cfp.english.upenn.edu

Africa: Cultural Translations

Lancaster University, UK 21-22 May 2010

http://www.transculturalwriting.com/Content/african_studies.html

Call for Papers

Scholars working on Africa-related topics are often faced with social, cultural or linguistic gaps that open up in the translation from one form of cultural representation to another. This conference seeks to explore translation, not only on a linguistic level, but in relation to the spaces and tensions between one cultural form or practice and another, one medium and another, or between reality and representation.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

Tensions between form, structure and sense
The translation of theoretical approaches
Interdisciplinarity and the translation of disciplinary languages
The role of digital technologies
Performance-based approaches (dance, drama, music) as a means of researching Africa
The oral and the written
What gets lost in translation
The position of the Western and/or African researcher
Tensions between and subversions of forms of cultural representation
Fiction as a form of writing over reality
Discourse and gender
Translating feminisms
The translation of rights issues between different contexts
Data and the written form
English as the language of the global academy

Please send abstracts of 300-500 words accompanied by your title, name, institutional affiliation and a 100 word bio to Charlotte Baker c.baker@lancaster.ac.uk by 31 January 2010.