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Volume 4 (2011)

Call for papers

Translation and Authenticity in a Global Setting

 Dionysios Kapsaskis and Lucile Desblache (Issue editors)

For centuries, the history of translation in the West has been entangled with the problematic of authenticity. On the one hand, in the context of nationalism and colonialism, translation has been used to promote mythologies of coherence, identity and supremacy. On the other hand, the thinking of translation, especially in the 20th century, led to the critical interrogation of authenticity, homogeneity and originality.

The ambivalent role of translation in both establishing and destabilizing notions of authenticity has also permeated Western translation theory. Much of the theoretical discussion on translation has revolved around the idea of equivalence with the original text, thus perpetuating metaphors of fidelity, treason and loss. More recently, however, less essentialist approaches (e.g.  cultural, systemic, sociological) have been exploring the role of translation in the construction of subjective or collective identities (ethnic, literary, sexual and so on.)

This ambivalence is perhaps symptomatic of a field whose widespread practical applications challenge the unity of its theoretical implications. Never was this more the case than in the present age of global interconnections. The map of translation is today the map of global flows, encounters and geopolitics. Going far beyond linguistic mediation, and involving new realities of technology, mobility and multimodality, translation is simultaneously a means of global acculturation and a tool for local empowerment. It lends audibility to "peripheries" and "minorities" at the same time as it helps consolidate various types of "hegemony" in politics, literature, the law, and elsewhere. Arguably, then, translation continues to be enframed within the conceptual enclosure of authenticity. Whether it is to claim national or historical singularity for specific communities or to rephrase all singularities in terms of a global "home", translation remains situated in the space between uniqueness and universality.

This issue aims to reflect on the critical function of translation in the current globalized topology, with particular attention to issues of authenticity and global/local identity. Articles are invited on one or more of the following topics/questions but need not be limited to them:

  • The politics of translation: How is translation used today to portray the migrant /peripheral/contingent in terms of the domestic/central/universal and vice-versa?

  • The space of translation: Does translation as practice or theory create a space where the notion of authenticity can be negotiated and perhaps transcended?

  • Forms of translation: Beyond literary translation, do other forms of translation, for instance interpreting in zones of war, offer more scope to reflect on its critical role today?

  • Translation and globalisation: Is there a paradigm shift in the way we understand translation today? Is translation a paradigmatic discipline for the age of globalisation?

  • Translation and border-crossing: A metaphor for interdisciplinarity in arts and the academe and/or a reality for migrants and refugees?

  • (Un)translatability: Is the current assumption that everything is translatable? Is universal translatability globalisation’s answer to a 20th-Century sense of the ineffability of the singular?

Detailed proposals (800-1000 words) for (6,000-7,000 word) articles as well as any inquiries regarding this issue should be sent by email to both Issue Editors: Dionysios Kapsaskis (d.kapsaskis@roehampton.ac.uk) and Lucile Desblache (l.desblache@roehampton.ac.uk). Please send a short bio together with your proposal.

Deadlines

30 October 2010                     submission of abstracts
30 December 2010                  notification of acceptance
30 July 2011                           submission of articles

 

Volume 5  (2012)

Call for papers

History and Contemporary Literature

Christine Harrison and Angeliki Spiropoulou (Issue editors)

The 'turn to history', witnessed in both literary studies and literature since the 1980s, has ensued in part from new developments in the theory of history itself, which have stressed the relevance of literature for history and the affinity of historiography with fictional narration, long suppressed by historiography's traditional empirical status and positivist claim to truth (c.f. the groundbreaking work of Hayden White and Paul Ricoeur, as well as that of Michel Foucault, Stephen Greenblatt and Dominick LaCapra, for example).  The turn to history has, inversely, also derived from an acknowledgement of the need to take into account the historicity of the historiographical, literary and critical acts.  Fredric Jameson, for example, contributed to the elaboration of a sophisticated notion of historicity in the field of literary studies in the early 80s, and at much the same time there also appeared 'new historicist' and 'cultural materialist' trends, inspired by diverse history-based theoretical paradigms.

Simultaneously, and related to the above developments, there has emerged a trend within literature itself of evoking historical epochs, personages and texts of the past, culminating in what Linda Hutcheon has called with reference to fiction 'historiographical metafiction', namely a set of texts which exhibits a concern with the historical past and with issues of historiography while retaining an acute language consciousness and a leaning to formal experimentation. Even more recently, over the past decade, both historicist models of criticism and established theorizations of new historical literature have been challenged for some of their presumptions. However, historical literature, and especially fiction, continues to dominate the literary production of the twenty-first century in forms and for reasons that need exploring as they may point to yet newer directions in both literature and the conceptualization of the relationship between history and literature.

We invite contributions that engage with the modes in which contemporary fiction, poetry and drama address, employ and revise history and historiographical practices, and/or discuss new critical trends and theoretical approaches to literature and history. Possible topics include, but are not restricted to:

  • New trends and subjects of historiographical representation in contemporary poetry, fiction, drama (e.g., gender and topographical approaches; interrogations of particular historical periods, methodologies and mythologies; challenges to divides between the literary/popular and private/public; contemporary historical literature and realism, modernism, postmodernism)

  • Revisions of literary history, the literary canon and traditional literary genres (e.g., the historical novel, historical drama, gothic romance)

  • New directions in historical literature and critical approaches since 2000

  • National/regional contemporary historical literature

  • Re-writings of colonial history and the history of the European periphery (Balkan, Mediterranean) through literature

  • Memory, auto/biography, visual material and contemporary literature

  • Historical fantasies and utopias of the future

  • The past-present dialogue in contemporary theory and literature

  • New challenges to recent historicist models and critical taxonomies of contemporary historical literature

Detailed proposals (800-1,000 words) for articles of  6,000- 7,000 words,  a short bio  (up to 300 words) as well as all inquiries regarding this issue, should be sent to both guest editors: Christine Harrison at chrisharrko@yahoo.co.uk and Angeliki Spiropoulou at aspirop@uop.gr.

Deadlines:

1 December 2010        submission of abstracts
1 February 2011          notification of acceptance
1 October 2011           submission of articles

 

 

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