The Moving Target: Translation and Chinese Poetry–cfa

Call for abstracts | The Moving Target: Translation and Chinese Poetry

On 1-2 June 2018, Maghiel van Crevel and Lucas Klein will convene a workshop entitled “The Moving Target: Translation and Chinese Poetry” at Leiden University, toward the publication of an edited volume in 2019.

Participants will arrive on 31 May and depart on 3 June. Hotel accommodation and all meals will be funded by the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS), the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS) and other local funding bodies.

The workshop aims to conjoin critical engagement with the notion of translation with deep linguistic, literary and cultural knowledge on poetry in Chinese: written in Chinese, translated into Chinese, or translated from Chinese into other languages.

We take translation to encompass everything from the reproduction in a target language of a text in a source language to cultural translation in its various interpretations. Examples of the latter include Chinese-foreign interactions of poetry’s texts, contexts and metatexts, but also interactions “within Chinese,” for instance between classical and modern cultural forms or between various identifications and persuasions in poetry.

In addition to the generic significance of studying translation-and-poetry, contributors will be encouraged to draw on issues that are specific to cultural China. For example: the proverbial and debatable untranslatability of classical Chinese poetry, modern Chinese poetry’s “foreign origins” and the conspicuous presence of foreign poetries in Chinese-language poetic discourse, and the power of poetry as a meme in Chinese cultural tradition, including social and political dimensions of this tradition.

We welcome proposals for broad-strokes essays as well as case studies from a variety of perspectives: textual and contextual, critical and historical, theoretical and methodological, etc. Abstracts of about 300 words should be sent to m.van.crevel@hum.leidenuniv.nl and lklein@hku.hk.

Deadline for abstracts: 18 December 2017. The selection of abstracts will be completed and invitations will go out early in January 2018. Full draft papers of c. 8000 words must reach the conveners by 23 April. All papers will be made available to all participants by 1 May. The workshop’s design will maximize time for discussion and feedback. Revised papers will be expected by 15 October.

Please consider submitting an abstract, forward this information to those you think might be interested and let us know if you need any additional information.

Sincerely,

Maghiel and Lucas

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