MT 2018 Week 5 Updates

The OCCT Discussion Group examines English translations of texts belonging to literatures which have often been deemed 'minor' and/or underrepresented in mainstream (Western) academia. Each session is facilitated by a specialist of the source language who will select and discuss a text in translation. On Monday of Week 6 the Discussion Group welcomes Adriana X. Jacobs (Oxford). She will discuss her translation of the poem 'Mekong River' by the Vietnamese-Israeli poet Vaan Nguyen. As always, no advance preparation is needed, and free sandwich lunch, fruit and coffee will be provided. Dodie Bellamy will read an essay/fantasy that explores online harassment, bullying, and surveillance culture at the Ruskin School of Art (Bullingdon Road) on Thursday of Week 6.

On Weds of Week 5, Tiphaine Samoyault and Ma Sha (Paris III - Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) explored eight translations of the Wake into French, Italian, and Chinese, reconsidering the concept of translation in the light of them.

 

EVENTS, PHD OPPORTUNITIES, and CFPs

 

1. You’re invited to attend a workshop with Professor Gayle Rogers (English, University of Pittsburgh) on Thursday, 15 November (Week 6) at 2pm in the Danson Room in Trinity College. Gayle will be speaking on the “Epistemology of Retranslation: Returning Hemingway to Spanish”.

In order to get a lively discussion going, Gayle has sent a PDF of the passages from Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and the translated Por quien doblan las campanas about which he will speak. It would be wonderful if attendees could take a look at these ahead of the workshop.

If you have any questions, please address them to me atmaria.blanco@trinity.ox.ac.uk.

 

2.Call for papers

Research project and web portal Polyphonie. Mehrsprachigkeit_Kreativität_Schreiben (http://www.polyphonie.at)

The editors Beate Baumann (University of Catania), Michaela Bürger-Koftis (University of Genoa) and Sandra Vlasta (Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz) kindly invite contributors to send proposals for the multilingual web portal Polyphonie. Mehrsprachigkeit_Kreativität_Schreiben (http://www.polyphonie.at, ISSN 2304-7607).

This international research project investigates the many and diverse connections between multilingualism and creativity in writing systematically and from an interdisciplinary perspective. The aim of the project is to explore the more or less close relationship between individual/social multilingualism and creativity in general, and in particular literary creativity.
On the web portal’s publication platform contributions from the fields of biography studies, research on multilingualism, neurolinguistics, applied linguistics, translation studies, literary studies, comparative studies, media and communication studies and didactics of multilingualism are published. New contributions are being published twice a year, the platform is updated in June and December.

Contributors are kindly invited to send their proposals for contributions for the issue to be published in June 2019. The contributions should comply with the web portal’s research focus and correspond to one of the fields present on the web portal. Please send your abstract (500 words) together with your contact details and a short academic CV to the editors (webportalpolyphonie@gmail.com). Contributions are welcome in English, German and Italian.

The final contribution should not exceed 7.000 words and should be introduced by an abstract (max. 100 words) in English.

Deadline for abstracts: December 15, 2018
Acknowledgement by the editors: December 21, 2018
Deadline for contributions: March 31, 2019

 

3. Lev Ozerov’s Portraits without Frames Readings

  • Tuesday, November 13, 2018
  • 7:00 PM 8:30 PM

Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk will read from their recently published translation of Lev Ozerov’s Portraits without Frames. The original, first published in 1999, three years after Ozerov’s death, is one of the most remarkable books of Russian poetry to have been published since the collapse of the Soviet Union - both a moving, intensely personal document and a mini-encyclopedia of Soviet culture.

Pushkin House
5a Bloomsbury Square,
London,
WC1A 2TA

 

4. CALL FOR PAPERS: Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood: Integration, Community, and Co-Habitation

Deadline: 10 January 2019

Conference: 24-26 June 2019: UCD Humanities Institute, University College Dublin

In collaboration with the Institute of Modern Languages Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London, and supported by OWRI Cross-Language Dynamics: Reshaping Community

Global mass migration on an unprecedented scale; dangerous journeys across the Mediterranean by refugees fleeing persecution and warfare; the loss of family and friends; the loss of home; the challenge of integrating the arrivants / arrivantes; and conflicting notions of identity and belonging - these are some of the transcultural predicaments of the globalisation processes of the 21st century coming to a head in the local encounters of urban (and rural) neighbourhoods. Whereas Singapore’s Holland Village, London’s Brixton and Berlin’s Kreuzberg have grown into trendy multi- and transcultural neighbourhoods coined by creativity and a newly affluent cosmopolitan class, others seem troubled by disenfranchisement, discord, and/or feelings of social dislocation, with Molenbeek in Brussels and the Clichy-sous-Bois banlieue in Paris being perhaps the most notorious examples.

Transnational neighbourhoods are frequently depicted as the ‘other’ and – as Gillian Jein notes – a ‘deviant terrain’. However, voices from within often emphasise different perceptions and have the potential to challenge and counter discourses emerging in the context of the rapid rise of populist right-wing parties across Europe that aim to reinstate or “protect” ethnic nationalism, Christianity as the dominant religion, a national language and organic culture, ancestry and lineage, and membership of a dominant ethnic or racial group as the bases for national membership. The current political debate is highly polarised, binary and often dominated by quantitative arguments concerning the number of refugees, and the social, economic and political impact of their integration. Against this backdrop, our conference seeks to shift focus by exploring transcultural encounters in the urban neighbourhood.

We posit that the urban neighbourhood is a social microcosm that allows for a more nuanced discussion of transculturality as lived practice. The urban neighbourhood is local but not provincial; it is a fluid space in which various temporal and spatial axes intersect; it is the locus where diverse trans/cultural practices can engender togetherness as well as differences and conflict. It is the contact zone where disparate cultures meet in often highly asymmetrical relations, fostering processes of hybridisation, creolisation and neoculturation. The neighbourhood is open to the type of multi-scalar perspective that, according to Ann Rigney, avoids entrapment in a binary discourse.

The urban neighbourhood lends itself to a broad multi-perspectival and interdisciplinary exploration of transcultural practices. We invite papers from a broad range of disciplines and fields, including urban geography, urban planning, architecture, memory studies, film studies, visual and performance arts, contemporary literary studies, cultural studies, sociology, practice-based research and linguistics. Possible lines of investigation include:

  • Theorising the Transnational/Transcultural Neighbourhood
  • Multi-Scalar Perspectives on Integration and Conflict
  • Built Environment, Social and Art Practice
  • Literary and Filmic Representations of Transcultural Neighbourhoods

Please send an abstract of approx. 250 words and a short biographical note of about 50 words to: m.rocalizarazu@bham.ac.ukbritta.jung@ucd.ie, and stephan.ehrig@ucd.ie

CLICK HERE FOR FULL DETAILS

Conference Organisers:

Prof. Anne Fuchs, UCD Humanities Institute, University College Dublin (anne.fuchs@ucd.ie)

Dr. Godela Weiss-Sussex, IMLR, University of London/King’s College Cambridge (godela.weiss-sussex@sas.ac.uk)

Dr. Britta C. Jung, IRC Postdoctoral Fellow, UCD Humanities Institute, University College Dublin(britta.jung@ucd.ie)

Dr. Maria Roca Lizarazu, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Birmingham (m.rocalizarazu@bham.ac.uk)

Dr. Stephan Ehrig, IRC Postdoctoral Fellow, UCD Humanities Institute, University College Dublin (stephan.ehrig@ucd.ie)

 

5. The department of Comparative Literature at Queen Mary University of London is pleased to invite applications for funded PhD studentships for 2019 entry. Supervision is available in all areas of the department’s research expertise:

  • Theoretical areas: cosmopolitanism, exile, translation, world literature, childhood, critical/literary theory, digital humanities, Global South studies and postcolonial studies.
  • Interdisciplinary areas: thinking literature alongside visual media, material culture, the arts, philosophy, ethics, pornography, fashion, life sciences, and environmental studies.
  • Regional and linguistic areas: German, Russian, French, Central European, East Asian (with focus on modern China), South Asian Anglophone and bhasha, Global South, and intra-Asian literatures.

For full details, see individual staff profiles on the department’s website.

PhD studentships are available as part of the following competitions:

·         London Arts & Humanities Partnership (LAHP), offering up to 90 studentships per year for projects in any area of the department’s expertise. These studentships offer 3-4 years of funding (fees + living stipend), and feature the possibility of cross-institutional supervision with other LAHP partners (including UCL, King’s and the LSE). The LAHP studentship competition will open by the end of November. Application deadline: 28 January 2019. Residency/nationality restrictions apply.

·         QMUL Principal’s Studentships, offering up to 18 studentship per year across the Humanities and Social Sciences. The Principal’s studentships offer 3 years of funding (fees + living stipend). Application deadline: 31 January 2019. No residency/nationality restrictions.

·         Leverhulme Trust Mobile People Studentships, offering up to 7 studentships per year for PhD research examining how the world is being dynamically constituted by mobile people in active and novel ways and how this affects fundamental social and political institutions. The Leverhulme studentships offer 3 years of funding (fees + living stipend). Application deadline: 31 January 2019. No residency/nationality restrictions.

·         China Scholarship Council (CSC), offering studentships for any area of the department’s expertise. These studentships offer 4 years of funding (fees + living stipend). Application deadline: 31 January 2019. For nationals of the People’s Republic of China only.

For more details about the department and these studentship opportunities, please contact a prospective supervisor directly, or the department’s PhD Tutor, Dr Adhira Mangalagiri. Further instructions on the application process available here.

 

6. INSTITUTE OF CLASSICAL STUDIES
School of Advanced Study • University of London

Wednesday, 14 November 2018 at 5 pm
T.B.L. Webster Lecture

Professor Martin Revermann (University of Toronto):
Brecht and Greek Tragedy: Radicalism, Traditionalism, Eristics

Venue: The Court Room, Senate House, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Brecht always considered Greek tragedy, and the kind of drama which in his perception Greek tragedy so prominently exemplified, as deeply problematic, politically naive and artistically flawed. These radical eristics of reception, so to speak, are in stark contrast to the philhellenism which traditionally informs responses to Greek tragedy. Brecht nonetheless very much needed Greek tragedy, and Tragedy in general, as an art form to engage with polemically, and the relationship between the two can be described as both dialogical and dialectical: without Greek tragedy as a target and an anti-model to work against Brechtian drama would lack a vital means of creating its own artistic autonomy and uniqueness.
This lecture will discuss key moments of Brecht’s complex and often stimulatingly idiosyncratic engagement with Greek tragedy: his 1948-adaptation of Sophocles’ 'Antigone' (Brecht’s play, his production in Chur/Switzerland and the subsequent ‘model book’), his theoretical treatise 'Small Organon for the Theatre' as well as what I call ‘functional equivalences’ (like the use of masks, the nature of chronotopes, the use of choruses, closural techniques or the representation of divinity).

ALL WELCOME

Contact: valerie.james@sas.ac.uk

 

TORCH team

Comparative Criticism and Translation

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