SHAKESPEARE, TRANSLATION AND THE EUROPEAN DIMENSION
October 1, 2011
Bucharest- English Department of the University of Bucharest
This conference is organized as part of the CNCSIS-funded project The European Dimension of Shakespearean Translations: Romanian Perspectives, ID_1978/2008
Keynote speakers:
Keith Gregor (University of Murcia)
Laura Tosi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Valerie Henitiuk (University of East Anglia)
October 1, 2011
Bucharest- English Department of the University of Bucharest
This conference is organized as part of the CNCSIS-funded project The European Dimension of Shakespearean Translations: Romanian Perspectives, ID_1978/2008
Keynote speakers:
Keith Gregor (University of Murcia)
Laura Tosi (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Valerie Henitiuk (University of East Anglia)
Translations have proved highly effective in constructing communities of interests and beliefs both within and across national boundaries. Depending on the historical context they are produced in, these communities have varied in the degree of their ethnocentric or, to the contrary, their other-oriented, inclusive thrust. The latter type of community, reinforcing cultural difference rather than sameness has recently been strongly valorized, with Paul Ricoeur considering it a fit paradigm for the democratic public sphere of a future (utopian?) Europe.
However, translations , particularly of canonical texts, have often fostered more de-centred communities, in which source text and translation are treated as equally valuable, standing side by side rather than in a relation of subordination. “Free” translations and adaptations that give voice to the non-canonical, marginal other in a minority language have been particularly powerful in projecting alternative communities. Though post-colonial re-writings of European canonical texts have often been quoted in this respect, European translations have also been highly productive or supportive of this type of community.
The present conference would like to investigate the various types of cultural and political communities that translations have been constructing. Priority will be granted to European re-workings of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, viewing the plays as both products and further objects of translation.
We invite papers around, but not restricted to the following issues:
a. Translations and the construction of transnational (European) cultural communities;
b. Shakespeare and the construction of European nationalist and /or transnational communities ;
c. Translations in the early modern period as productive of a globalized community;
d. Academic versus stage/movie translations of Shakespeare and the construction of communities;
e. Translations/adaptations of European canonical texts and the reinforcing/contesting of Eurocentric stereotypes;
f. Beyond the cultural turn in translation – what communities can be constructed?
Please send 200-word abstracts and short bios to Dr Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru (sabina.draga@americanstudies.ro) and Dr Oana Alis Popescu (oanaalispopescu@yahoo.com) by 1.08.2011.
However, translations , particularly of canonical texts, have often fostered more de-centred communities, in which source text and translation are treated as equally valuable, standing side by side rather than in a relation of subordination. “Free” translations and adaptations that give voice to the non-canonical, marginal other in a minority language have been particularly powerful in projecting alternative communities. Though post-colonial re-writings of European canonical texts have often been quoted in this respect, European translations have also been highly productive or supportive of this type of community.
The present conference would like to investigate the various types of cultural and political communities that translations have been constructing. Priority will be granted to European re-workings of the plays of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, viewing the plays as both products and further objects of translation.
We invite papers around, but not restricted to the following issues:
a. Translations and the construction of transnational (European) cultural communities;
b. Shakespeare and the construction of European nationalist and /or transnational communities ;
c. Translations in the early modern period as productive of a globalized community;
d. Academic versus stage/movie translations of Shakespeare and the construction of communities;
e. Translations/adaptations of European canonical texts and the reinforcing/contesting of Eurocentric stereotypes;
f. Beyond the cultural turn in translation – what communities can be constructed?
Please send 200-word abstracts and short bios to Dr Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru (sabina.draga@americanstudies.ro) and Dr Oana Alis Popescu (oanaalispopescu@yahoo.com) by 1.08.2011.
