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

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