Language In Motion

The Conference on Editorial Problems proposed for November 18-19, 2016 will focus on the opportunities and problems presented by the editing, translation or adaptation of theoretical texts on language, a phenomenon both modern and premodern. Manuals of grammar, rhetoric or poetics or dictionaries explore the parameters of a particular language and instantiate possibilities of inflecting that language for multiple communicative, aesthetic or persuasive purposes. How is it possible to translate such theoretical thinking about language as a subject while deflecting the object of analysis onto another language, culture, geography, period or medium? How does the work with such theoretical texts open or foreclose spaces where the editor/translator/adaptor can intervene in the recalibration of the ideological commitments inherent in the original work? How might an editor/translator/adaptor negotiate the complexities of theoretical texts that are already fully enmeshed in the multilingual? How might translation of the multilingual become a space for creative play with both language and text, play that can range in form from commentary, calques, tropes or digital links? We hope to bring together a dynamic group of scholars to reflect on such questions, questions that are increasingly compelling in the contemporary diasporic, global world where languages, texts and the ideologies and theoretical commitments they both inhabit and produce, are constantly in motion, travelling between cultures, spaces, media and time.

For tentative program, click here.

For presentation abstracts, click here.