Call for Papers:
Thirty-Second Annual NEMLA Convention
March 30-31, 2001; Hartford, CT
Panel: Translating Early America
Scholars and students of American literature have recently begun
to discover the stunning multilingual diversity of colonial America.
Popular collections of American literature such as the Heath and Norton
anthologies now include excerpts from French and Spanish accounts of the
New World as well as selections of Native American traditions.
Nevertheless, many crucial texts remain untranslated and inaccessible for
most of today's readership. Thus, translation is becoming an important
part of early American scholarship and teaching. At the same time, issues
of historicity,identity, and voice turn translations of early American
literature into instances of cultural revisionism.
Presenters on this panel may address some of the following questions:
How do translations of Native American, Spanish, French, Dutch, and
German texts (among others) transform our understanding of the
manifold cultures of early America, our literary canon, and even our
perception of multiculturalism and multilingualism in the United
States of the 21st century?
In what way does the incorporation of multilingual material into the
classroom redress the monolithic position of Anglophone texts in the
corpus of American literature?
Could the translation of non-English texts have the reverse
effect and veil or even obliterate diversity?
Panelists may further explore more practical aspects of the process of
translating early American literature:
What are the ways to preserve the peculiar voice of non-English
literary traditions? What role can bilingual editions play?
How can translators mediate between non-Anglophone early American
identities and 21st-century American sensibilities?
How does the selection of specific pieces for translation out of a large
body of unknown texts shift historical priorities and adjust them to
modern interests?
Papers on this panel may explore any practical and theoretical issue
of translating non-English early American texts. Especially encouraged
are discussions of how teachers "translate" Native American or other
European traditions for American students today.
Please mail or e-mail 1-2 page proposals by Sept. 15 to:
Patrick M. Erben
Department of English
Emory University
302 North Callaway Center
537 Kilgo Circle
Atlanta, Georgia 30322
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