SFPS Monthly Mailing: January 2017

Wednesday, January 24th, 2017

1. Calls for Papers

 

1.1. Transnational Memory, Translation and Adaptation

1.2 From Abolition to Black Lives Matter: Past and Present Forms of Transnational Black Resistance

1.3 RE… AFRICA: Knowledges, Archives, and Approaches

1.4 Postcolonial Studies Association Convention 2017: Globalisation

1.5 Poétiques du texte francophone : nouvelles approches

 

2. Announcements

2.1 Maghreb des Livres 2017

2.2 The 2017 George Steiner Lecture in Comparative Literature

 

3. New Titles

3.1. Speaking Memory: How Translation Shapes City Life

3.2 Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains

3.3 Une saison ardente : Souffles, 50 ans après

 

1. Calls for Papers/Contributions

1.1 Transnational Memory, Translation and Adaptation

Postgraduate and Early Career Conference

Cardiff University

Wednesday 31st May 2017

In partnership with the Institute of Modern Languages Research (French Studies)

Keynote Speaker: Dr Siobhan Brownlie, University of Manchester, UK

This one-day conference will explore and expand understandings of ‘translation’ beyond the notion of textual transfer between languages, and analyse how multimedia adaptations, and intercultural acts of translation form an integral part oftransnational memory debates and politics.

This interdisciplinary conference aims to bring together postgraduate and early career researchers from Modern Languages, Humanities and Cultural Studies, among others, to discuss the interconnections between memory and the act of translation and adaptation.

As cultural scholar Neubauer argues, memory is ‘dynamic’ and it is ‘constantly revised, rewritten, and repeated with difference’ (2008, p.16), thereby lending itself to intercultural and transnational processes of translation and adaptation. In this conference, we will explore how translation and adaptation reflects the trends, shifts and controversies that characterise memory politics across nations and time periods.

We invite 20-minute papers from postgraduate and early career researchers related to, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Collective memory and its influence on translations/adaptations
• Transnational memory and intercultural acts of translation/adaptation
• The politics of memory: controversy, disagreement and discord in translation/adaptation
• The evolution of translations/adaptations through time and across spaces
• Trauma and the challenges of translation and adaptation
• The potential and pitfalls of multimedia transadaptation

Participants will also benefit from roundtable discussions between academics and postgraduate and early career researchers on methodologies, challenges and opportunities presented by examining the role of memory in translation and adaption, chaired by the IMLR.

A keynote lecture will be given by Dr Siobhan Brownlie, who is a Lecturer in Translation Studies and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester, UK where she is Programme Director of the Master’s Programme in Intercultural Communication. Dr Brownlie’s recent research has focused on memory studies in relation to mediation and intercultural relations. Her publications include Memory and Myths of the Norman Conquest (2013) and Mapping Memory in Translation(2016).

Please send enquiries and abstracts (of no more than 250 words) to: WalmsleyC@cardiff.ac.uk by 31 January 2017

This conference is funded by the Institute of Modern Languages Research, with the help and support of The School of Modern Languages, Cardiff University

 

1.2 From Abolition to Black Lives Matter: Past and Present Forms of Transnational Black Resistance

Subject Fields: African American History / Studies, American History / Studies, Atlantic History / Studies, Race Studies, Slavery

October 26-28, 2017

Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz, Germany

Deadline for abstracts: January 31, 2017

Conference organizers: Nele Sawallisch, Johanna Seibert, Pia Wiegmink, Frank Obenland

This conference hosted by the Transnational American Studies Institute aims at assessing and theorizing past and present forms of black intellectual, political, and cultural resistance from the era of abolitionist campaigns against the transatlantic slave trade to the recent global protest formation of Black Lives Matter.

Protests against racial discrimination, inequality, poverty, and injustice not only pervade (North) American history but span the globe and cross – oftentimes multiple – borders. Building on the recent transnational turn in American Studies and de-centering American Studies’ focus on the nation as the prime focus of analysis, this workshop invites papers that trace the Atlantic routes/roots (Gilroy), the diasporic and global trajectories, as well as the movement, circulation, and dissemination of past and present forms and ideas of black resistance. The conference aims at discussing the transnational dimension of various forms of resistance that are often embedded in larger social movements such as the anti-slavery, the anti-lynching, the Civil Rights, Black Power, Anti-Apartheid, the Global Justice, the Prison Abolition, or the Black Lives Matter movements. Investigating the transatlantic significance of these movements, this conference will also address how collective or individual acts of resistance are articulated and represented in print, performance, visual art, or other media.

How do we conceptualize the connections between past and present forms of transnational black resistance? How does this relationship between the past and the present shape existing notions of resistance? How did national movements for black equality and justice impact as well as intersect with national and international forms of protest? How do forms of black resistance initiate ways to re-think forms of protest and activism outside the United States? How do protest movements intersect with scholarly and intellectual pursuits in academia? What role have different media played in and for black resistance movements throughout the centuries not only in national but also international contexts? How have the digital world and global social media changed previous forms of transnational black resistance? What could be possible trajectories of movements such as Black Lives Matter in the face of the 2016 Presidential election in the United States? How can scholars and activists collaborate in articulating critical interventions in ongoing political discussions? 

Confirmed keynote speakers:

• Prof. Charmaine Nelson, Professor of Art History, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
• Prof. Dorothy Randall Tsuruta, Professor of Africana Studies, College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU, San Francisco, United States​

We invite contributions from all disciplines, e.g. history, literary and cultural studies, visual culture/art history, political science, sociology. Potential paper topics could include, but are not limited to:

• transnational routes of political/social activism and cultural resistance/protest cultures
• transnational black intellectual histories of racial equality and justice
• methodological and conceptual perspectives that bring together approaches from transnational American Studies with African American and Black Diaspora Studies
• intersectional approaches to the study of black resistance with regard to class, gender, age, nationality, religion, etc.
• the role of women in and for black resistance movements
• Black literatures of protest and resistance
• Black resistance and cultures of performance, transnational aesthetics of protest
• Black resistance and popular culture, Black resistance and global (social) media
• Intersection of popular resistance movements and academic interventions in political discourse

​Please send you paper proposal (max. 300 words) and a short bio (150 words) by January 31, 2017 to sawallis@uni-mainz.de.

For further details, see: http://obama-institute.com/call-for-papers-from-abolition-to-black-lives-matter-past-and-present-forms-of-transnational-black-resistance/.

 

1.3 RE… AFRICA: Knowledges, Archives, and Approaches

2017 Northwestern Program of African Studies Conference

April 14-15, 2017

Northwestern University, Evanston

Keynote Speaker: TBA

The Program of African Studies graduate student seminar (AfriSem) invites graduate student papers in the study of Africa and its communities engaging with the theme “RE…AFRICA.” Interested participants should submit abstracts of not more than 250 words to: afrisemconf2017@gmail.com by February 10, 2017. Please include your name, affiliation, and contact details.

Discourse concerning Africa and its diaspora has been characterized by a dialectical tension between invention and refusal; injury and repair. Taking this as a point of departure, this conference—under the banner of RE… AFRICA—aims to curate a dynamic conversation on the multivalent modes of thinking “Africa” and “Africanity.” We invite papers which critically rethink familiar and unfamiliar African objects, revisit archives, refuse prevailing historical concepts, re-theorize structures of feeling, and reconsider methodologies in the study of African life, politics, and aesthetics. In order to explore new ways of thinking about the questions and concerns that have historically afflicted the enterprise of African studies, we welcome papers that unsettle origins, reject hegemonic narratives, and pay particular attention to the consistent re-invention of “Africa” as a discursive and ‘real’ object.

Some questions to consider are:

• What does Africa signify in the current moment, and how does it resonate with and trouble notions of African-ness?
• What are the assumptions behind contemporary approaches to archives, methodologies, conceptual tools, and ways to organize knowledge?
• How do we reconstruct a genealogy of concepts and critical practices that define the field?
• How is Africa reinvented by its actors within and outside the continent?
• What are the ethics of revisiting revolutionary pasts as “usable pasts” for purposes of reparations and/or reconciliation? Could these pasts offer pedagogical insights for contemporary revolutionary movements?
• Are there alternatives to revisiting, reclaiming, and recollecting without limiting those practices to nostalgia? How do we attend to patterns of repetition, cycles, silences, and haunting?

Papers are welcome from a diverse range of disciplines in the Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities. We are also interested in papers that engage with art, society, governance, public policy, education, and consider community involvement and collaboration. Papers with qualitative and/or quantitative approaches are encouraged.

This conference is primarily a forum for graduate students to present their research (in various stages of development) to a cross-disciplinary audience. Please contact afrisemconf2017@gmail.com with questions and inquiries.

 

1.4 Postcolonial Studies Association Convention 2017: Globalisation

School of Advanced Study, Senate House,University of London

18–20 September 2017

The 2017 PSA Convention will be held at the School of Advanced Study, Senate House, University of London, from 18th to 20th September 2017. Paper and panel proposals are invited from academics, scholars and postgraduates with research interests in any area of postcolonial studies from any disciplinary, cross- or interdisciplinary perspective.

Confirmed keynote speaker:  Dr. Sharae Deckard (University College Dublin)

Other keynotes to be confirmed shortly

The Special Topic of the 2017 Convention is Globalisation. Proposals for panels and papers on this theme are particularly encouraged (click here for CfP).

While the transregional history of globalisation can be traced back to antiquity, its discursive entanglement with the temporal realm of the ‘postcolonial’ has been the subject of much discussion and analysis in recent times. The 2017 convention seeks to investigate the crucial role of postcolonial studies in furthering newer understandings of economic, political and cultural globalisation in the light of the current international climate: the complex socio-political ramifications of the Brexit verdict, Trump’s electoral victory, or the European refugee crisis, which have come to be regarded as the reactionary ‘whitelash’ against globalisation.

Harnessing the philosophical scope of the postcolonial field, our special topic aims to examine the nexus between a ‘neoliberal’ grand-narrative and ‘neocolonial racism’ as a mainstream ideological position in both the North and South. How are these ongoing developments in the global North perceived by peoples and communities in the global South? How is the North/South binary interrogated by the liminal story spaces of illegal immigrants, temporary workers, refugees and asylum seekers? How might we postulate an alternative global economy? In what ways could informal citizenship practices collaborate with radical discourses of ecofeminism, or the transnational agency of a globalised digital resistance, to pose a concerted challenge to the reductive hierarchies of neocolonial racism? In what ways might postcolonial analyses of cultural production account for globalisation within the current economic and political conjuncture?

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words for 20-minute individual papers and 500 words for panels of three, along with a brief biographical note of participants (2-3 sentences max), to psaconference@postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk

The deadline for the receipt of abstracts is Tuesday, 28^th February 2017.

 

1.5 Poétiques du texte francophone : nouvelles approches

Appel à communications

Journées d’études organisées par le Centre International d’Études Francophones (CIEF) de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne les 13 et 14 octobre 2017.

Toutes les communications se dérouleront à la Fondation Lucien Paye (45, boulevard Jourdan, 75014 Paris).

Argumentaire

Depuis une quinzaine d’années, les débats relatifs à la francophonie littéraire se polarisent sur la question des « poétiques francophones » (Dominique Combe 1995). La diversité linguistique, historique et sociologique de la francophonie – cet « ensemble flou à l’intérieur de la République mondiale des Lettres » (Lise Gauvin 2007 : 5) – est l’aiguillon qui a favorisé la recherche de cadres théoriques et de méthodes d’analyse. Dans nombre d’études, la construction d’approches globales se fonde sur la prise en compte du contexte de production des œuvres, l’observation des choix d’écriture opérés par les écrivains, l’examen de leurs trajectoires au sein du « système littéraire francophone » (Pierre Halen 2001, 2003) et la comparaison de ce corpus avec d’autres grands ensembles littéraires. Le prisme des dominations socio‑symboliques, les problématiques linguistiques, la démarche institutionnelle, l’analyse du discours et les modélisations inspirées de la théorie bourdieusienne du champ littéraire figurent ainsi parmi les voies les plus frayées.

Aussi virulent soit-il, le manifeste de Michel Le Bris et Jean Rouaud publié en 2007, Pour une littérature-monde, a également contribué à la réflexion sur les poétiques francophones. Les ambiguïtés d’un texte se défendant de sacrifier à un quelconque « impérialisme linguistique » (Michel le Bris, Jean Rouaud 2007 : 47), mais dont le point d’ancrage demeure la langue française, ont été amplement relevées. L’appel à une littérature transnationale a cependant eu le mérite d’attirer l’attention sur la place de l’écrivain francophone à l’ère de la mondialisation et de la vogue de la world literature. Cette démarche a d’ailleurs été contemporaine de nouveaux travaux d’histoire littéraire qui ont mis en cause le paradigme national – le fameux « pacte » entre langue et nation – pour préférer une dynamique de la globalité ou de l’interrelation.

Le panorama scientifique a été aussi redessiné par l’émergence des cultural studies, dont au premier chef les théories postcoloniales. Ces dernières ont permis à une logique interdisciplinaire déjà solidement implantée dans les études francophones de conquérir de nouveaux territoires.

Qu’ils s’intéressent à la littérarité des textes ou relèvent d’une approche idéologique de l’objet littéraire, ces différents courants témoignent d’un intense travail théorique et herméneutique. À l’aune d’inflexions qui demandent au chercheur d’être attentif aux « enjeux scientifiques » et aux « mots de son exercice » (Romuald Fonkoua 2006 : 4), nous nous proposons de réunir les étudiants, doctorants et post-doctorants désireux de mettre en lumière les outils méthodologiques forgés pour appréhender la variété des écritures francophones. Le souhait du comité scientifique est de croiser les regards et les disciplines – la littérature, la psychanalyse, l’histoire, la géographie, les sciences politiques, la sociologie, l’anthropologie, les sciences de l’éducation et la philosophie – afin de rendre compte des « tensions créatrices » (Lise Gauvin 1997 : 6) caractéristiques du corpus francophone. Les orientations proposées sont les suivantes :

Pistes de réflexion

– Dans quelle mesure les approches critiques les plus souvent plébiscitées (l’analyse du discours, la perspective sociocritique, socio-discursive, psychocritique et linguistique) ont-elles été renouvelées ? Quels sont les nouveaux courants critiques ?

– Quels traitements des nouvelles écritures francophones caractérisées par une hybridité et une intermédialité accrues ? Comment appréhender les genres littéraires à la lumière de ces évolutions ? Comment se construisent les nouveaux instruments conceptuels ? Quelles réflexions sur les concepts les plus utilisés dans les études littéraires francophones ?

– Quelles sont les nouvelles démarches comparatistes ? Quelles sont les méthodologies des études menées sur des corpus larges ? Comment saisir l’unité du fait francophone au-delà de la répartition traditionnelle « francophonies du Nord » / « francophonies du Sud » ? Quelles sont les nouvelles modélisations théoriques et historiographiques de la francophonie littéraire ? Comment penser les liens unissant littératures francophones et littérature française ?

– Quels usages théoriques, critiques et historiographiques des discours articulant le littéraire et le politique ? Quels sont les apports de l’interdisciplinarité et des cultural studies (théories postcoloniales, subaltern studies, études de « genre », de « race », écocritique) ?

Ces axes ne sont pas exhaustifs : toutes les propositions traitant le sujet de ces deux journées d’études seront bienvenues.

Modalités

Envoi des propositions : au plus tard le 24 mars 2017.

Les propositions (titre et résumé : 300 mots) et une brève présentation de l’auteur (nom, prénom, courriel, affiliation(s), recherches) doivent être envoyées à l’adresse suivante : poetiques.francophones@gmail.com.

Réponse du comité scientifique : 29 mai 2017.

Date des journées d’études : 13 et 14 octobre 2017.

Langue des interventions : français.

Veuillez noter que les frais de déplacement et d’hébergement sont à la charge des participants.

Voir https://www.fabula.org/actualites/poetiques-du-texte-francophone-nouvelles-approches_77646.php.

 

2. Announcements

2.1 Maghreb des Livres 2017

The annual Maghreb des Livres festival will take place in Paris on 18-19 February 2017. The focus this year will be on Algeria. Click here for more details: http://coupdesoleil.net/maghreb-des-livres-2017/.

 

2.2 The 2017 George Steiner Lecture in Comparative Literature

School of Languages, Linguistics and Film

Queen Mary University of London

Tuesday 7 February 2017 at 6:30pm

“Strangers in Europa: Migrant, Terrorist, Refugee” (Professor Aamir R. Mufti, UCLA)

Abstract: Europe’s present structural crisis is simultaneously economic and cultural, highlighting the failure of both financial and multicultural integration, which are aspects of the same historical process. This lecture will argue that this crisis must be approached through the perspectives offered by a critical examination of the colonial and imperial origins of the European idea and the present trace of that past in the experience of postcolonial migrancy. Furthermore, the most notorious figures of migrancy in Europe today, the most hyper-visible variants of the figure of the migrant, are the terrorist and the refugee, and equally evident is that they have legible “Islamic” markings. The inter-war sense that the presence of relatively small “alien” populations constitutes a threat to the integrity of society has reappeared now with a vengeance. And while the minorities that produced such anxieties then were disproportionately Jewish, now they are disproportionately “Muslim”. No appeal on the left to a broadly conceived European demos as the claimant to a common life on the continent can bypass this necessity of confronting these imperial origins. In the absence of such a self-critique of the European idea, the dēmos is threatened with reverting to ethnos, a political-progressive concept of the European people to a reactionary “cultural” or “civilizational” one.

Biography: Born and raised in Karachi, Aamir R. Mufti is Professor of Comparative Literature at UCLA. He pursued his doctorate in literature at Columbia under the supervision of Edward Said. He was also trained in anthropology at Columbia and the LSE. A student of the imperial process in the emergence of modern culture and society, he has examined it in a number of domains, including secularism and secularization, minority social formations, nationalisms and statelessness, language conflicts, comparative and world literature, and the globalization of English. Among his books, Enlightenment in the Colony: The Jewish Question and the Crisis of Postcolonial Culture(Princeton, 2007) reconsiders the secularization thesis in a comparative perspective, with a special interest in Islam and modernity in India and the cultural politics of Jewish identity in Western Europe. Forget English! Orientalisms and World Literatures (Harvard, 2016) is the first systematic critique of the concept of world literature from the perspective of non-Western languages. Among current projects are books concerning exile and criticism, the colonial reinvention of Islamic orthodoxy, and the migration crisis of the European project. He is also co-convener of a collaborative project called Rethinking Bandung Humanisms.

To book at ticket, click here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-2017-george-steiner-lecture-in-comparative-literature-tickets-30323250659

 

3. New Titles

3.1. Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains (Brill, 2016)

Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François (Pennsylvania State University)

In his comparative interdisciplinary study, Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains, Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François examines what constitutes the counter-discourse that emerging Francophone literatures articulate to think through the dynamics of violence in our contemporary world in view of the proliferation of artistic, iconographic and media representations of violence effecting our perception of our environment. In the context of the trivialization of violence, and the crisis of representation that this phenomenon produces, he underscores both the aesthetic and ethical engagement of writers from a wide range of geographical regions, by bringing together literary texts that develop a new poetics of violence, characterized by a break in the aesthetic values usually associated with the ‘unrepresentable.’ By exploring the stylistic, historical and thematic contours of these Francophone and postcolonial texts, his study invites us to better understand the thematic, aesthetic and ethic issues they raise. For further details, see: http://www.brill.com/products/book/poetiques-de-la-violence-et-recits-francophones-contemporains.

3.2 Speaking Memory: How Translation Shapes City Life (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016)

Sherry Simon

Speaking Memory evokes the complex “language-scapes” that form at the crossroads of culture and history in cities. While engaging with current debates on the nature and role of translation in globalized urban landscapes, the contributors offer a series of detailed and nuanced readings of “translational” cities – their histories, their construction and transformation in memory, and the artistic projects that tell their stories. The three sections of the book highlight historical case studies, conceptual issues, and text-based analyses of city scripts, in particular as they relate to creative literary practices and language interventions on the surface of the city itself. In this volume, translation points to the dissonance of city life, but also to the possibility of a generalized, public discourse – a space vital to urban citizenship, where the convergence of languages can be the source of new conversations. Essays cover a variety of topics and approaches, bringing new voices and insights to discussions on multilingualism and translation in the urban contexts of cities including Dublin, Montevideo, Montreal, Prague, and Vilnius. Defining cities as fields of translational forces where languages are both in conversation and in tension, translation in Speaking Memory is stretched beyond its usual confines, encompassing literary, artistic, and cultural practices that permeate everyday contemporary life. Contributors include Liamis Briedis (Vilnius University), Matteo Colombi (University of Leipzig), Michael Cronin (Dublin City University), Michael Darroch (Windsor University), Roch Duval (Université de Montréal), Andre Furlani (Concordia University), Simon Harel (Université de Montréal), William Marshall (Stirling University), Sarah Mekdjian (Université Paris III), Alexis Nouss (Université d’Aix en Provence), Katia Pizzi (University of London), Sherry Simon (Concordia University), Will Straw (McGill University), and Miriam Suchet (Université Paris III).

For further details, see: http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/speaking-memory.

3.3 Une saison ardente : Souffles, 50 ans après (Sirocco, 2017)

La revue Souffles (Anfas), en six ans d’existence (mars 1966-janvier 1972), a joué un rôle déterminant dans le débat d’idées, le renouvellement des pratiques littéraires et artistiques, permettant ainsi de faire accéder la culture marocaine à la modernité et l’ouvrir sur l’universel. Aujourd’hui, l’aventure de cette revue continue à nous interroger et à nourrir notre réflexion. A l’initiative de la Fondation LAABI pour la culture, la commémoration du cinquantenaire de sa création s’est déroulée à Rabat les 7, 8 et 9 avril 2016 à la Bibliothèque nationale du royaume du Maroc, et se prolonge dans ce livre.

La présente publication rassemble non seulement les communications qui furent prononcées lors de ces journées, par les « anciens » de Souffles et plus d’une trentaine d’universitaires et d’intellectuels originaires de plusieurs pays, mais aussi un florilège des textes de Souffles qui réunit les voix d’acteurs et de compagnons de route de la revue, un aperçu des diverses manifestations tenues à l’occasion de cet anniversaire et un ensemble de photographies, qui parcourent, cinquante ans après, cette « saison ardente ».

Avec des textes de :

Mohammed Ismaïl Abdoun, Jacques Alessandra, Safoi Babana-Hampton, Kacem Basfao, Assia Belhabib, Jamal Bellakhdar, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Habib Ben Salha, Souleïman Bencheikh, Mohammed Berrada, Lamia Berrada-Berca, Charles Bonn, Laura Casielles, Zakya Daoud, René Depestre, Guy Dugas, Moulim El Aroussi, Touriya Fili-Tullon, Anne George, Marc Gontard, Khalid Hadji, Olivia C. Harrison, Susanne Heiler, Bernard Jakobiak, Serhat Karakayali, Naget Khadda, Abdellatif Laâbi, Jocelyne Laâbi, Rim Laâbi, Azelarabe Lahkim Bennani, Saïda Lamara, Toni Maraini, Abdallah Mdarhri-Alaoui, Mohamed Melehi, Mostafa Nissabouri, Kenza Sefrioui, Abdelhak Serhane, Thomas C. Spear, Abdallah Stouky, Hocine Tandjaoui, Abderrahman Tenkoul, Teresa Villa-Ignacio, Khalid Zekri…

For more details, see http://editionsdusirocco.wixsite.com/accueil/unesaisonardente-souffles50ansapr.