Pre-conference Workshop: The Translator as Scholar

How do scholars use translation to challenge (neo)colonial power structures, including those embedded in their own contexts of practice? How might translation - as theory, method, and craft - unsettle Eurocentric models of literary circulation? As Comparative and World Literature increasingly intersect with Global South studies, queer and crip thinking, Black studies, critical race theory, and Indigenous studies, translation reemerges as a method and an ethical inquiry of doing and undoing literary studies, and of producing decolonial pedagogies amid rising authoritarianism. No longer merely a bridge between languages, translation becomes a practice of world-making, one that exposes and reconfigures the politics of recognition, accessibility, and difference. As such, this workshop invites scholars to reflect on their own positions as translators - of texts, theories, and worlds - and to consider how Comparative Literature might disrupt hierarchies of knowledge production. We will discuss strategies for working multilingually, citing across languages, and designing collaborative translation projects that bring marginalized voices into global academic conversations. Structure: The pre-conference workshop will feature two scholars, each giving a short presentation of about 20 mins. Ipek and Haider will then facilitate a discussion that includes time for participants to break into small groups and reflect on the ideas shared. To close, we’ll reconvene as a full group to share key insights and have a Q&A.

Organizers:

Ipek Sahinler, University of Texas at Austin (Graduate Student Committee, Chair)
Haider Shahbaz, UCLA (Graduate Student Representative)
 

Panelists:

Esther Allen (Baruch College, CUNY), Professor of Latin American, Iberian, French and Comparative Literature

Christi Merrill (University of Michigan), Professor of South Asian Literature & Postcolonial Theory and Associate Professor of Comparative Literature