LINKS (London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies)

Time: 3.00pm - 5.00pm GMT
Institute of Modern Languages Research

Online Workshop (free)

Please note that you will need to register here in advance to receive the online event joining link and pdf copies of the preparatory reading.

Part of the Convocation Seminars in World Literature and Translation: Postgraduate workshop co-convened with LINKS (London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies)

Discussants: Florian Mussgnug (UCL) and Danielle Sands (Royal Holloway University London)
Chair: Ruth Cruickshank (Royal Holloway University London)

Global warming demands new forms of linguistic and conceptual inventiveness that can alert readers to unfamiliar and counterintuitive scales. As ecocritic Timothy Clark has suggested, much environmental damage happens at a scale that cannot be fully expressed by traditional realist modes of literary representation. It is brought about by individual human actions which are not ecologically significant in themselves but which collectively, across space and over time, threaten much of what we value about humanity and the more-than-human world. In the context of the climate crisis, this relation between individual observable causes and vast global effects marks a stark challenge to familiar anthropocentric narratives. It demands an unprecedented ability to move between counterintuitive scales and to communicate the unfamiliar. Writerly and critical attention to nonhuman subjectivity – a creative process that is also known as inter-species translation – marks a particularly important aspect of this new cultural and political agenda. 

In this workshop, we will read and discuss three chapters: by Timothy Clark, who has linked scalar literacy to the political critique of anthropocentrism; by cultural theorist Michael Cronin, who has stressed the significance of translation, beyond its linguistic origins, as a powerful metaphor for inter-species exchange; by Kari Weil who invites us to explore the apparent paradox of posthuman autobiography. Eco-translation, as defined by Cronin, and posthumanism, for Weil, foreground the importance of the more-than-human world, not as a mere backdrop or context for human stories, but as a co-constitutive presence that intersects with human culture and society in a single, volatile temporal force field. Translation, which “on the face of it appears to be a pre-eminently human activity”, thus comes to express extended forms of ecological relatedness (Cronin 2017: 13). Dramatic shifts in the common perception of distance, proximity and context, according to Cronin and Weil, are not only a persistent feature of cultural and linguistic translation: they also define our planetary habitat in times of anthropogenic crisis.


Preparatory Reading (PDFs sent to registered attendees)
Timothy Clark, “Scalar Literacy”, in The Value of Ecocriticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 38-56.
Michael Cronin, “Translating Animals”, in Eco-Translation: Translation and Ecology in the Age of the Anthropocene (New York and London: Routledge, 2017), pp. 67-93.
Kari Weil, “Autobiography”, in Bruce Clarke and Manuela Rossini (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Posthuman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 84-95.

 

Time: 6.00pm - 8.00pm
Venue: IAS Forum Room, ground floor, South Wing, Wilkins Building
UCL Institute of Advanced Studies, Gower Street, LONDON WC1E 6BT

The London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies (LINKS), the UCL Institute of Advanced Studies (IAS), and Queen Mary University of London are proud to host Prof. Rebecca L. Walkowitz (Rutgers) in conversation with researchers in Comparative Literature. 

15.00 Masterclass with Rebecca L. Walkowitz 

This masterclass gives postgraduate and doctoral students the opportunity to discuss with Prof. Walkowitz a selection of her recent writings. Participants are encouraged to join the masterclass having read the following texts:

1. “This Is Not Your Language” (from Born Translated)

2. “Reading in a World of Wonderlands” (Los Angeles Review of Books) https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/reading-world-wonderlands/

3. “Future Reading” (ACLA State of the Discipline) https://stateofthediscipline.acla.org/entry/future-reading

17.30 Roundtable: Thoughts on Born Translated

This roundtable discussion celebrates Prof. Walkowitz’s contribution to comparative studies, with specific focus on her award-winning monograph: Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature (2015). All are welcome.

Discussants: Florian Mussgnug (UCL), Tamar Steinitz (Goldsmiths), Francesca Orsini (SOAS), Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary University London) 

Respondent: Rebecca L. Walkowitz (Rutgers)

Chair: Adhira Mangalagiri (Queen Mary University London)

19.00 Drinks reception

  

 

Is mourning a special case of the transformation of life into literature? What are the temptations, benefits, and potential pitfalls of turning the personal experience of grief into literary forms and images? How can literature help in the lived experience of mourning? What do we even mean by ‘help’ in this context? What other roles might literature have?

In this roundtable, chaired by Florian Mussgnug (UCL) we will address these questions through three papers. We will hear from Simona Corso (Roma Tre) on mourning diaries, including Roland Barthes’s posthumous contribution to this genre. The artist Zoe Papadopoulou will share with us her innovative approach to bereavement, which embraces literary and artistic works, encourages creative expression, and includes a specially converted Italian ambulance. And with Jennifer Rushworth (UCL) we will travel back in time to Petrarch’s narration of the death of Laura in a series of dramatic images.

This seminar is supported by the London Intercollegiate Network for Comparative Studies (LINKS), by Comparative Literature at UCL, by the Institute of Advanced Studies (UCL), and by the UCL Cities partnerships Programme in Rome (CpP).

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/events/2019/feb/mourning-between-life-and-literature

Time: 6.00pm - 8.00pm
Room 246, Second Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

This panel brings together experienced editors active in major publications and presses in the field of Comparative Literature. The speakers will share their expertise on the nuts and bolts of publishing and on current publishing trends in Comparative Literature.

Speakers:

• Wen-chin Ouyang (SOAS), Editor of “Studies in Comparative Literature” book series at Legenda.
• Emily Finer (St Andrews), Editor of “Studies in Comparative Literature” book series at Legenda.
• Ben Hutchinson (Kent), Editor of Comparative Literature series at Palgrave.
• Will McMorran (QMUL), Editor of Comparative Critical Studies.

Attendance free.

Please register here. 

Time: 6.00pm - 8.00pm
Room 246, Second Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Lecture by Pablo Mukherjee, Professor of English and Comparative Literary Studies at University of Warwick and member of the Warwick Research Collection (WReC).

Attendance free.

Please register here.