Call for Papers
October 13, 2015
(Un)restrained Intentions: Translation and Adaptation in Literature and Culture
An Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference hosted by the English Department of 㽶Ƶ, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Translation and adaptation are important sites of contestation for theory and philosophical inquiry, especially in the current atmosphere of globalization, intercultural interaction, and cultural exchange. Is the translator a “traitor,” as the Italian proverb tells us? Or is the translator what L.R. Lind imagines to be “a man without a country [lingering] upon national boundaries, seeking what he may bring home to that strange limbo that lies between one tongue and another”? What does it mean to adapt artistic materials from one cultural context to another? What are the political implications of such an exchange? How do artists overcome linguistic or artistic incommensurability? The Translations/Adaptations interdisciplinary graduate conference seeks to engage with these questions that place translation and adaptation in the border spaces between preservation and destruction, enlightenment and violence.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Nationalist translations.
Translating between genres.
Intermedial adaptation and liminality.
Transnationalism
Novelty, appropriation, allusion, and “making it new.”
Plagiarism and copyright.
Intercultural hermeneutics.
Translating the body and affect, disability and accessibility studies.
Polylingual texts and polylingual meanings.
Post-colonialism, writing-back, and writing from the margins.
Alternative translations, alternative translation theory.
Representing vernaculars.
Interpretation and exegesis.
Mass reproduction and tourist appropriation.
Improvisation, originality, and the contingent.
Context, contextualization, and translating out of context.
Adapting art in the changing 21st century media-scape (viral cultures).
Please send proposals (up to 300 words), along with a brief biography or curriculum vitae, totranslationadaptation [at] gmail.com. We welcome proposals from any field or historical period on topics that relate to translation and adaptation.
Conference Location: 㽶Ƶ, Montréal, Québec, Canada.
Conference Starts: February 19th, 2016
Conference Ends: February 21st, 2016.
Submission Deadline: December 1st, 2015.
UPDATE: The submission deadline has been extended by an extra week. Submissions of abstracts are now due by DECEMBER 7th, 2015.