OCCT HT 2022 - Week 5 Updates
Good afternoon!
Join us this coming week for three exciting events, an online Discussion Group session, this term's Fiction and Other Minds seminar, and a conference!
This coming Monday, our Discussion Group welcomes Behnam M. Fomeshi. In this session, Fomeshi will discuss the reception of American literature in Iran between two revolutions i.e., the Persian Constitutional Revolution (1905 – 1911) and the 1979 Iranian Revolution. This session will require registration: if you want to participate, please fill in this form by midnight GMT on Sunday, 20 February. We will be sending out invitations via email on the morning of the event, from 10am GMT. Select the link Join Microsoft Teams Meeting in your meeting invite to be taken to a page where you can choose to either join on the web or download the desktop app. If you already have the Teams app, the meeting will open there automatically. If you have any questions, please contact Ola Sidorkiewicz.
On Wednesday 23 February, join us for this term's Fiction and Other Minds seminar, in which Professor Michael Wheeler (Philosophy/University of Stirling), will present on the topic of "Seeing the Real You at Last: Searching for Authenticity with the Beats, Beckett, and the Embodied Phenomenological Mind."
Finally, on Saturday 26 February, we are excited to host the Metaphors in Translation Conference. Join us for a day of roundtables and workshops exploring the relationship between translation and metaphor. The word translation originates in the past participle of the Latin verb transfero—literally meaning to transfer, to carry beyond. The act of translation can thus be understood as a means of subverting the constraints of language-specific boundaries and transporting signification from one linguistic or modal realm into another. Similarly, the word metaphor—usually defined as ‘a figure of speech in which a name or descriptive word or phrase is transferred to an object or action different from, but analogous to’—is, in fact, the Greek variant of the concept of transfer. With a focus on the interplay between these terms, our sessions will consider metaphors for translation, and the challenges and creative possibilities of conveying metaphors across languages and media. Please see below for descriptions of each session and more information on the speakers. Please register for this event by 12 noon GMT on Friday, 25 February using this form. All sessions are free and open to the public. There will be coffee, tea and a buffet lunch with vegetarian and vegan options. Please indicate on the registration form if you have any other dietary requirements. Please email the conference organisers, Erin Nickalls and Maëlle Nagot with any questions.
As always, all are welcome. We look forward to seeing you!
Calls for Papers and Events:
1. CfP: MLA Convention Panels
The MLA Global Arab and Arab American Forum invites proposals for the following panels at the MLA Convention in San Francisco (5 - 8 January 2023):
Writing and Cultural Production as Oppositional Work
Oppositional work of writing and cultural production in the Arab region and global Arab diaspora, including protest and dissident literature/art/activism that resists surveillance and discursive/cultural practices of domestication and containment. 250-word abstract & bio by March 15, 2022 to rc49@soas.ac.uk (Rasha Chatta, Freie Universität)
Migrants as Working Subjects
Literary and artistic representations of migrant labour in the Arab region and global Arab diaspora, as inflected by class, race, ethnicity, language, nomenclature, and sociocultural/economic practices including sponsorship. 250-word abstract & bio by March 15, 2022 to Anna Ziajka Stanton, The Pennsylvania State University.
2. Early Career Fellowships: Inclusion, Participation and Engagement
The Institutes of Classical Studies, English Studies, and Modern Languages Research at the School of Advanced Study, University of London are offering three five-month funded fellowships in languages, literatures and cultures. These are intended to support projects that address or wish to address inclusive and participatory methods of engagement as part of their research.
The School of Advanced Study has been awarded short-term funding to scope a programme of activities embedding inclusion, participation, and engagement in research in the humanities. As a result, the Institutes of Classical Studies, English Studies, and Modern Languages Research are able to offer three Early Career Fellowships in the field of languages, literatures, and cultures. Fellows are expected to pursue their own research during the five months of the Fellowship and to contribute to the School’s scoping mission.
The Fellows will be based in the Institutes of Classical Studies, English Studies, and Modern Languages Research, as appropriate. We invite applications from individuals, pairs or triads of early career scholars who have active research interests in these areas.
Applicants are invited to submit a research proposal on a topic of their choice, either individually or as part of a group. This should specify as an objective a defined outcome for the research carried out during the period of the Fellowship, such as a grant proposal, an article, chapter in a book, and/or detailed proposal for a book.
In addition to pursuing their research programme, Fellows will be expected to contribute to the scoping of a programme of activities to promote inclusion, participation, and engagement in research in the School of Advanced Study. These might include making recommendations for training the School should develop for postgraduate research students and early career researchers, and other activities that will help advance, promote, and support research in the humanities nationally. These recommendations will be communicated in a report, to be submitted by the end of the Fellowship period.
The Fellowships will last five months. Because of the nature of the funding, successful applicants must be available to take up the Fellowship as soon as possible, and in any case by the end of May 2022. Fellows will receive a stipend of £2,000 per month; this may be used as a contribution towards travel and/or accommodation costs during the Fellowship, though residence in London is not a requirement of these posts. Payment will be made in two instalments during the course of the Fellowship, at commencement and in month 3. The overall payment is £10,000 or pro rata if the fellowship is terminated early. Some additional funding will be available to support events and activities.
The Fellowships are intended to support early career researchers without a permanent academic post. In order to be eligible for the scheme, early career scholars (i.e. scholars within eight years of PhD award, not including any period of career break), must have been awarded their PhD by the start of the Fellowship. Independent researchers without a PhD would not normally be eligible.
The closing date for receipt of applications and references is 11 March 2022.
Please read the full details of the fellowship scheme here
3. CfP: Reflections on (Literary) Solitude
November 3 - 4, 2022
The postgraduates and ECRs of the German Schiller Assocation (DSG) invite the submission of abstracts for an interdisciplinary conference at the Literature Archive Marbach (DLA)
Solitude: Sometimes it is voluntary and other times – as in lockdown – it is imposed. Early Career Researchers in particular have accumulated many experiences of solitude during the ongoing pandemic, not always by choice. The German Schiller Association (DSG), is a literary society that offers its community the space and conditions to mitigate that solitariness. It is an environment that we, as Early Career Researchers, aim to employ to come together, physically, in the German Literature Archive in Marbach, with a conference that will represent the launch of a new network for ECRs. Our launch event will focus on reflections on solitude in theory, in literature, and in philosophy, but it will also take in psychological aspects of the experience of solitude in reality.
Organisers: Dîlan C. Çakir, Martin Kuhn, Felix Lempp, Nadine Redmer, Merisa Taranis, Viola Völlm, Dominik Wabersich
The detailed CfP and further information can be found here
For further inquiries, please email: forschung@dla-marbach.de
4. Job Opportunity: Assistant Professorships in Translation and Transcultural Studies
The School of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Warwick invites applications for two outstanding Assistant Professors in Translation and Transcultural Studies. These are permanent, full time posts (start date: 1 September 2022). We especially welcome applications from candidates with a proven record of, or clear potential for, addressing cultural, theoretical, or practical dimensions of audiovisual translation, and/or translation and technology.
The successful candidates will play a full part in the School, and in the Translation and Transcultural Studies section, activities with a remit to develop and help to deliver UG and PG degree-level quality provision in translation and transcultural studies. They will be expected to contribute actively to our UG modules, to our MA in Translation and Cultures, and to our PhD in Translation and Transcultural Studies.
The closing date for applications is Sunday 13 March 2022, and all details are available here. For informal enquiries, please contact Dr Mila Milani, Head of Translation and Transcultural Studies, School of Modern Languages and Cultures, and Professor Katherine Astbury, Head of School
5. Events: Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation
The Foreign Connection: Writings on Poetry, Art and Translation
6 - 7pm GMT, Wednesday 2nd March
Distinguished poet and translator, Jamie McKendrick, will be discussing his new book, The Foreign Connection: Writings on Poetry, Art and Translation, in conversation with Professor Matthew Reynolds of St Anne's College, University of Oxford. Click here for more information and tickets.
Book Club: The Fig Tree
6:30 - 7:30pm GMT, Tuesday 15 March
Our book club will be discussing The Fig Tree by award-winning writer, Goran Vojnović, translated from the Slovene by Olivia Hellewell. For more information and to register, see here.
