Translatable: Creativity and
Knowledge Formation Across Cultures
An interdisciplinary conference on the poetics and pragmatics of literary translation
Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
April 24-25, 2009

Conference organizers: Peter Burian (Classical Studies, Duke), Eric Downing (English and Comparative Literature, UNC), Christophe Fricker (Germanic Languages and Literature, Duke), Erdag Göknar (Turkish Studies/Slavic and Eurasian Studies, Duke)

This international, interdisciplinary, and transcultural conference will bring together not only writers and scholars who translate literary texts, but cultural theorists, publishers and editors, and others interested in many facets of the process of translation between and among languages and media, and the politics and influence of translation in today's increasingly globalized culture. We thus invite proposals for papers representing a broad spectrum of academic disciplines, languages and national cultures.

We envision meetings organized around two overarching themes:

1) translation and creation, including such topics as translation as a mode of thought, the influence of translation and translated texts on the development of national literatures, the role of translation in the artistic development and expression of creative writers, poetics of translation, translation and adaptation in multiple media; and

2) translation in the formation and dissemination of knowledge, including such topics as post-colonial translation in the age of English-language hegemony, translating Islam for the West and the West for Islam, translation in the economy of contemporary cultures, translation as a model—or models—for intercultural communication, translation in the age of global English.

This conference will take advantage of demonstrated interest in literary translation, both as an activity and a subject of scholarly inquiry, at our universities and in the wider academic community. It has been prepared by a series of well-attended "Translatable" events at Duke over the last two years, featuring prominent literary translators from a number of linguistic, literary, and cultural traditions.

The opening lecture and the first day of the conference will be held at Duke; the second day will take place on the UNC campus. Our hope is that this initial conference will be followed by Translatable conferences elsewhere, and that the conference papers will provide the basis for the publication of a volume of distinguished and wide-ranging essays.

Please send proposals (no longer than 300 words) and a short CV to all four organizers at pburian@duke.edu, goknar@duke.edu, edowning@email.unc.edu and cef15@duke.edu by 15 January 2009.