OCCT—Week 6 Updates

This Saturday we are hosting a Poetry Workshop at St Anne’s as part of our Special Event on Queer Poetry. Join Sophie Seita and Stuart Bell in Seminar Room 8 for a practice-based workshop, in which we will experiment with various translational and translingual techniques of writing and making. All are welcome!

Next Wednesday we host the second event of our Queer Poetry series: a Poetry Reading featuring two works of contemporary queer French poetry, published in translation by the87press. Join the press’s director, Azad Ashim, as well as poets Laura Doyle Péan and Édith Azam, who will read from their books Coeur Yoyo and Oiseau-Moi, and Lola Olufemi and Calliope Michail, who will read from Stuart Bell’s translations, Yo-yo Heart and Bird me. This event will take place on Zoom. To register for this event, please fill out this form.

This Monday, we welcomed Ayoush Lazikani to our Discussion Group. She spoke about her recent book Cry of the Turtledove: Emotion in Christian and Islamic Contemplative Texts, 1100-1250. Conversation ranged from the motivations and approaches that informed this comparative project, to specific readings of the poetry of Sufi Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari and the anonymous prose meditation known as the Wooing of Our Lord. Thank you to everyone that attended.

Calls for Papers and Events

[1] CfP: ARIEL Writer’s Residency
After a year devoted to the redesigning of its website, to the launching of podcasts (coming at the end of November) and to the management of its image, the International Writer’s Residence (ARIEL) based at the Université de Lorraine (Nancy, France), under the patronage of novelist, filmmaker and academic Philippe Claudel, is launching a call for applications for its fourth year and will be effective from 1 Oct. 2022 to Jan. 31. 2023.

You can download the call through the following link:
https://filesender.renater.fr/?s=download&token=edc955d1-66b5-4698-9ddd-...
(be careful, it expires on 2 Dec. 2021)

The deadline to receive applications is 30 Dec. 2021. You will find the call in French and English, as well as the application form to be filled in by the applicant. We also propose (in this link) a video of the ARIEL project which summarizes the different aspects of the residency.

[2] CfPs: Sympathetic Vibrations: Sound, Communities, Environments
Yale Graduate Music Symposium
March 4-5th 2022
Yale University

Keynote: Professor Jessica Bissett Perea (UC Davis)
Workshop: Professors Tavia Nyong’o and Braxton Shelley (Yale)

How does music bring people together in community? How do environments we live in shape our sonic practices? The organizing committee of the 2022 Yale Graduate Music Symposium welcome abstracts on the topic “Sympathetic Vibrations: Sound, Communities, Environments.” This symposium is built on three pillars: sound as a musical, material, and aural phenomenon; communities that are constructed around specific musical practices, identities, and histories; and enviroments both physical and intangible. These three pillars are co-constitutive of one another, forming a relationship which we are calling “sympathetic vibrations.” We hope that this conference will foster a rich exchange of critical perspectives on the theme by bringing together graduate students representing a variety of intellectual disciplines and backgrounds.

We conceive of this theme quite broadly. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
-   Music in/of marginalized communities
-   Liveness, presence, and mediation
-   Music and Critical Race Theory
-   Communities of music pedagogy
-   ‘Vibing’ as embodied practice
-   Environmental/historical soundscapes
-   Digital environments
-   Afrofuturisms
All proposals must be submitted electronically by Wednesday 1 December 2021. For more information about how and what to submit, see here.

[3] Event: Politics of Untranslatability: Bengali Poetry as Literature of the World
Monday 29 November 2021, 2-3.30pm (GMT), via Zoom

Emily Apter rightly argues, quoting Derrida, that the history of translation cannot be delinked from the “history of proselytism and forced conversion” (Apter 2021, 223), a world-system in which “Globish (Global standard English)” is imposed on us as our “absolute habitat” (Derrida 1998), conferring on it its undisputed monolingual sovereignty. Is translation a hegemonic exercise that silences, glosses over multiple non-English specificities or the “untranslatables” (Cassin 2014; Attridge 2021)? How can translation meet the challenges of “incommensurability, nonequivalence, the history of violent erasure, … and nonwords, or the effects of non-translation” (Apter 2021, 219)? Is translation akin to Lyotard’s idea of the “differend”, a conflict zone, left unsettled, unanswered? Is translation, therefore, “a facilitator of Globish (a tool of monolingualism)” (Apter 2021, 221)? How do we strategize a renegade translation heuristic when we trans-iterate minor or micro-literary texts? How can “mistranslation”, “nontranslation”, or a “resistant model of translation” weaponize against the world-systems of literary translation? How do we translate the untranslatable? Or how “to philosophize in translation”, making it a deconstructive tool? This seminar will situate all these questions within the context of translating modern Bengali poetry, or Kallol era poetry to be more precise. Kallol poets were brilliant literary interlocutors of the world, being Bengali avant garde practitioners; they wrote during the inter-war period, a time strikingly similar to our current conjuncture of human conflict and the rise of neo-fascist authoritarianism.

Around the virtual table to discuss these issues will be Emily Apter (New York University), Supriya Chaudhuri (Jadavpur University), Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha (Kazi Nazrul University / University of East Anglia) and Liesl Schwabe (Yeshiva University).

Please register in advance for this free event via Eventbrite.

[4] CfPs: Elmira 2022: The Ninth International Conference on the State of Mark Twain Studies

GROWTH: The Most Rigorous Law of Our Being
“What is the most rigorous law of our being? Growth.”
--Mark Twain, from “Consistency,” a paper read in Hartford in 1887

Deadline for submissions: January 7, 2022
Sponsor: Center for Mark Twain Studies
Contact email: jlemak@elmira.edu
The conference will be held from Thursday, August 4 to Sunday, August 7, 2022 on the campus of Elmira College in Elmira, New York. In addition to scholarly presentations, the conference will have events that provide contexts for Mark Twain and his life in Elmira, and will also feature a keynote by Jimmy Santiago Baca, an award-winning writer for whom Twain has been an important influence.

An important focus of the conference will be scholarly discussion of the study of Mark Twain and how the field might grow and change in response to changing conditions in the world, in the academy, and in the field of Twain Studies. We encourage all proposals to address how your scholarship might help us think about growth and change in the context of our studies of Mark Twain. We have included a list of questions at the end of this announcement to help spark your thinking.

Submission
In keeping with the theme of the conference, we encourage scholars to consider how different ways of presenting your scholarship to the audience might encourage growth and conversation. We encourage you to be open to ideas such as flash presentation sessions in addition to standard 20-minute paper presentations and as roundtables.
•   Paper presentations—20-minute presentations of scholarly arguments and discoveries
•   Roundtables—groups of 3-5 scholars each present for roughly 10 minutes on a theme or topic, leaving significant time and space for discussion
•   Flash Presentations – In addition to roundtables and sessions comprised of individual papers, we will be forming several sessions in which scholars each present for up to 5 minutes on a central subject as a way to spark conversations. Topics might range from “fresh pedagogical approaches to teaching Connecticut Yankee” to “which work by Twain does not get enough attention” to “how can we continue to grow and expand Twain studies.” Please indicate in your submission whether you might be interested in participating in a flash session, and do share suggestions for topics for flash sessions.
Each person may present a paper OR participate in a roundtable. However, you may participate in a flash session in addition to presenting a paper or being on a roundtable.
We encourage you to connect your proposal to the theme of “growth” and to think about how your scholarship can help to grow and change the field.

Proposals for presentations or roundtables (700 words) should be emailed as a Word document to Joseph Lemak at jlemak@elmira.edu by Friday, January 7, 2022. Include a cover letter containing your contact information (name, mailing address, etc.) in the body of the email. Proposals will be reviewed anonymously by members of the conference planning committee.

We invite papers on any aspect of Mark Twain’s work and legacy, but have a particular interest in the questions listed below:
•   How might Twain scholarship change in the future?
•   What are the dynamics of growth and change in Twain’s ideas, moral attitudes, literary aesthetics, etc.
•   What lessons about coping with change can Mark Twain teach us?
•   How did changing circumstances in Twain’s life shape changes in his thinking and writing?
•   Why and how do Twain’s characters grow or change
•   How does travel–in the U.S. and abroad–change Samuel Clemens and the works of Mark Twain?
•   How might we look at Mark Twain and his era in new ways?
•   How does our understanding of Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain change when scholars consider disease, financial panic, and cultural upheaval?
•   How can or should our teaching of Mark Twain and his time change?
•   What impact did the radically shifting racial structures in the U.S. have on Samuel Clemens and Mark Twain?
•   How can the study of Mark Twain and his era help scholars and students understand systemic racism?
•   How might Mark Twain fit into an anti-racist pedagogy?
•   How has America’s response to Mark Twain changed over time?
•   When Mark Twain’s works are translated into other languages, how do they change and what cultural work do they do?
•   How have responses to Mark Twain around the world changed over time?
•   How do we grow and change as scholars? As teachers?
•   What previously neglected texts by Twain speak to us today and deserve to be reconsidered?
•   What ideas that we had earlier would we now change or reject?

Important Dates and Deadlines
•   Paper and panel proposal deadline – Friday, January 7, 2022
•   Decisions deadline – Friday, February 26, 2022
•   Conference registration begins – Friday, February 26, 2022
•   Conference registration deadline – Friday, July 15, 2022
•   Elmira 2022 Conference – Thursday, August 4 to Sunday, August 7, 2022