Calls for Papers, Calls for Papers, Articles, Translations, Conferences

CFP: After Clarice: Lispector’s Legacy (Oxford)

After Clarice: Lispector’s Legacy, November 17-18, 2017. University of Oxford

Organizers: Claire Williams (Modern Languages, Oxford) and Adriana X Jacobs (Oriental Studies, Oxford)

“After Clarice: Lispector’s Legacy” commemorates the fortieth anniversary of Clarice Lispector’s death, but also aims to analyse her legacy and influence as it has developed in the decades since. This international gathering will evaluate the fluctuations and swerves in Lispector’s critical fortunes, and focus, as well, on the way her works have evolved in translation into other languages and cultures and through other disciplines (film, music, sports and visual arts). Additionally, our conference will address Lispector’s status as a Jewish writer, issues of class and race in her work, translation and reception, as well as the politics of publishing and marketing Lispector for international readerships.

In addition to her stories and novels, this event will move beyond Lispector’s literature to look at her journalism, writing for children, interviews, interfaces with painting and music, and consider the ways these activities shaped her persona and garnered her new readers in a wide range of disciplines. Films inspired by her life and work, as well as the ways actors have portrayed her and her characters will also be discussed. The internationally recognized scholar of Lispector’s life and work, Prof Nádia Battella Gotlib (Universidade de São Paulo), will provide a keynote address.

This event will include a roundtable with contemporary translators and publishers, writers and artists influenced by Lispector’s work, film screenings and a dramatic performance of one of her texts.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute presentations in English or Portuguese. Please include a title, a 200-300-word abstract, and brief bio. Suggested topics include:

• Multidisciplinary Lispector (sports, fine arts, film, music)
• Translation and retranslation (We encourage in particular proposals that address translation into non-Western languages.)
• Lispector in the Museum
• Lispector and the global publishing industry (marketing, reception, translation into English)
• Teaching Lispector
• Class and Race in Lispector
• Jewish Lispector
• Domesticity in Lispector
• Lispector’s journalism, writing for children, interviews
• Re-writing Lispector

The deadline for proposals is July 1, 2017. Send queries and completed proposals via email to: afterclarice@gmail.com

Books, Conferences, Events of Interest, Publications of Interest, Translations, Workshops

Tamim Al-Barghouti: Book launch, Workshop, Public Event (SOAS)

 

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The Poet of Jerusalem is coming to SOAS. Tamim Al-Barghouti, one of the most important and popular Arab poets of his generation, is launching the first English translation of his poetry on. The poemsin In Jerusalem and Other Poems, lovingly translated by his late mother, Radwa Ashour, the prominent Egyptian academic and novelist, and Ahdaf Soueif, the Booker nominated author of The Map of Love, were written in Cairo, Ramallah, Amman, Washington, DC and Berlin between 1996 and 2016. In 2007, Al-Barghouti’s long poem “In Jerusalem,” which describes an aborted journey to the city, became something of a street poem. It is heartbreakingly beautiful. It speaks to the story of millions of homeless Palestinians who have been forced to live in exile since 1948. His father, the famous writer Mourid Barghouti, was expelled from Egypt, where Tamim was born, when he was only five months old. Tamim lived with his mother in Cairo, and for 18 years only saw his father in Budapest during winter and summer vacations. But his poetry is more than the sum total of the Palestinian experience. It is also the barometer of the political fortunes in the Arab world, from the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Arab Spring spreading like fire from Tunisia in 2010, and the 26 January 2011 Revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak and transformed an entire generation. Above all, it is testament to a resilient Arabic poetic tradition that, at the hands of a young talent, can continue to thrive, generate new energy and move hearts and souls.

Tamim returns to SOAS on Tuesday, 27 June 2017, to take part in the Chase-funded Arabic Poetry and Stories Translation Workshop (SOAS, S118, 2:30 to 5:30PM) and public event (SOAS, KLT, 6:30-8:00 PM), convened by Marina Warner (Birckbeck) and Wen-chin Ouyang (SOAS), as part of ‘It was and it was not…’: Translation in Action Programme.

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Tamim Al-Barghouti is an acclaimed Palestinian poet, columnist and political scientist. His poetry readings are attended by thousands, sometimes packing stadiums and amphitheaters. Born in Cairo in 1977, Al-Barghouti published six poetry collections in both colloquial and classical Arabic including  Meejana (Ramallah 1999), Al-Manzar “The Scene” (Cairo 2000), Maqam Iraq (Cairo: 2005) and Fil Quds “In Jersualem” (2008), and two  academic books on Arab politics and history:  Benign Nationalism (Cairo: 2007) and The Umma and The Dawla: The Nation State and the Arab Middle East  (London: 2008). He is also the author of “War, Peace, Civil War: a Pattern?” in Palestine and the Palestinians in the 21st century (Bloomington: 2013) and “Cracking Cauldrons” in Shifting Sands: the Unraveling of the Old Order in the Middle East (London: 2015). He received his PhD in political science in 2004, and has since taught at Georgetown University, the Free University in Berlin, and the American University in Cairo. He was also a fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced studies 2007-2008.  A columnist since 2003, writing in Egyptian and dailies, Al-Barghouti has been associated with the 2011 uprisings, where recordings of his poetry were broadcast on makeshift screens in Egypt’s Tahrir Square during the 18 days of demonstrations that ousted Hosny Mubarak.

Calls for Papers, Calls for Papers, Articles, Translations, Conferences, Symposiums

CFP: Of Borders and Ecologies (Birmingham City)

Of Borders and Ecologies: Comparative Literature and the Environment, The NCLN 3 rd Annual Symposium, Hosted by the School of English, Birmingham City University, 28 October 2017

The Northern Comparative Literature Network (NCLN) is a platform for scholars in the midlands and the north of the UK who study literature across boundaries of language, culture and nationality.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The environment does not respect borders. The effects of ecosystems’ degradation cross all boundaries, including those of nations, cultures and languages. Among the questions raised by contemporary ecocriticism is that of borders, especially perhaps, the limitations of anthropocentrism and the boundaries between the human and the non-human. In terms of literature and the environment, Timothy Clark has articulated the question along the following lines: Can anthropomorphism, the tendency to attribute human qualities to nature, offer a way of understanding the non-human environment, or is it a form of solipsism wholly determined by human consciousness? To problems of epistemology come questions of ethics: Does the Anthropocene require, as Timothy Morton’s writings on ‘hyperobjects’ suggest, an extension of ‘personhood’ to aspects of the non-human world? Meanwhile, renegotiations of Marx’s ecological thought have sought to recognise the unacknowledged labour of the natural world in capitalist value creation, thereby breaching the apparently closed borders of economic systems (Foster: 2000), whilst McKenzie Wark’s Molecular Red (2015) has attempted to broach the perceived gap between high theory and individual ecological praxis.

This one-day symposium, organised by the Northern Comparative Literature Network, invites papers that explore contemporary engagement with the environment in postcolonial, world and planetary literatures. How might Comparative Literature make a distinctive contribution to the understanding of literature and the environment? For this symposium, we are particularly interested in literary scholars working on questions of the environment and ecocriticism in the 20th and 21st centuries. Although it is not a strict requirement, preference may be given to comparative approaches that move across the boundaries of nationality, culture and language.

We are currently in talks with literary journals as we plan to publish a selection of papers delivered at the symposium in a themed issue (scheduled for publication before REF 2021).

Topics may include:

 Planetary and World Literature

 Hybrid and creole literatures

 The unsettling of species boundaries and post-humanism

 Romanticism, ecofeminism, postcolonial eco-justice, animal welfare and deep

ecology.

 Ecology vs ‘nature’

 Planetary/world ecological history or memory, and its literary representation

 ‘Eco-cosmopolitanism’ (Heise, 2009) and its representation in literature

 Aesthetics, forms and themes of ‘world-ecological literature’ (Deckard, 2017)

 The Anthropocene vs. ‘the Capitalocene’ (Moore, 2014)

We welcome abstracts and expressions of interest in NCLN from established scholars, postgraduates and researchers. Abstracts of 250 words for papers lasting around 20 minutes should be forwarded to Peter Jackson peter.jackson@bcu.ac.uk or Tom Knowles thomas.knowles@bcu.ac.uk by Monday 11 September 2017

Conferences, Events of Interest

Translating Eurydice (Uni. of East London)

Translating Eurydice, One-day Conference on Myth in the Twenty-First Century, Friday, 27 October 2017, University of East London (Stratford Campus)

We are pleased to announce a one-day conference to explore the fate of Eurydice translated into our divided, twenty-first century world. Translation is understood in the broad sense of the transference of mythic material across cultures and epochs; it includes, but is not limited to, the rewriting of texts. More specifically, the conference sets out to explore how one particular myth has been adapted to the challenges and traumas of linguistic and cultural displacement in an era of local and global dislocation. How has Eurydice fared in the contemporary world of domestic politics and mass migration? Is she perceived as powerless or has she become newly empowered, freed from the embrace of Orpheus?

The programme is organised as a series of plenary papers in the morning and performance sessions after lunch. Speakers will approach the myth of Eurydice from various perspectives, ranging from its literary and artistic reception to its application in the field of psychoanalysis. More information on the speakers will follow.

For further information, please visit The Centre for Myth Studies Wordpress page https://essexmyth.wordpress.com/conferences/translating-eurydice/ and our Twitter and Facebook accounts: https://twitter.com/mythstudies/ and https://www.facebook.com/mythstudiesessex/ 

Please email us if you have any queries about the conference:  mythic@essex.ac.uk

To book your place, please visit the Eventbrite page: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/translating-eurydice-one-day-conference-on-myth-in-the-twenty-first-century-tickets-35189404456

There is no charge for attendance, but, to avoid disappointment, those wishing to attend are strongly advised to register in advance, as space is limited. 

Best wishes,

On behalf of the Centre for Myth Studies Executive Committee

Events of Interest, Lectures

Culture and Anarchy 150th Anniversary Panel (Sussex)

On the 22nd of June 2017, the University of Sussex is hosting a special edition of the BBC Radio 3 programme Free Thinking, which will mark the 150th anniversary of Matthew Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy with a panel discussion in front of a live audience.

Arnold argued that modern life was producing a society of ‘Philistines’ who only cared for material possessions and hedonistic pleasure. As a medicine for this moral and spiritual degradation, Arnold prescribed ‘culture’, which he defined as ‘the best which has been thought and said in the world’, stored in Europe’s great literature, philosophy and history. By engaging with this heritage, he argued, humans could develop towards a higher state of mental and moral ‘perfection’.

The discussion, hosted by the writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet, will discuss the significance of Culture and Anarchy, and its legacy in ongoing arguments for the value of culture and the humanities.

The speakers on the panel will be:

Tiffany Jenkins (sociologist of heritage, author of Keeping Their Marbles: How the Treasures of the Past Ended up in Museums, and Why They Should Stay There).

 Simon Heffer (writer, author of High Minds: the Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain).

Stella Duffy (writer and co-director of the Fun Palaces campaign).

Will Abberley (lecturer in Victorian literature at Sussex).

The discussion will be followed by an audience Q & A.

Everyone is welcome to join us for this unique event. Please book your free place here.