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Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Caribbean Literature at CEA 2023 (March 30 - April 1, 2023)




 Caribbean Literature at CEA 2023
March 30 – April 1, 2023 | San Antonio, TX
Sheraton Gunter Hotel, 205 East Houston Street, San Antonio, TX 78205





Call for Papers:
The College English Association, a gathering of scholar-teachers in English studies, welcomes proposals for presentations on Caribbean Literature for our 53rd annual conference. Submit your proposal at www.cea-web.org.






The general conference theme is “confluence,” so we are especially interested in presentations that feature topics relating to our theme of confluence in texts, disciplines, people, cultural studies, media, and pedagogy.

We welcome individual and panel presentation proposals that address Caribbean literature in general, including—but not limited to—the following possible themes:Convergence: blending the past and the present—or dividing it
Individuality: struggling to find the self in the many; the value of standing alone
Heritage: recognizing those who came before and their influence on us now
Transcultural life: living in-between; creating a new space
Revision: re-seeing the parts that have created the whole; the dangers of privileging one
Reclamation: uncovering the forgotten voices; contrasting with the dominant voice



General Call for Papers: CEA also welcomes proposals for presentations in any of the areas English departments typically encompass, including literature criticism and scholarship, creative writing, composition, technical communication, linguistics, and film. We also welcome papers on areas that influence our work as academics, including student demographics, student/instructor accountability and assessment, student advising, academic leadership in departments and programs, and the place of the English department in the university.










Submission deadline: November 1, 2022. For more information on how to submit, please see the full CFP at www.cea-web.org.

Membership: All presenters at the CEA 2023 conference must become members of CEA by January 1, 2023. To join CEA, please go to www.cea-web.org.

Questions? Please email me at <cea.english@gmail.com> and note “San Antonio Conference” in the subject line.















Contact Info:


Laura Barrio-Vilar, Ph.D. | Associate Professor of English

University of Arkansas at Little Rock | School of Literary and Performing Arts | 501.916.3161
Contact Email: lxbarrio@ualr.edu

Sunday, February 20, 2022

CfP: International Conference on Music as a Profession: Status, Careers and Organizations (18th-20th centuries) JUne-2022

 organised by

Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas (CAN - Colégio Almada Negreiros)
30 June and 1 July, 2022

Organization: PROFMUS – To be a musician in Portugal: the social and profissional condition of musicians in Lisbon (1750-1985)

Keynote Speakers:
Élodie Oriol (École Française de Rome)
Martin Cloonan (University of Turku)

 







CALL FOR PAPERS

The research project PROFMUS – To be a musician in Portugal: the socio-professional condition of musicians in Lisbon (1750-1985), funded by FCT (PTDC/ART-PER/32624/2017), invites the submission of paper proposals for the international conference Music as a Profession: Status, Careers and Organizations (18th-20th centuries), which will take place at the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas - Universidade Nova de Lisboa (Colégio Almada Negreiros), on 31 June and 1 July 2022.

The historical importance of musicians’ professional organizations for the definition of their careers and social status, as well as their impact on society's perception of musicians and their activities has received increasing attention from Musicologists, and also from disciplines such as Sociology and History. However, research on these subjects is still insufficient and unsystematic. The international conference Music as a Profession: Status, Careers and Organizations (18th-20th centuries) aims to encourage dialogue and exchange on these issues and related topics in an international and long-term perspective, through different scientific approaches.


The scientific committee encourages submissions within the following topics:
- Social and professional status of musicians in different geographical, political, social and cultural contexts
-
The impact of training models on careers and access to the profession
- The status of the musician through the ages
- Women and musical professions

- Labour relations and musicians' employment contracts
- Local musicians vs. Foreign musicians
- Circulation and mobility of musicians
-
Material conditions of the daily life of professional musicians
-  Musicians as seen by society/Musicians as seen by themselves: perceptions and representations
- Professional Organizations: brotherhoods, confraternities, academies, mutual benefit associations, class associations, trade unions

 





Scholars are invited to submit proposals for individual papers which shall not exceed 20 minutes.
Abstracts should not exceed 300 words, and should be accompanied by a brief curriculum vitae of 150 words max.
This should include name, e-mail address and institutional affiliation.
Proposals should be sent via email to: info@profmus.pt

Official Languages: Portuguese, English, Italian, Spanish and French.

Deadline for submissions: 20 March 2022 (inclusive).
The results of the evaluation will be communicated by 5 April 2022.

More information: info@profmus.pt

 

Scientific Committee
Cristina Fernandes (INET-md), Luísa Cymbron (CESEM), Manuel Deniz Silva (INET-md), Maria Alexandre Lousada (CEG-UL), Maria José Artiaga (CESEM), Rui Vieira Nery (INET-md), Teresa Cascudo (UNIRIOJA)

Organizing Committee
Cristina Fernandes (INET-md), Isabel Pina (CESEM), Manuel Deniz Silva (INET-md), Tiago Manuel da Hora (INET-md)

Contact Email: info@profmus.pt

CfP: Reflections on (Literary) Solitude -German Literature Archive Marbach- Nov-2022








The postgraduates and ECRs of the German Schiller Assocation (DSG) invite you to an interdisciplinary conference at the German Literature Archive (DLA)

Organisers: Dîlan C. Çakir, Martin Kuhn, Felix Lempp, Nadine Redmer, Merisa Taranis, Viola Völlm, Dominik Wabersich










Scholarly Networks and Solitude

Sometimes it is voluntary and other times, as in lockdown, it is imposed. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the impact of solitude was recognised as a serious issue for literary and scholarly writing, as well as reading. How to handle solitude, but also the need for solitude, is different for every form of reading and writing, and in Literature Studies the ambivalence of solitude raises questions that go well beyond the contexts of literary production. While working alone at a desk may be regarded as disciplined, for early career researchers, interaction and exchange with a network is also essential. There are in fact numerous arguments for the establishment of a network of young researchers, whose members come together and work to strengthen the interaction between postgraduates and ECRs, irrespective of their institutional affiliation.

In order to address this need, as postgraduates and ECRs, our aim is to organise an annual conference with the support of the German Schiller Association (DSG) and the German Literature Archive Marbach (DLA). In addition to the opportunity to present their research, this will allow ECRs to get acquainted with the DLA and its museums and to discuss issues affecting ECRs outside the immediate field of their research.







While the network aims to invite scholarly dialogue, it also aims to facilitate opportunities for free and informal exchange between participants and experts about career paths and the challenges in obtaining qualifications and in the post-qualification period. In addition to this, skills workshops will be offered. The first conference of this kind will take place 3-4 November 2022, and will be dedicated to the broad theme of reflections on solitude:

1. Research papers reflecting on solitude (interdisciplinary)
2. A workshop on ECRs and mental health
3. Tour of the archive and the museums in Marbach
4. Evening event

For (1.) abstracts reflectingon the issue of solitude accompanied by a short CV of the applicant are highly welcome. Note it is still possible to attend the conference without giving a research paper.

You do not have to be a member of the German Schiller Association or a Schiller researcher in order to submit an abstract. External submissions are welcome!
● Presentations can be given in German or in English.
● The deadline for submissions is March 31, 2022.
● Please submit abstracts using this portal.
● For further inquiries and registration (for attendees not giving a paper), please email: forschung@dla-marbach.de.
● The conference is planned to take place in-person.

Submissions should consider the following:






Literature and Solitude

Solitude is an ambiguous phenomenon: while it is understood on the one hand as exclusion from a society, isolation, or social anxiety, on the other hand, positive conceptions of solitude emphasise the individual sense of freedom and autonomy, and the creative energy that is released by it. Conceptions of solitude are linked here to aspects of mental and physical health, and to conceptions of happiness.

While nowadays search engine results for the term ‘Solitude’ principally name publications concerning the pandemic, the conference intends to address reflections on solitude in literature, philosophy and art in the current context of Covid-19 but as well beyond the latter. What are the prevailing forms and characteristics of solitude in different places and times? How are they individually experienced and shaped by literature? Who seeks solitude and who avoids it? What duties and freedoms does an individual have in a society that may support or condemn isolation? Is solitude a means of stimulating creativity and self-reflection or an elite privilege involving an egoistic and antisocial mind-set? What is its relationship with the related concepts of boredom and loneliness? When is sociability preferable to solitude? Is there an ‘Aesthetics of Solitude? Are there any trends that can be demonstrated through increased use of specific motifs or narrative patterns? Who writes about solitude? To what extent are literary production and literary reception solitary tasks, or forms of ‘interaction-free communication’ (Luhmann)? In an era of globalisation and digitisation, how are research findings in the fields of sociology and psychopathology on the subject of solitude expressed in literature? Is solitude gendered? To what extent is solitude defined as a place of longing?

Due to its ambiguity, the concept is also relevant to the field of literature: reflections on solitude and literature can relate to the thematic level or indeed to those of reception or aesthetics and production. Thus neither the act of reading, nor literary production, have been construed as a solitary activity since the birth of the modern era.

Even in the eighteenth century, the literature of the Enlightenment considered this problem: In Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (1782), for example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau calls for a conscious retreat into solitude for the purpose of self-reflection. Sophie von La Roche began her major work, Geschichte des Fräuleins von Sternheim (1771), in reaction to her solitude and boredom. Besides Christian Grave and Joseph von Sonnenfels, the popular philosopher Johann Georg Zimmermann also devoted himself in several texts in the eighteenth century to the question of solitude, in which he also opposed lone contemplation with the human ‘drive to socialise’. Contemplation and creativity in solitude and the longing for recognition and security in society also defined the field for literary reflections on solitude in subsequent centuries. Romantic loners, such as Ludwig Tiecks Christian, sought a path between social integration via marriage and isolated hiking on the Runenberg (1804). In his Letters to a Young Poet (1929), Rainer Maria Rilke advised the young author Franz Xaver Kappus to utilise the severity of solitude for his writing, and Stefan Zweig demonstrated in his work The Royal Game (1944) what the psychopathological consequences of imposed solitude can be with the character of Dr B. In exile, authors seek support in solitude and make efforts to form networks – for example, Hilde Domin repeatedly urged her friend, Nelly Sachs, to support her career. In contemporary post-migration texts like Deniz Ohdes’ Streulicht (2020) or Sasha Mariana Salzmann’s stage work Us Braids (2014), the solitude of the protagonist can often be interpreted as a mode of being, which stages their condition in the space between their homeland of their (grand)parents’ generation and their own country of birth. In Marius Goldhorn’s Park (2020) however, solitude seems to the narrator to be a postmodern feeling of loneliness, meaning that, despite the networking effects of globalisation and digitisation, he seems only to perceive the world passively.

This brief overview being neither exhaustive nor prescriptive illustrates how, again and again, literature, the literary scene, and Literature Studies prove the multifaceted uses of the motif of solitude. On the one hand, solitude is cast as a requirement for inventive creativity, a means of exploring belief and the soul, and a mode of deepening engagement with nature and self-knowledge. On the other hand, it is also viewed as the result of societal alienation, a lifestyle of melancholy, and the result of discrimination and exclusion.







More information about the work of the German Schiller Association can be found here: https://www.dla-marbach.de/ueber-uns/traegerverein-dsg/

Contact Info: 

Alexa Hennemann, Head of Communication Department, German Literature Archive Marbach (Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach - DLA)

Department of Research, German Literature Archive Marbach (Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach - DLA):
Telefon +49 (0) 7144 / 848-175
Telefax +49 (0) 7144 / 848-179

Contact Email: 

Saturday, February 12, 2022

CFP Animals in the American Popular Imagination | Virtual conference

Animals in the American Popular Imagination

Virtual conference 12-16 September 2022






In his book Animals on Television (2017), Brett Mills states that "representations of animals often function to highlight cultural understandings about what it is to be human." Nonhuman animals have been unwilling objects of the human gaze: humans have been exploiting animals (real and imagined) on the basis, and the attendant continued perpetuation, of self-assigned human superiority and centrality. This anthropocentrism is also why humans primarily define animals, their agency, their intelligence, their emotional lifeworlds, etc. by projecting onto them human ideas and discourses. Innumerable popular culture artifacts and performances revolve around nonhuman animals, from reality TV shows on Animal Planet and iconic characters such as Lassie to animals as parts of wrestler gimmicks and animals in sports team names. These and other popular culture artifacts touch on animal-related matters of all kinds, from narratives in which heroic pets seem to take center stage to meat preparation and consumption. All of these figurations of animals allow us to explore how we treat and discursively construct animals.

This international conference will focus on the representation of animals and human-animal relations in American popular culture, in all its forms, across media, past and present. While we list a few thematic clusters below, proposals that do not fall into these will, of course, also be considered.

Currently confirmed keynotes: Brett Mills, Christy Tidwell. More TBA.

The program is organized and hosted by the PopMeC Association for US Popular Culture Studies and the Austrian Association for Cultural Studies, Cultural History, and Popular Culture.

  






Thematic Clusters

• Representations of animals in popular culture 

Nonhuman animals have been a fixture in film, TV series, comics and graphic novels, music videos, reality TV shows, documentary films and series. These representations tend to establish and perpetuate (or appropriate) shared beliefs about, and stereotypes of, specific species. Anthropomorphic animals roam Disney movies (and other popular culture artifacts), while zoomorphism renders human characters and actors animal-like (see also below). Crucially, animal representations in popular culture do (purportedly) not only target human audiences. For example, the official DOGTV website hails its programming as “the only technology created for dogs with sights and sounds scientifically designed to enrich their environment.” Dogs can watch other dogs sleeping or running around. And the broadcaster’s YouTube channel is filled with content that highlights that “dogs love to watch DOGTV.”

 

• From animality to bestiality: the human as nonhuman animal

Animality and bestiality have been used as symbolic tools to exclude selected subjects from the select group of “human” on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, etc. Asymmetric power structures and purposeful discrimination have been connected to specific discourses and representations, often relying on zoological metaphors and constructions, as well as the creation of human-animal hybrid monsters transgressing established social mores. At the same time, though, animal symbolism often endows humans (and human characters) with superhuman strength, agility, etc., which is why animal representations (next to Indigenous peoples) are frequently used as sports team names and sports mascots.

 







• Commodification of non-human animals: zooculture, pet industry, agribusiness

Animals are integrated into a world ecology that, according to Jason Moore, relies on the “cheapening of nature,” which allows humans to shamelessly exploit nonhuman animals. While discussions of, for example, zoo animals and animals in theme parks are long-established by now, the exploitation of animals has taken different dimensions in recent years that warrant closer examination, such as the exploitation of pets and their keepers’ feelings by the pet industry. Likewise, documentaries such as The Conservation Game have shown how not only the trade in “exotic” animals is booming in the US but how media figures that purportedly publicly represent animal welfare, in fact, profit off animal exploitation.

 

• Animal science: research, experimentation, and animal-assisted therapy

Nonhuman animals have been objects of scientific interest for a variety of reasons and aims, often raising ethical concerns and controversies. Besides their zoological study, animals have been used as research commodities and test subjects in processes that range from drug and beauty product testing to the creation of human-animal hybrids (e.g. xenotransplantation). Animals have also been increasingly used in therapeutic contexts, giving rise to debates on the effectiveness of the practice. 

 

• Animals in popular discourse

We might be witnessing the first stages of the sixth mass extinction. And while plants, fungi, and other lifeforms also vanish at an alarming rate, popular discourse focuses on the disappearance of animals from Earth. This is just one example of how animals figure in a variety of popular discourses and practices including, but not limited to, wildlife protection vs. agricultural interests, wildlife vs. recreation (e.g. black bears killing hikers and mountain lions snatching mountain bikers off their bikes), domestic cats as invasive species, the Asian “murder hornet” invasion, de-extinction science, animals and climate change, re-wilding, and public science (e.g. photographing sharks to identify them).

 








Deadline for submission: April 24, 2022

 

We accept abstract proposals for individual presentations (≈ 300 words) or full panels (3-4 presenters, ≈ 250-word description of panel plus abstracts of all papers—these abstracts may be shorter than abstracts for individual presentations). Please, email your proposal to popmec.animals@gmail.com as a single attachment (.doc, .docx, .odt) including name, affiliation (if any), and contact email.

Update: In response to popular demand, we also welcome proposals for video essays. We will feature video essays on the website and participants will be able to comment on the videos. You can submit a proposal as indicated above (for either one individual submission or a cluster of videos), specifying that it is a video essay; if you’d like to discuss your video essay live, please just mention it in your email so that we can organize the video essay session in the best way possible. Please note that video essays are not pre-recorded presentations.

If you have any doubt or inquiry, feel welcome to drop a line at popmec.animals@gmail.com

 

The conference will take place virtually, tentatively on 12-16 September 2022. Since we expect that presenters from all across the globe will participate in the conference, real-time presentations will take place between c. 4 and 9PM Central European Summer Time. A series of virtual keynote events will precede the conference. 

Participation fees will be between 10 and 20€ (free for PopMeC and AACCP members).

The organizers may decide to pursue a publication project based on the conference.

  

Organizers: Michael Fuchs and Anna Marta Marini

Assistant organizer: Dina Pedro

Advisory committee: Trang Dang, Ester Díaz, Mónica Fernández Jiménez, Dolores Resano, Alejandro Rivero Vadillo

Contact Info:   Anna Marta Marini (organizer) and Dina Pedro (organizing assistant)
Contact Email:  popmec.animals@gmail.com

Saturday, February 5, 2022

International conference: A Europe of migrations: family, childhood and clandestinity during the 'Trente Glorieuses' – from October 5–7, 2022 – University of Neuchâtel/CH

 Call for Papers

International conference, from October 5–7, 2022, University of Neuchâtel/CH

 

A Europe of migrations: family, childhood and clandestinity during the 'Trente Glorieuses





 

Labour migration has had a profound impact on European societies after World War II. In the context of an insatiable thirst for labour in the service of economic reconstruction, the mobility of workers from the countries of the South to the industrialised countries of the North constituted a “new intra-European migration regime” (Dirk Hoerder) which, until the 1970s, mobilised about 15 million people from the (Euro-)Mediterranean region (Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Tunisia, Greece, (former) Yugoslavia, etc.) to the industrial centres of Northern Europe. Despite the end of an active recruitment policy after the oil crisis in 1973, the “guestworker-system” continued to exist/endured until the end of the 1980s.

While some elements of what Peter Gatrell has called «The unsettling of Europe» have been studied for various and specific contexts, the social situations of the workers, and particularly their family life, have long been neglected by migration history. The limited historiography stands in contrast to an abundant sociology of the “Guestworker” since the 1970s. This reticence can be explained, among other things, by a lack of sources. The challenge is even greater when it comes to research on unauthorised family reunifications and other strategies by which the persons concerned tried to maintain family relations. Official records are silent on the placement of children in orphanages or the deportation of children without legal status (sometimes accompanied by their mothers, sometimes raised by relatives in the home country). The archives are also silent on children who lived, sometimes for years, clandestinely and sometimes even hidden in the host country. However, a set of more (or less) recent tools makes it possible to explore this history, notably oral history, the sociology of mobilisations, the socio-history of migrations, gender approaches or the notion of “transnationalism” (Green/Waldinger).





By inviting contributions from various disciplines, the conference “A Europe of Migrations” aims to shed light on the links between family, childhood and clandestinity in the context of labour migration between the Second World War and the end of the Cold War (which, in turn, resulted in other types of labour migration that are not at the centre of this conference). Against the backdrop of our own research on the Swiss case, we aim to build a network of researchers who study diverse (trans)national contexts in the spirit of a critical perspective on the ‘Trente Glorieuse’, ‘miracle years’, ‘Wirtschaftswunder’, bringing together multiple disciplinary perspectives and developing a sensitivity for transnational and even comparative perspectives.

We are planning to publish an edited volume following the conference. The papers may thus also have the character of a “work in progress” in view of a future publication in 2023 (deadline for authors: 31 December 2022). Preference will be given to unpublished contributions.

 

 





We invite contributions that are particularly interested in:

  • The legal-political framework of labour migration and family reunification and its development from the end of the Second World War until the 1990s;
  • The strategies of immigrant workers’ families to make family life work under the conditions imposed by a migration regime that aims to limit or even prevent family reunification;
  • The experiences of migrant children (and their parents), especially from the point of view of clandestinity (clandestine border crossing, clandestine stay, but also frequent mobility to avoid clandestinity, threats, denunciation); the trajectories of children affected, at one time or another, by clandestinity; the multiple physical and psychological consequences of clandestinity;
  • the schooling of migrant children, with a particular focus on clandestine children, who, in the case of Switzerland, obtained the right to go to school in the early 1990s. What was the situation in other countries?
  • Gender relations under the conditions of migration, family reunification and clandestinity;
  • Mobilisations in favour of the rights of immigrant workers and especially of children, carried out for example by trade unions, churches or migrant associations; the impact of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.







Please send a proposal of approximately 3,000 characters by 29 April 2022 to the following address: marie2.bouvier@unine.ch

You will receive a notification by 30 May 2022 at the latest.

Languages of the conference: English, French, German.

Language of the publication: English.

Information to be submitted with the proposal: First and last names, institutional affiliation; postal and email address; 5 keywords; research areas.

 





Contact Info: 

OrganisationProf. Kristina Schulz, Dr. Sarah Kiani, Magali Michelet, Dr. Carole Villiger – University of Neuchâtel

Date of the Conference: October 5-7, 2022

Place: University of Neuchâtel/CH – Espace Tilo-Frey 1, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland

Contact: Dr. Carole Villiger

Adress for the proposal: marie2.bouvier@unine.ch 

Funded by the Swiss National Science Fundation and the University of Neuchâtel

Monday, January 31, 2022

CFP: Virtual Conference on Encountering Colonialism: Land, Lives, and Legacies :Dalhousie University Canada-March 18th-19th, 2022.

 International Conference 

on

 Encountering Colonialism: Land, Lives, and Legacies 

Dalhousie University Canada

March 18th-19th, 2022.






Call For Papers

The Dalhousie Graduate History Society is delighted to announce that graduate students from all disciplines within the Humanities and Social Sciences may now submit abstracts to Dalhousie University’s 23rd Annual History Across the Disciplines conference. This conference is entitled “Encountering Colonialism: Land, Lives, and Legacies,” and will be held virtually, on March 18th-19th, 2022.

The conference is an interdisciplinary gathering of researchers that aims to promote new ideas, discussions, and connections. It will embrace all scholarship that explores the dynamics of interaction between and within colonial and Indigenous powers and peoples. Of particular relevance are discussions of demographic, cultural, economic, religious, linguistic, legal, material, and gendered encounters.

Applicants should submit a 300-word abstract and a short personal biography to the conference committee no later than 11:59 p.m. AST on Friday, February 11th, 2022. Successful applicants will be notified within two weeks of February 11th. The best paper presented at this conference, as decided by a panel of students and faculty members, will win the John Flint Prize (a $250 honorarium). To be considered for this prize, applicants must provide the conference committee with a final paper by Monday, February 28th, 2022. Presentations may be up to twenty minutes in length, and will be held in English.

This will be an online event. However, following panel discussions on Saturday, presenters who are in the area are invited to experience local Halifax culture with us in an informal setting. Details to follow.

For more information, please feel free to contact the conference committee, at dalconference2022@gmail.com. We look forward to reviewing your abstracts!

Contact Info: 

Catherine Charlton, Dalhousie University Graduate History Society

Thursday, January 27, 2022

CFP: European Colloquium on Gender & Translation. University of Ferrara, Italy, 6-7 June 2022

 European Colloquium on Gender & Translation (5th edition) 

Gendering Agency and Activism in Translation and Interpreting 


University of Ferrara, Italy, 6-7 June 2022 






Call for Papers  


The main aim of this hybrid Colloquium (in person and online) – which has shifted venue from edition to edition since 2016 – is to periodically offer an overview of the latest trends in the research on translation and gender around the world, with special emphasis on its cross-pollination with a number of disciplines, including but not limited to Translation Studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Cultural and Media Studies, Sociology, Politics, Linguistics and Literary Criticism. Besides its overview of the growing diversity of research (both theoretical and practical) on translation and gender/sexuality/equality, the 5th edition of this Colloquium will have a thematic orientation focused on the role played by translation and interpreting as agents of resistance to and change of the dynamics between gender and power in society.

The alliance between feminism(s) and translation has fostered the development of studies centred around agency and performativity of the individual, the translator or the interpreter and their role in society. In the 21st century, both feminism(s) and translation have become privileged spaces of agency, activism and resistance, thus becoming central to the identification and analysis of the strategies of subordination used to exercise social, political and cultural power.

Starting from the work by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian, The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Activism (2017), we intend to develop further the notion of the translator/interpreter as activist, namely as champion of political change, advocate of gender equality, promoter of gender diversity, voice-giver and helper of minorities, migrants and refugees, and agent of change capable of putting “into words the perspectives and experiences of oppressed and silenced peoples”. Our reflection also follows in the footsteps of Olga Castro and Emek Ergun’s research on Feminist Translation Studies. Local and Transnational Perspectives (2017) in order to widen the discussion on the interplay between feminist translation, agency and activism as academic fields of enquiry.



The Colloquium aims at making visible the important role of interpreters and translators in: 1) promoting and enabling social, political and cultural change around the world; 2) promoting equality; 3) fighting discrimination; 4) supporting gender diversity; 5) supporting human rights; 6) empowering minorities; 7) challenging authority and injustice not only across European countries but all over the world; 8) facilitating network-building activities among activists and agents of change and 8) teaching feminist translation as a pedagogical act in support of social and gender equality.







We are aware that translation is a powerful tool capable of producing social, political and cultural transformation. Thus, the Colloquium wants to open a forum of discussion and reflection on the contribution offered by practitioners, stakeholders and scholars to the study of translation as activism and agent of change.

Abstracts (up to 250 words) are invited on any aspect of the interface between translation, agency and activism and particularly on (but not limited to) the following Topics:

Activism through translation and interpreting

The role of translators and interpreters in promoting gender equality

The role of translators and interpreters in fighting discrimination

The role of translators and interpreters as champions of gender diversity

Translation and interpreting as acts of resistance to and change of the dynamics between gender and power

The role of translators and interpreters as voice-givers to minorities

Translation and human rights

Translators’ and interpreters’ agency exercised across different media

Translation and interpreting as network-building activities among activists and agents of change

Feminism(s), translation and interpreting: common grounds, challenges, divergences

Implementing innovative (feminist) strategies of translation across media and cultures

Border-crossing and feminism(s): synergies in translation and interpreting projects

The importation of feminism(s) through translation and interpreting

Personal experience and the translation praxis: the importance of (feminist) translators’ agency

Teaching (feminist) translation as a pedagogical act in support of social and gender equality

Translating (feminist) texts from/into different languages and cultures



Practical arrangements

Colloquium format: in person (University of Ferrara) and online

Presentations: in the form of Papers (a 20-minute presentation + a 10-minute discussion)

Official languages: presentations will be in English and Spanish

Abstract evaluation: double-blind and peer-reviewed.



Abstracts should be sent (to translationfest2022@gmail.com) as MS-Word attachments and include:
- Name(s) of author(s)
- Author affiliation(s) – university or institution, e-mail
- Title
- Abstract (up to 250 words)
- 3-4 keywords to identify the subject matter of your presentation



Following the colloquium, presenters will be invited to contribute to a publication in English (volume of essays). More information will be circulated in due time.





Key dates

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 15 April 2022

Notification of acceptance: 30 April 2022



Confirmed plenary speakers
Eliana Maestri, University of Exeter
Lupe Romero, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
José Santaemilia, Universitat de València


Conference organisers
Università di Ferrara: Eleonora Federici, Giulia Giorgi, Luisa Marino and Marta Fabbri
University of Exeter: Eliana Maestri
Universitat de Valencia: José Santaemilia.