Conferences
Translation/Transmission/Transgression
The 2022 International Komplitt Symposium
Held at Lund University on 22–23 September 2022, the international Komplitt symposium "Translation/Transmission/Transgression" will address the complex forms of difference that are actualized when literature is translated and circulated beyond its origins. It aims for vibrant interdisciplinary exchange and to reconfigure the boundaries of world literature and translation studies.
Format & scope
The symposium will gather scholars from Belgium, Britain, Norway, Sweden and the US working in the fields of translation studies and comparative literature, as well as Chinese, English, French, German, Scandinavian, and Spanish literatures. Reflecting this diversity topics under consideration are wide raning: case histories on translations of specific literary works; theories of multilingual and transcultural reading practices; sociological analyses of peritextual traces of international consecration; close examinations to de-sexualizing modes in translations of canonical authors; writing pracitices in transcultural LGBTQ-communities.
The symposium will not have any parallel sessions, but gather all participants and presenters in shared venues. Indeed, one might envision the two days of the symposium as a continual and creative workshop, fostering discussion and exchange on the variuos "trans-function" of world literature.
Symposium program
Please note that the symposium convenes at the Centre for Languages and Literature and the adjacent LUX-building complex, signaled by the “LUX” and “SOL” codes for venues. Both buildings open to Helgonavägen in Lund.
Day I: Thursday, September 22, 2022
10:00 – 10:30 Registration and coffee LUX: C121
10:30 – 10:50 Opening address: Oscar Jansson
10:50 – 12:00 Keynote session: Paul Tenngart, Lund University
“Translation, Sexuality, and the World Literary System”
12:00– 13:15 Lunch
13:15 – 14:45 Session I: Translation SOL: A158
“Viewing Encanto from the Periphery: The Use of
Paratexts to Convey Magic Realism and the Feminine”
- Berit Grønn & Britt W. Svenhard, Østfold University College
“From Compassion to Politics in 19th Century Translation”
- Cecilia Wadsö Lecaros, Lund University
“The Word Homosexual is not a Noun: Transmitting and Reconfiguring James Baldwin’s Intersectional Thought and Writing through European Translations”
- Remo Verdickt, University of Leuven
14:45 – 15:15 Coffee
15:15 – 16:00 Panel discussion: Teaching with/in/on translation SOL:H135a
- Shuangyi Li, University of Bristol & Alexander Bareis,
Lund University. Moderator: Oscar Jansson
16:15 – 17:30 Keynote session: Kanika Batra, Texas Tech SOL:H135a
“Trans Worldings and Postcolonial Sexual Activism”
19:00 Symposium dinner
Day II: Friday, September 23, 2022
8:30 – 10:00 Session II: Transmission SOL:A158
“Foreign Familiarities: Untranslated Endearments
in Sang Young Park’s Love in the Big City and Violaine Huisman’s Book of Mother”
- Oscar Jansson, Lund University
“Peritextual Consecration of Literature in Norwegian and Swedish Translation: a Study of Book Covers”
- Marcus Axelsson, Østfold University College
“Refugee Writing and the Production of World Literature: Statelessness, Translation, and Transnationalism in Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains”
- Tom Toremans, University of Leuven
10:00 – 10:30 Coffee
10:30 – 12:00 Session III: Transgression SOL:A158
“At the Border of Pornography: Erotic Literature as Transgressional Mode and Position of Contention in the Literary Sphere”
- Anna Hultman, Lund University
“Animals, Humans & Fabulative Sexuality in Dai Sijie’s L’Acrobatie aérienne de Confucius (2009)”
- Shuangyi Li, University of Bristol
“Translating Vegetal Voices: Companion Plant Readings Across Languages”
- Astrid Møller-Olsen, Universities of Lund, Oxford & Stavanger
12:00 – 13:15 Lunch
13:15 – 14:30 Keynote session: Emily Apter, New York University SOL:A129b
“No Good Paradigms! On Untranslatability as Critical Method”
14:30 – 15:00 Coffee
15:00 – 16:00 Closing remarks and discussions SOL:A129b