OCCT HT 2022 - Week 6 Updates
Good afternoon!
Sixth Week has been, and continues to be, a fantastically busy week at the OCCT. This term's events have shown brilliantly the vast range of ideas, languages, texts and contexts, methodologies and disciplines in circulation at the research centre, as well as the generative, welcoming, and mutually enriching atmosphere we strive to create: on Monday, in an online session of our Discussion Group, we welcomed Behnam M. Fomeshi, who discussed the reception of American literature in Iran between two revolutions; on Wednesday, Michael Wheeler lead a lively discussion of authenticity, embodied cognition, Beat fiction, and Samuel Beckett at this term's Fiction and Other Minds Seminar. This Saturday, we host the Metaphors in Translation Conference, a day of roundtables and workshops exploring the relationship between translation and metaphor.
In Seventh Week, on Wednesday 2 March (5pm - 6:30pm GMT), we will host a Special Roundtable Discussion around the recently published Routledge World Companion to Polish Literature (September 2021). We are joined by one of the book’s editors, Dr Stanley Bill (Cambridge), as well as by Professor Tamara Trojanowska (Toronto), the editor of Being Poland: A New History of Polish Literature and Culture since 1918 (2018), and Dr Karolina Wątroba (Oxford). The discussion will be moderated by Ola Sidorkiewicz (Oxford). This exciting event will take place online. To join the discussion, please sign up here. The deadline for signing up is 12 noon GMT, Wednesday 2 March, 2022. The link to join the meeting will be sent to your email address an hour before the event.
All are welcome! We'd love to have you join these conversations!
Calls for Papers and Events
1. CfPs: Workshop Constructing Fantastical Worlds: from Antiquity to the Present
University of Amsterdam, Thursday 30 June – Friday 1 July, 2022
Keynote Speakers: Dr Benjamin Stevens (Trinity University) and Dr Rutger Allan (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)
Organisers: Caterina Fossi MA (University of Amsterdam), Dr Merlijn Breunesse (University of Amsterdam), and Koen Vacano MA (University of Amsterdam)
This interdisciplinary two-day workshop is devoted to the construction of fantastical worlds across various narrative media from antiquity to the present.
In recent years, media and literary studies have drawn attention to the process of constructing ‘imaginary’ or ‘secondary’ worlds. We define these fantastical universes as fictional worlds, that involve creatures and/or events, whose existence and/or occurrence is impossible in our actual world. Being often heterotopic and heterochronic and endowed with their own geographies, populations, histories, governments, etc., fantastical worlds may in complex ways reflect, contrast, and/or transcend ordinary reality.
Yet while this phenomenon is generally considered to originate in Tolkien, fantastical worldbuilding can be recognised in antiquity as well. Recent studies in classical literature and receptions have emphasised the fantasy-like quality of classics like Homer’s Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Plato’s eschatological myths (Rogers & Stevens, 2017: 8-9; Nightingale 2002a, 2002b), while linguists and narratologists have brought to light literary devices that might be used by ancient authors to construct fantastical worlds and mediate the audience’s experience of them (e.g., Allan 2020; de Jong 2009; Ryan 1991).
Rarely, however, has the connection been made between the classical and contemporary construction of fantastical worlds, let alone between classics and modern media studies. The overarching aim of the workshop is to launch such an interdisciplinary discussion in search of a comparative, diachronic perspective on fantastical worldbuilding.
Principally, the workshop will focus on the how of fantastical worldbuilding, i.e., on the devices and techniques used in different times and media to create a fantastical world, as well as the ways in which this world is presented as different from, yet somehow anchored in reality.
We invite papers that address one (or more) of the following research questions:
- What devices do authors or artists use to construct fantastical worlds? (E.g., common ground management, deixis, the general rendering of time and space)
- How are these fantastical worlds anchored to the audience’s actual world, and what devices are used to express this relationship? (E.g., metalepsis, immersive/enactive devices, shifts in the deictic centre)
- How do fantastical worlds encourage the audience to reflect on the actual world? (E.g., metaphor, metonymy, contrast)
- What differences and similarities exist between the construction of fantastical worlds in different periods and different media?
- How are the devices used by ancient authors to construct fantastical worlds reused (consciously or unconsciously) in later times?
We are interested in contributions from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds that discuss the construction of fantastical worlds in or across different media (e.g., written narratives, drama, film, television, video games). Papers may focus on single narratives, authors, and periods, or discuss fantastical worldbuilding techniques more broadly, e.g., from a theoretical, comparative, or reception point of view.
The workshop will take place in Amsterdam on the 30 June and the 1 July 2022.
We invite submissions for 25-minute presentations. To register your interest, please submit an anonymous abstract of max. 400 words (excluding references and bibliography) to constructingfantasticalworlds@gmail.com by the 15 March 2022. Your name and affiliation should be included in the body of your email. We aim to respond no later than the 15 April.
Depending on the state of the pandemic, we will consider the option of having a (limited) part of the workshop in a hybrid format. We therefore also encourage scholars outside Europe to submit an abstract. If selected, we will attempt to facilitate the delivery of their paper even if it is not possible for them to travel to Amsterdam in June/July.
We are also exploring the possibility of publishing the results of the workshop as a collected volume.
Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions: Caterina Fossi, Merlijn Breunesse, and Koen Vacano.
This workshop is generously funded by OIKOS, the National Research School of Classical Studies in the Netherlands, and the gravitation project Anchoring Innovation.
2. CfPs: Ibero-American Gothic: Gothic productions in the Iberian Peninsula and in Latin America
Editors:
Javier Sánchez-Verdejo (UNED, Spain)
Júlio França (UERJ, Brazil)
Xavier Aldana Reyes (MMU, UK)
Submissions accepted until April 10, 2022.
The origins of Gothic Literature go back to, among others, Anglo-Saxon, German, and French traditions, and the mode is most often associated with them. However, there is also a long-standing tradition of Spanish and Portuguese-language Gothic (Iberian Gothic, Latin American Gothic), which has both followed imported canons and developed unique tropes and myths of its own. The aim of this special issue on Gothic Studies (to be published in 2022), is to bring together research, that considers the influence and reception of external models on Iberian and Latin Gothic, as well as overlooked authors, or those in need of critical reappraisal. In so doing, the issue will make a contribution to debates around the legacy and cultural work of Gothic in Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries. The issue invites contributions in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.
https://www.e-publicacoes.uerj.br/index.php/abusoes/announcement/view/1261
3. Event: Uncanny Valleys: Austrian Literature and Film in the New Millennium
Thursday, 3 March 2022, 5pm - 6pm GMT
Online
Uncanny Valleys: Austrian Literature and Film in the New Millennium
Book Presentation and Conversation with the photographer Lois Hechenblaikner
Attendance free | Advance booking essential
Further details and booking link
4. Events: Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation
You are cordially invited to join us at the following events in March:
The Foreign Connection: Writings on Poetry, Art and Translation
6pm - 7pm GMT, Wednesday 2 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
6:30pm - 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.
