OCCT TT 2022 - Week 8 Updates
Good morning!
We have one more event this term: On Thursday 16 June at 10:45 am, we will participate in Transnational Africa: The Dakar Translation Symposium. In this transnational event, linking institutions across three continents, Baboucar Diouf, Saliou Dione, Gregory Pardlo and Baba Badji join OCCT's Tinashe Mushakavanhu and Matthew Reynolds for a roundtable discussion celebrating the Dakar Translation Symposium and the inauguration of the Assane Seck University Center for Translation. This event will be taking place online via Zoom. If you would like to attend, please fill out this form. We look forward to seeing you virtually!
Thank you to all of our speakers, panellists, workshop leaders, and audience members for what has been an excellent term of events!
Calls for Papers and Events:
[1] CfPs: Posthumanism and the Posthuman: Chances and Challenges in German and European Literature and Culture
23-24 March 2023
at the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, Senate House, WC1E 7HU
Confirmed keynotes: Professor Karin Harrasser (Linz); Dr Stefan Herbrechter (Heidelberg)
‘Not all of us can say, with any degree of certainty, that we have always been human, or that we are only that. Some of us are not even considered fully human now, let alone at previous moments of Western social, political and scientific history.’ As the philosopher Rosi Braidotti reminds us, one of the central achievements of posthumanism and ‘the posthuman’ has been to enrich and diversify our sense of what it could have meant to be ‘human’, and what it might still mean.
At a time of intersecting geopolitical, economic, biomedical, and ecological crises, this two-day conference seeks to re-evaluate the categories of humanness and ‘the human’ through the lens of the posthuman. Whether through an embrace of non-human perspectives, through an engagement with accounts of bodily enhancement and disability, or through the temporal and spatial shifts of ecology and ecocriticism: we want to explore both the possibilities and the problems that this concept and discourse continue to present. How effectively can it still challenge the hierarchies that crisscross our many – human and non-human – coexistences? And as advances in genetics, prosthetics, and AI reshape those worlds, might ‘the posthuman’ simply end up perpetuating existing systems and structures by other means?
The focus will be on German-language and (in comparison) European literature and culture in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We warmly welcome 20-minute papers (in English) that approach ‘the posthuman’ from literary perspectives (including graphic novels), as well as filmic, theoretical, or philosophical angles. Thematic areas may include (but are by no means limited to):
- Posthumanism and agency
- Posthumanism, transhumanism and AI
- The Posthuman in relation to ethnicity, gender, and sexuality
- Medical humanities and disability studies
- Critical animal and plant studies
- The environmental, ecological, and energy humanities
Please send a title and abstract of no more than 250 words, together with your contact details and affiliation (if applicable), to imlr.posthumanism.conference@gmail.com by 31 August 2022. We are planning to get back to those interested by the end of September.
To facilitate exchange, this conference is planned as an in-person event. However, where different access needs arise, we will aim to facilitate the hybrid participation of speakers via video stream.
Conference website: https://posthuman-chances-challenges.com
Conference organisers: Robert Craig (Bamberg), Annegret Marten (KCL), Rebecca Wismeg-Kammerlander (KCL), and Amy Ainsworth (Cambridge)
[2] Event: Comparative Conversations – British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) Online Seminar Series (via Zoom)
‘Navigating the job market: Applying for jobs and research funding’ - Thursday, 9 June 2022, at 2-3.30pm UK time
Speakers: Dr Nicola Thomas (Lancaster University), Dr Shanti Graheli (University of Glasgow), Dr Will McMorran (Queen Mary, University of London)
Chair: Dr Joanna Rzepa (University of Essex)
In this online seminar, academics with experience in comparative literature and related fields will share their advice on how to navigate the academic job market. Questions that we will discuss include: how to look for jobs and funding sources, how to prepare applications for teaching posts and research fellowships, how to present one’s work when applying for humanities jobs in the UK, and how to prepare for a job interview. Our focus will be on the field of comparative literature in particular, and there will be plenty of time for questions from the audience. Everyone’s warmly welcome!
Registration link: https://essex-university.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYvcO2rqD4sHtZa4GVHPE_GWelJA7p1Bvqp
BCLA website: https://bcla.org/
[3] CfPs: Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Italian Thought
a Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui special issue
In the Anglophone world, there is an ever-growing interest in contemporary Italian philosophy. In recent years, publishers, editors and translators have been particularly active in turning into English a wide range of philosophical works. SUNY Press and Seagull Books have established a series of books on Italian Thought, and MIT Press and Bloomsbury have started their own. Stanford University Press and Semiotext(e) have published on the subject, a Society of Italian Philosophy has been founded, and a Journal of Italian Philosophy has been launched by Newcastle University. In the last few decades, Italy proved a fertile ground for new ideas and for novel engagements between philosophy and subjects as diverse as law, theology, linguistics, anthropology, politics, and literature. Anglophone circles have been increasingly interested in thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Antonio Negri, Pier Aldo Rovatti, and Gianni Vattimo, and more recently Paolo Virno, Christian Marazzi, Massimo Cacciari, Maurizio Lazzarato, and Adriana Cavarero.
In his seminal Living Thought: The Origins and Actuality of Italian Philosophy (2012), Roberto Esposito suggests that a distinguishing feature of Italian Thought is that it is willing to go beyond the boundaries of philosophy to engage with the world at large. Italian philosophy, Esposito claims, ‘has always been worldly: in the world and of the world’ (Esposito 2021, 130). This engagement, however, is not one that looks for pacification. Indeed, for Esposito, another feature of Italian Thought is its emphasis on the role of antagonism as a conceptual tool to understand the political, and as a methodology for advancing the philosophical enquiry (see also Gentili 2012 on ‘sinesteritas’, 12-14).
We suggest that the ‘worldly’ character of Italian philosophy and its emphasis on antagonism make it particularly useful to engage Beckett’s work. The conceptual tools developed by Italian thinkers to tackle the political dimension of life can be used to further the recent interest of scholars in the political aspects of Beckett’s work. At the same time, the engagement of Italian philosophy with literature can be challenged and expanded by placing it in dialogue with Beckett’s texts. Finally, the emphasis on antagonism might prove helpful to confront the elements of antagonism (e.g. against philosophical and literary traditions) found in Beckett’s work.
Samuel Beckett studies have shown increasing engagement with Italian Thought as a way to shed new light on Beckett’s work (see for example Evans 2009; Israel 2018; Jones 2008, 2011, 2018; Kennedy 2019; Jacob 2009). The two recent ‘Beckett and Italy’ conferences held in Reading (2019) and in Rome (2021) have opened the floor to striking contributions to the topic, which paved the way for a volume dedicated to Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Italian Thought. This special issue of Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui aims to fill this gap.
We are seeking contributions on (but not limited to):
· Beckett and Italian Thought
· Beckett and Italian Contemporary Thinkers
· Beckett and Italian Feminist Thought
· Beckett and Italian Biopolitical Thought
· Beckett and Italian Postmodern Thought
· Beckett and Italian Thoughts’ engagement with literature and poetry
· Beckett, Italian Thought and their common roots (e.g. Dante, Vico, Leopardi)
To contribute, submit an abstract of no more than 500 words to beckettanditaly@gmail.com by 15 July 2022. Final articles should not exceed 6000 words – including abstract, notes, and bibliography.
SCHEDULED DEADLINES
15 July 2022: submissions of abstracts
1 December 2022: texts of proposed articles submitted by authors
15 February 2023: results of peer-reviewing
1 May 2023: revised texts submitted by authors
The special issue is scheduled for publication in 2024.
For questions, contact Dr Michela Bariselli and Antonio Gambacorta at beckettanditaly@gmail.com
