Call for Papers American Comparative Literature Association Conference

Call for Papers
American Comparative Literature Association Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana
April 1-4

Panel: Retelling: Narrative in Translation

Seminar Organizers:
Brian O'Keeffe, Barnard College, Columbia University
Leah Leone, University of Iowa

Literary studies has not had great difficulty in agreeing that literary translations can be counted as independent texts, newly original creations of an original text, however ostensibly “derivative” a translation may be. Yet translated fiction continues to be read, analyzed and taught as if its narratives were identical to those of their sources. Translations are said to re-interpreted, retold by a new narrator, yet there has been relatively little study of the ways in which narratives shift in translation.

This seminar accordingly seeks to provide a forum for discussing the possible intersections of narrative studies and translation. For narrative studies, therefore, we envisage opening up a new avenue in comparative studies — the comparison of the narrative as it is transformed across multiple translations. For translation studies, we hope to go beyond the study of grammatical and prescriptive issues and invite considerations of narrative form — what happens to emplotment, characterization, teleology.

In the spirit of a conference devoted to the practice of comparative literature, we welcome “comparison” in all of its forms, for this includes questions of how different cultural attitudes to narrative itself affect translations of fiction. It is moreover a matter of how the multiple inheritances of North-American narratology might address the question differently, in comparison, say, to German response-theory, or French structuralism. We invite papers that deal with any aspect of narrative in translation, and hope to promote dialogue that furthers theoretical and methodological approaches to its study. Papers should be 15 to 20 minutes in length to allow for discussion.

Please submit an abstract of 250 words to http://www.acla.org/submit/index.php

Official Deadline is November 13, 2009

Call for Papers: Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture

CALL FOR PAPERS - LOUISVILLE CONFERENCE ON LITERATURE AND CULTURE

Call for Papers - Narrative Medicine

Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900

February 18-20, 2010

The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 has again extended an invitation to Narrative Medicine to organize a panel. Focusing on Narrative Medicine, this panel will share the same broad scope as the conference itself. All proposals for papers addressing narratives of illness and health since 1900 are welcome.

At this time the best way to indicate your interest is to contact David Eberly, the panel’s convener, at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) by *October 12, 2009.

*Please include your name, affiliation, and contact information together with a description of your suggested topic.
* *Please attach a brief proposal, if available.

The conference will be held at the University of Louisville on February 18-20, 2010. Generally, the conference “welcomes critical papers on any topic that addresses literary works published since 1900 and/or their relationships with other arts and disciplines (film, journalism, opera, music, pop culture, painting, architecture, law, etc.)”

Call for Papers: Narratology and the New Social Dimension of Narratives

Workshop “Narratology and the New Social Dimension of Narratives”: call for papers

Conference organised by the Centre de Recherche sur les Arts et le Langage (CRAL)

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) - Paris – Tuesday 02 February 2010

Call for Papers

Aims of the conference

Created in 2003, the seminar “Narratologies contemporaines” at the EHESS was quick to stand out in France as one of the leading centres for transdisciplinary research in narrative theory. “Narratologies contemporaines” enjoys a dual status: it is a research centre attached directly to the Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage (EHESS/CNRS) and at the same time a course offering under the heading “Theories and practices of language and the arts” in the Masters program in social sciences at the EHESS. From its beginnings, the seminar has sought to be a forum of discussion for researchers and of presentation for students of new horizons in today’s international postclassical narrative theory. It thus regularly invites both French and foreign researchers to present and debate their work. In this context, a first conference is being organised for the purpose of creating new and closer links between European research centres active in the field of narratology and in particular of furthering exchanges between doctoral students and young researchers.
Themes of the conference

In connection with the theme of for the seminar “Narratologies contemporaines” for the academic year 2009/10, this conference will be devoted to the new social uses of narratives.

Although analysis of the specificity of narrative remains at the heart of our research program, we consider, unlike the positions held by classical narratology, that cognitive and social parameters form an integral part of narrative discourse, both fictional and factual. For this reason, the postulate will be re-examined according to which narrative is a form of socially shared cognition. Neglect of the social dimension filled by narratives, rarely acknowledged by earlier theories, played no negligible role in their decline and thus needs to be introduced once again into current methods of analysis.

Without renouncing use of the tried and proven analytical methods set up by earlier narratological theories, the development over time, circulation and changes due to recent technological developments require that the symbolic and social functions of narrative discourse understood as a form of semiosis be taken more carefully into account

Without seeking to establish an exhaustive list of the questions raised by this approach, the issues involved are as follows:

• Interfaces between narratology and the cognitive science
• Narrative as a form of socially shared cognition
• Narrative as a form of knowledge and semiosis
• The role of interpretative practices in the definition of narrative
• New media and new forms of narrative
• New social roles of narrative (narrative and politics, narrative and the business world, narrative and social control, etc.)
• Narrative, interactivity, and transmediality
• Recordings of the lectures given at the conference will be put on line on the website of the seminar (http://narratologie.ehess.fr). Publication of the proceedings in electronic form is also planned.
• Submission of proposals and important dates

Authors are asked to submit their proposed lecture in the form of a summary of around 500 words (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)). The subject of the lecture and its theoretical framework as well as the implications at the theoretical and methodological level must be clearly defined.

Deadline for submission of proposals: 01 December 2009
Notification of authors: 08 December 2009
Receipt of the texts of the lectures: 21 January 2010

For more information: http://narratologie.ehess.fr/

Call for papers: Tales of Transit

Call for papers: Tales of Transit: Narrative Migrant Spaces in Transatlantic Perspective, 1830-1954

Tales of Transit:
Narrative Migrant Spaces in Transatlantic Perspective, 1830-1954
International Conference   Felix Archive
Antwerp, Belgium   10-13 June, 2010

Keynote speakers:
Adam Walaszek (Jagiellonian University Krakow)
Matthew Frye Jacobson (Yale University)
Nancy K. Miller (City University of New York)
Werner Sollors (Harvard University) TBC

Organizing Institutions
University College Ghent – Faculty of Translation Studies
Ghent University Association Research Group on Literature in Translation
Institute of Jewish Studies, University of Antwerp
Leuven Research Group on Literary Relations and Postnational Identities
Lessius University College Department of Applied Language Studies
Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg
Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp

Call for papers

The period between 1830 and 1940 witnessed the most dramatic population movement in recorded history. Motivated by economic, religious and political upheavals, millions of migrants left their familiar homes in search of a better life, whereby the Atlantic functioned as one of the central thoroughfares. Many of these travelers left testimonies of their journeys, whether in written or oral form. Traditionally such narratives have been approached within the framework of either the source or the receiving societies, and consequently most research energy has been invested in the ways migrants managed or failed to adapt to new conditions, how they reconciled the often conflicting impressions of the new culture with the one they were born into. Studies of this kind often start from a preset agenda regarding the nature or development of a specific culture. In reaction to such restricted national or subnational perspectives, recent approaches in migration research and literary and cultural studies address no longer just the starting or end points of migration movements but also the diverse trajectories before and after the journey, as well as the role of corporations and agencies involved in oceanic travel. The aim of Tales of Transit is to bring together these new insights and methodologies and confront them with the rich but underexplored archive of transatlantic migrant narratives.

Transit places – docks, hotels, railway coaches, inspection offices, dormitories, churches, ship’s decks, etc. – normally figure only marginally in migrant narratives. They are mentioned in passing, as a prelude or even in counterpoint to the new life that waits after the
journey. Precisely because of this, these peripatetic places (both in a literal and a figurative sense) can help us to challenge received notions about migration as a form of one-way traffic whereby supposedly nothing is lost or gained along the way, and to reconceptualize it as a multicausal process. In view of the opening of the Red Star Line/People on the Move museum in Antwerp, Tales of Transit takes the city as its starting point to rethink transatlantic migration. We encourage contributions offering comparative perspectives on migrants traveling through well-known as well as lesser known ports in Europe, Africa and the Americas. The focus may be broadened to include mainland cities functioning as nodal points for migration flows or border crossing points on the frontier between states or regions. Overall, the stress lies on how such liminal spaces are narrated or visualized: How vital are these sites or loci for the narrative? Do they affirm or rather subvert the migrants’ aspirations and hopes? Does the perspective shift in accordance with the medium or audience expectations and, if so, in what ways?

Within the framework sketched out above, we have selected a number of subtopics, one or more of which can form the basis of paper or panel proposals:

Language and Translation
Whether transmitted through writing or not, migrant narratives are inevitably subject to, or involved in translation. To convey his or her story, the migrant has to choose a language: either that of the home culture or that of the adoptive country, or else, something in between. How do such translation processes contribute to the construction of an “authentic” account? What if there are several mother or father tongues to choose from? Does that mean there is more than one “original” narrative? Or could it be there is none (as with fake translations)? How common are self-translations and how are they different from or similar to other translations? What, finally, is the status of retranslations?

Migration as Business
Migration is never a matter of individual stories of tragedy or success alone, but also constitutes a flourishing business. Comparative research on the competition between ocean lines and intermediary agencies for the recruitment of migrants is still in its infancy. In what ways did such corporations play a role in preselecting the trajectories of migrants? Did the agents of these companies differentiate along ethnic, religious and/or linguistic lines? What was the impact of steamship lobbies on national and international immigration legislation? How important were aid organizations and charities? Do touristic routes overlap with migration routes, and, if so, in what ways do these economies obstruct or facilitate each other?

Iconography of Migration
Passing migrants do not often leave a lasting imprint on the cultural life of a nation or community, yet traces survive in most transit places. The advertisements by which companies used to lure migrants constitute a visual culture in its own right, the stereotypes and
counterstereotypes circulating in the local press another. Paradoxically, even while serving as instruments of transnational displacement, ocean lines at the same time constitute emblems of national pride. How do (sub-)national literatures of the period 1830-1940 represent migrants? What role do museums and monuments play in the construction or subversion of stock images about migrants in transit places? To what extent do for instance cartoons and other more or less popular art forms serve to set off “good” from “bad” or “new” from “old” migrants?

Archiving Testimonies
Migrant narratives are almost by definition difficult to locate in library collections. An important heuristic question is how we can gain access to the migrant narratives that are dispersed all over the globe. This also involves broader issues of visibility and belonging. Should
there be a kind of Schengen Convention or Free Trade Agreement for migrant testimonies? Should collections cut across ethnic, national, linguistic and other faultlines, or should they preserve them? Institutionalizing the migrant heritage may always appear paradoxical,
as such initiatives tend to pin down what is not directly localizable. Given that successful migrant groups tend to dissolve themselves, what would be a viable policy toward the preservation and memorialization of migrant narratives?

Paper proposals in English of no more 300 words can be submitted to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) by November 15, 2009. The academic committee will evaluate the abstracts and send out notifications of acceptance by the end of November. Each participant will be given 20 minutes to present, followed by 10 minutes of discussion. A selection of papers will be published in the conference proceedings.

http://webs.hogent.be/talesoftransit/

Call for Papers: Panel on “Retelling: Narrative in Translation”

Call for Papers: Panel on “Retelling: Narrative in Translation”
ACLA New Orleans April 2010

Call for Papers: Panel on “Retelling: Narrative in Translation”
American Comparative Literature Association Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana, April 1-4

Seminar Organizers: Brian O’Keeffe, Barnard College, Columbia University
Leah Leone, University of Iowa

Literary studies has not had great difficulty in agreeing that literary translations can be counted as independent texts, newly original creations of an original text, however ostensibly “derivative” a translation may be. Yet translated fiction continues to be read, analyzed and taught as if its narratives were identical to those of their sources. Translations are said to re-interpreted, retold by a new narrator, yet there has been relatively little study of the ways in which narratives shift in translation. This seminar accordingly seeks to provide a forum for discussing the possible intersections of narrative studies and translation. For narrative studies, therefore, we envisage opening up a new avenue in comparative studies — the comparison of the narrative as it is transformed across multiple translations. For translation studies, we hope to go beyond the study of grammatical and prescriptive issues and invite considerations of narrative form — what happens to emplotment, characterization, teleology.

In the spirit of a conference devoted to the practice of comparative literature, we welcome “comparison” in all of its forms, for this includes questions of how different cultural attitudes to narrative itself affect translations of fiction. It is moreover a matter of how the multiple inheritances of North-American narratology might address the question differently, in comparison, say, to German response-theory, or French structuralism. We invite papers that deal with any aspect of narrative in translation, and hope to promote dialogue that furthers theoretical and methodological approaches to its study. Papers should be 15 to 20 minutes in length to allow for discussion.

Please submit an abstract of 250 words to www.acla.org

Official Deadline is November 1, 2009

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