Presentation
The Universidade do Minho’s 2016 Summer School, organized by its Research Center CEHUM, will focus on the areas of Gender, Translation and Performance Studies. Aimed at doctoral and post-doctoral students from a variety of national contexts, the Summer School will be organized around individual seminars in these areas and larger seminars bringing together students who wish to discuss intersections between the research fields above named globally inscribed in a Comparatist Studies framework. The seminars will be led by specialists in each field, who will present research material and methodologies to students and provide feedback on their research projects. All students will be expected to present a paper in the seminar, max. 15 min. (abstract should be atttatched in the registration form) as a basis for discussion and for comments from the seminar leader during the workshops that will take place after each session.
Invited speakers:
- Jane Linden (Manchester Metropolitan Univ.)
- Eleonora Federici (University L’Orientale, Naples)
- César Dominguez (Univ. Santiago de Compostela
Deadline for registration: 1st April 2016
Organized by: CEHUM / Research Group in Gender, Arts and Post-Colonial Studies
Coordinators:
Ana Gabriela Macedo
Francesca Rayner
Information
Deadline for registraion: 1st April 2016
Registration fees:
General public: 50€.
ILCH Students: 40€.
Dinner (optional): 15€.
Programme
Seminar I - Performance - Expanded Interdisciplinary Arts Practice and the Curation of Knowledge.
Jane Linden (Manchester Metropolitan Univ.)
This presentation looks at the work of selected artists from mixed disciplines whose practice was profiled in the pilot research project ‘Curating Knowledge’ in 2008. The project responded to the growing culture of practice-as-research in the British academy and sought to give platform to the complex, diverse and often interdisciplinary creative processes that, whilst richly insightful, are mostly obfuscated by our attention to end-on artefacts on the one hand, and written explications on the other.
Workshop I - Getting real: contemporary configurations of political performance.
Francesca Rayner
Performance has conventionally been associated with notions of ephemerality and irrepeatability. As such, it seems to defy the demands of a research agenda concentrated on the fixed and the permanent. On the other hand, performers who embark on traditional research projects within universities often find that the language through which they frame their research questions is considered not academic enough and that their expectations of what constitutes a research component within a performance differ greatly from the expectations of university researchers and funders. What kind of research tools and methodologies might help to bridge the gap between performance practice and university research? How might research projects based on performance balance the need to create with the need to research? Can the collaborative framework of performance practice be translated into a research environment focused on the individual? This seminar will present projects that have combined performance and research and discuss research tools and methodologies within the practice as research (PaR) framework that will interest those considering embarking on such research projects or already working in this area.
Seminar II - Translation and Gender: New Theories and Practices?
Eleonora Federici, University L’Orientale, Naples
In recent years the intersection between gender and translation has been intensely explored, with research in areas such as sexual identity in translation, the writing and translating of the female body, the effects of grammatical gender travelling from one language to another, the translation of misogynist texts and the theory and practice of feminist translation. Since the emergence of feminist translation in Québec some three decades ago, a fruitful interdiscipline has been affirming itself and generated new perspectives on women, men, gender, sex and translation. Seminal papers by Levine (1983), Maier (1985), Mezei (1987), Chamberlain (1988), Godard (1990) or Flotow (1991) are obvious reminders that the identification of a ‘woman’s (feminist) writing’ –and the concomitant ‘feminist translation’– was Canadian, and Québécois, in origin. Those papers described a specific historical context (the 1970s) in which a feminist discourse was born as a form of political action, and a feminist translation emerged as a theory (and especially, a practice) in the (re)writing of women’s experiences. From that moment theories on gender and translation have developed also in the European context with different approaches and methodologies. Nikolaidu & López Villalba (1997), Vidal (1997), Agorni (1998, 2005), Heinitiuk (1999), Littau (2000), Godayol (2000), Santaemilia (2003, 2005), Martínez García (2004), Bassnett (2005), Martín Ruano (2005), Leonardi (2007), Sardin (2008), Federici (2011 and 2013), De Marco (2012) are among the European scholars which have expanded and reinterpreted the translating activity of past women in terms of ideological and political activity, as well as a critical reframing of gender and identity. My lecture will focus on these new studies and two main issues: how it would be important to bridge the gap between theory and practice and the importance to open TS to a transdisciplinary perspective involving various areas of research such as sociolinguistics, pragmatics, literary studies, media studies, semiotics and cultural studies among others.
Workshop II: Translation in Conflict Areas.
Maria Filomena Louro
Translation Studies are a well-established field of research but translation has found difficulty establishing itself in the area of the Humanities. Translation Studies and Translation Practice are often seen as separate or false twins: of the same source, but of very different character. The act of translation has been given a multitude of definitions. They may focus alternatively on the text itself, the intention of the author, the expected function of the translation by the end users, or the intention request of the entity requesting the translation. As Umberto Eco wittily remarks translation is often evaluated on moral terms – fidelitas. Not many other artistic or academic activities are evaluated on their fidelity or loyalty to the source. This does not mean that the issue is spurious or irrelevant. The current crises that our common global form of life bring before our eyes and ears everyday show that we are faced with communicative challenges that require attention and a concerted competent and efficient response. The practical issues of passing information, reporting events, interpreting situations and people in conflict and critical situations, as the displacement, refugee, re-location, disaster scenes all these foreground the need and the adequacy of translation as a profession. This seminar would look at the work done by voluntary, pro-bono, translators, fansubbers and subtitlers as some of the more visible examples of the diverse translation processes taking place without our awareness. How conflict is reported; how people and entities are identified in these circumstances as victims or belligerent groups;, how these news are circulated and reported to the global community; how this is in a certain way the result of a translator’s work.
Seminar III - Comparativismo.
César Dominguez (Univ. Santiago de Compostela)
Similarly to Weltliteratur, whose most famous coinage by Goethe is briefly discussed within an "alien" autobiographical text of sorts (Eckermann's Gespräche), the concept of kleine Literaturen was briefly discussed by Kafka in an "alien" autobiographical text (Max Brod'sKafkas Tagebücher). Despite both these similarities and the fact that both concepts seem to be somehow two sides of the same coin—literature at its "maximum"/"minimum" expression—Weltliteratur and kleine Literaturen have not been put into critical dialogue. In this seminar I will initiate such a dialogue by surveying the disparate genealogies (and translations) of the concept of kleine Literaturen, from Kafka's seminal discussion in relation to Yiddish, Marthe Robert's French translation of the Tagebücher and the emergence of mineur, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's identification of mineur as a construction within a "major language", and Jon Juaristi's application to Bilbaoan (a Spanish-Castilian dialect spoken in Bilbao), to "small literatures" within the context of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The final aim is to reflect on whether minor literatures provide us with a different picture of world literature.
Workshop III - Comparativismo. Gaining in Translation?
César Dominguez
In one of his four –at least– definitions, David Damrosch claims in passing that "World literature is writing that gains in translation" (What is World Literature? 281). The object and/or meaning of said "gain", however, is not discussed. The aim of this workshop is to explore such a provocative statement by discussing specific translation imports/exports of minor literatures. While the interface of world literature and translation studies is an exciting, emerging field, specific attention has not been paid to the particularities of minor literatures in translation flows. Empirical research would be conducted not only regarding the interlingual dimension, but also some critical locations such as prefaces, notes, anthologies, programmatic statements, etc.
This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:
http://cehum.ilch.uminho.pt/ivsc/default/index#contacts