sloppy Novels: Objects and Settings After GenAI
• Maureen Hosay (Universiteit Antwerpen): Is Literacy Child’s Play? The Multisensory and Material Storytelling of Picturebooks
• Loren Verreyen (Universiteit Antwerpen): The Reality Effect on Trial: A Large-Scale Analysis of Things in the True Crime Podcast

17:15–17:45 | Closing reception

Practical information

6 November 2026 

Stadscampus UAntwerp

W. Elsschotzaal, Hof van Liere, Prinsstraat 13, 2000 Antwerpen

Participation is free, please register below