OCCT TT Week 6 2019 Updates
Blog post by Eleni Philippou
Oxford Translation Day is taking place next week, and its programme is as rich and varied as ever! We have workshops, talks, and poetry readings with some of the globe’s most esteemed translators. On Friday night (14 June), we kick off with a session on different translations of Jane Eyre, the English classic. On the Saturday (15 June), we have a workshop for teachers exploring the use of translation in the classroom running parallel to a multilingual translation workshop celebrating the fluidity and movement of language and identities! These workshops are followed by a book launch of an Uyghur memoir; a talk on the translation of European Romanticism, and a reading and conversation with the poet André Naffis-Sahely. Our event, “This is Why”, is an unmatched opportunity to hear the shortlisted Weidenfeld translators discuss their dedication to translation and languages. To see the full programme and book tickets, go here: http://www.occt.ox.ac.uk/oxford-translation-day-2019.
In our Discussion Group session, we discussed translating from Armenian literature with Dr David Zakarian (Pembroke College, Oxford) who introduced us to the (seemingly considerable) 'Challenges of Translating Medieval Armenian Colophons in Verse'.
Events and CFPs
1. Ika Willis, ‘Reception All The Way Down’
20 June (Thu week 8), 5-7pm, Ertegun House
Abstract: Reception study is often seen as peripheral to the business of literary studies, looking away from the text itself in order to investigate the contingent, unpredictable, and unruly activities of real-life readers – more properly, perhaps, the domain of sociology, ethnography, or cultural studies. In this paper, I argue that, to the contrary, reception and literary studies are coextensive. As signifying structures, texts cannot be considered in isolation from the processes of signification through which they are produced and circulated, or from the networks and media of communication through which they are received by readers. It is harder than we often credit to draw a boundary between the ‘text itself’ and its reception: as the Biblical reception scholar Brendan Breed puts it, it is ‘reception all the way down’.
Bio: Associate Professor Ika Willis is currently Discipline Leader in English Literatures at the University of Wollongong, where she arrived in 2013 after seven years as Lecturer in Reception at the University of Bristol. At Bristol, she designed and convened the interdisciplinary MA in Reception and Critical Theory from 2007-2011. Her first book, Now and Rome, reads the works of Lucan and Vergil in relation to five twentieth-century critical theorists including Jacques Derrida; her most recent book is Reception in Routledge’s New Critical Idiom series (2018). She is the founder of the Australian Reception Network.
Organisers: Karolina Watroba, Colton Valentine, Max Norman
2. THE EDWIN MORGAN 100 CONFERENCE
CALL FOR PAPERS
The centenary of the birth of Edwin Morgan (1920-2010), one of Scotland’s best-known and most distinguished poets and the first National Poet, falls in 2020.
The University of Glasgow will mark this centenary by bringing together academics, writers, and publishers in Morgan’s home city to celebrate his life and the wide range of his work as poet, playwright, educator, and critic. An international conference will take place at the University of Glasgow Monday 27th—Tuesday 28th April 2020, Marjorie Perloff will give a keynote lecture. Delegates are invited to a Civic Reception at the City Chambers in Glasgow on the evening of Monday 27th April.
Papers are welcome on any aspect of Morgan’s life and work. Themes might include, but are not limited to:
• Life and Work
Poetry, Criticism / Essays, Drama, Biography, Archives, LGBTQ+, Modernism and Experimental Poetry, Sci-Fi.
• National / International / East and West
Scottish literary history, the Beats, Russian Formalism, Concrete poets, Correspondence / Networks, Translation and Languages (including Russian, Hungarian, Latin, French, Italian, Old English, Scots).
• Public and Legacy
Teaching Morgan / Morgan Teaching, Awards and Honours, Film and TV documentaries / interviews.
• Method and Character
Collaborations (visual arts / film / music), Computers, Humour, Small magazines and publishing.
• Glasgow
Localism, People, History, Housing, Future Glasgows.
Those interested in presenting 20-minute papers should submit a 250-word abstract, brief biographical statement (including academic affiliation and contact information), and A/V requirements to edwinmorgan100conference@glasgow.ac.uk by 5pm Monday 2nd September 2019. Submissions from graduate students and early career scholars are encouraged.
The Edwin Morgan 100 Conference Organising Committee is made up of: John Coyle, Alan Riach, Corey Gibson, Sarah Hepworth, Philippa Osmond-Williams, and James Rann.
The conference is part of a programme of events celebrating the centenary supported by the Edwin Morgan Trust in association with Creative Scotland, National Library of Scotland, and Glasgow Life: The Mitchell Library, Special Collections.
Any queries, please contact organisers at: edwinmorgan100conference@glasgow.ac.uk
Edwin Morgan Trust:
www.edwinmorganaward.com
Conference site: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/newsandevents/forthcomingconferences/headline_647701_en.html
#EdwinMorgan100
3. Conference: 'The Literary Image and the Screen'
Location: Department of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Genoa, Italy
Date: 5-6 September 2019
Papers: Proposals from PhD and early career researchers welcomed
Conference description:
This conference aims to explore the connections and relationships between literature and the screen, from the pre-cinematic age to the era of television and new digital technologies. A cross-media approach, aimed at understanding the reciprocal influences between these various artistic forms, as seen from the point of view of techniques of representation, theoretical exchanges and the circulation of works, will shed new light on ideas in, and theories of, both literature and the cinema.
The official language of the conference is English.
Keynote speakers: Prof Laura Marcus and Prof Nikolaj Lübecker, University of Oxford.
This will be the opening event of a series co-organised by the University of Genoa and the University of Oxford.
Application process:
Please send an abstract (max. 250 words) and a short bio (max. 50 words) in a PDF attachment to: oxford.genoa.conference.2019@gmail.com
Proposals should include your name, university affiliation (if applicable), academic status, and the title of your paper. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes.
The deadline for abstract submissions has been extended to 30th June 2019. Notification of acceptance will be communicated on 15th July 2019.
4. AGS CONFERENCE 2019 -- University of Bristol, 4-6 September 2019
REGISTRATION OPEN - deadline Friday, 28 June 2019
The next AGS conference will take place from Wednesday 4th - Friday 6th September 2019 at the University of Bristol. The lead panel will be on the theme "Citizenship". Regular panels will also be running, as well as a number of one-off panels. Full details of the programme and registration details can be downloaded on the AGS website.
Please visit www.ags.ac uk and follow the CONFERENCES -> FUTURE CONFERENCES link.
Please return the completed registration form to the conference secretary Frauke Matthes (frauke.matthes@ed.ac.uk) by EMAIL ONLY and transfer the sum to the relevant AGS account (please DO NOT send cheques) as detailed on the form. The deadline for receipt of registration forms and full payment is Friday, 28 JUNE 2019.
Please contact Frauke if you have any queries.
We look forward to seeing you at Bristol!
5. INSTITUTE OF MODERN LANGUAGES RESEARCH
School of Advanced Study • University of London
Friday 12 & Saturday 13 July 2019
Transnational Families, Transnational Novels
Room 243 IMLR, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London
https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/19431
Programme
Friday 12 July
9:00 Registration / Coffee & Tea
9:30 Opening Remarks
10:00 Maria Roca Lizarazu: Beyond the Family (Novel)? Sasha Marianna Salzmann’s Politics and Poetics of Non-Belonging
Sabine Waas: The Function of Transnational Family in Julya Rabinowich’s Spaltkopf (2008)
Rehnuma Sazzad: Transnational Families and Lending Colour to Britishness in Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon
12:00 Lunch (own arrangements)
14:00 Maureen Moynagh: Global Intimacies: The Transnational and the Domestic in Contemporary Fiction
Sigrid Thomsen: Mobilities of Chronology and Family in Julia Alvarez’ How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
15:30 Coffee & Tea
16:00 Ashwiny O. Kistnareddy: Vietnamese Transnational Refugee Families: Flight, Filiation and Food as memory in Kim Thúy's Ru
Elaheh Ghasempour: Scent of Pine, Scent of Hyacinth
18:00 Keynote: Antoinette Tidjani Alou
Presents her collection of short stories Tina Shot Me between the Eyes
Moderator: Amelie Daigle
Saturday 13 July
9:00 Registration / Coffee & Tea
9:30 Björn Laser: The Time of the Dragons - Concepts of Family, Migration, and Ethnicity in the Works of Alice Ekert-Rotholz
Meng Xia: Locating Transcultural Memory in Transnational Families
10:50 Coffee
11:00 Amelie Daigle: Tangible Gains and Intangible Losses: Migration and Family in Laila Lalami’s Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits
Elisa Walker: The deconstruction of the Freudian family romance in Italian migration literature
Umme Salma: “no turning back … to go through”: Family Memory and Female Agency in Nashid Kamal’s The Glass Bangles (2011)
13:00 Lunch (own arrangements)
14:15 Orsolya András: Mother, Border, Daughter
Annette Bühler-Dietrich: Planetary Orphanage
15:45 Coffee & Tea
16:00 Keynote Speaker: Temi Oh
Presents her novel Do You Dream of Terra-Two?
Moderator: Annette Bühler-Dietrich
17:30 Closing Remarks
Supported by the Coffin Fund, Frauen in der Literaturwissenschaft, The Universität Stuttgart and the Higher Education, Research and Innovation Department of the French Embassy.
Advanced registration required by Thursday 4 July 2019 at: https://modernlanguages.sas.ac.uk/events/event/19431
Registration Fees:
Standard Ticket one day £15.00 | Standard Ticket both days £25.00
Student/Unwaged one day £10.00 | Student/Unwaged both days £15.00
6. BECKETT & ITALY
University of Reading (7-8 November 2019)
"Can’t conceive by what stretch of ingenuity my work could be placed under the sign of italianità… There are a number of Italian elements [in my work]…" (SB to AJ Leventhal, 21 April 1958)
Beckett and Italy. As a student at Trinity College Dublin, Beckett studied Italian language and literature, and cultivated them privately with Bianca Esposito, the signorina Adriana Ottolenghi of ‘Dante and the Lobster’. They discussed the writers on his syllabus: Machiavelli, Petrarca, Manzoni, Boccaccio and Tasso, to name a few. His most striking encounter was with Dante – he read the Commedia many times throughout his life – and he also discovered a particular affinity with Leopardi. As a student, he wrote essays on Carducci and D’Annunzio. He attempted translations of Dante into English in letters and notebooks, and wrote a curious dialogue in German based on Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. In 1930, he published translations into English of Montale’s poem ‘Delta’ and texts by Franchi and Comisso. For a good part of his formative years, Beckett really was, as Walter Draffin in Dream of Fair to Middling Women, an “Italianate Irishman”. His interest extended well beyond literature. For example, he read the philosophical investigations of Bruno, Campanella, Thomas Aquinas and Vico. Moreover, he was interested in Italian music, was fascinated by Italian art, and followed with curiosity the experiments of Neorealist cinema. Yet Beckett’s relation to Italian culture is far from unambiguous. For example, despite his knowledge of the language, Beckett’s involvement with the Italian translation of his work was negligible. Comments like the one quoted above, where, while denying the “italianità” of his work, he draws attention to “a number of Italian elements” in it, are a testament to both the ambiguity and the vitality of this relationship. These two conferences aim to re-assess the influence that Italian culture, literature, poetry, theatre, arts and cinema had on Beckett’s works, even beyond what he was willing to recognise.
Italy and Beckett. When Godot was first performed in Italy in 1953, the first Italian-language production coming a year later, Beckett was greeted as a playwright who belonged to the Theatre of the Absurd. Meanwhile his prose was mostly ignored or disregarded as minor. Eventually, Beckett found his place in literature, art, and popular culture; it is significant, in this light, that Calvino turned to him, in the last years of his life, and looked positively at his minimalism in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Writers and artists felt – as they do today – the need to respond to the Beckett phenomenon, even if only to condemn his ‘literature without style’. Theatre directors welcomed his experiments and continue to propose innovative productions of his work. Critics have analysed him comparatively with writers like Pirandello, Levi and Gadda. More recently, much attention has been paid to the ties between Beckett’s writing and the philosophy of Agamben. In more general terms, there is room to investigate the way Beckett can help the exploration of the new avenues opened by the so-called ‘Italian Theory’, and, conversely, how the conceptual tools offered by this trend of thought can shed a different light on Beckett’s work. The recent publication of the Italian translation of Beckett’s letters seems to align with this continued Italian interest in Beckett. On the other hand, the fact that it is still difficult to find his work in bookshops, confirms the ambiguity of Beckett’s position in Italian culture. Each of these conferences aims to reconsider the impact of Beckett’s work on Italian culture.
We encourage submissions focused on, but not limited to, the followings areas:
· Beckett and Italian culture (literature, philosophy, poetry, art, cinema, music, science, theatre, radio);
· Beckett, Italian Philosophy, and ‘Italian Theory’;
· Beckett, Italian Language, and Translation;
· Beckett, Italian Publishing Houses and Market;
· Beckett and Italian Criticism;
· Beckett and Italian Popular Culture;
· Beckett and Italian Theatre;
· Beckett, Italy and Poetry;
· Beckett and Italian Arts;
· Beckett and Italian Politics, and Bio-politics.
Confirmed Keynotes:
Prof. David Houston Jones (University of Exeter)
Dr. Rossana Sebellin (University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’)
Prof. Mariacristina Cavecchi (University of Milan)
Dr Pim Verhulst (University of Antwerp)
Submission of proposal:
Please send anonymised abstracts, in English, of 300–500 words to beckettanditaly@gmail.com with a separate short bio of no more than 150 words by 16 June 2019.
For more information, please email beckettanditaly@gmail.com or visit barpgroup.wordpress.com.
Organisers:
Dr Michela Bariselli (University of Reading)
Antonio Gambacorta (University of Reading)
Dr Davide Crosara (University of Rome, Sapienza)
Prof. Mario Martino (University of Rome, Sapienza)
