Seminars
Multilingual Archives and the Shadow Texts of German- and Yiddish-language Literature
Seminar with Matthew Johnson, Associate Senior Lecturer in Yiddish, Lund University.
Time & place: Thursday 12 September, 15–17 in H135b.
Abstract:
In the writing of literary history and in the analysis of individual texts, the archive – as both a repository of historical documents and an amorphous concept (e.g., ‘the rules or regularities,’ in Foucault’s account, ‘that govern what can be said within a discourse’) – plays an important but indeterminate role. In recent decades, literary scholars invested in archival work have increasingly moved beyond genetic criticism and editorial projects, following a ‘move from archive-as-source to archive-as-subject' (Stoler).
In my presentation, I will reflect on how such an ‘archival turn’ might reshape our understanding of multilingual and transnational literary histories, with a particular (but not exclusive) focus on the intersection of Yiddish- and German-language literature in the first decades of the twentieth century. I will spotlight the unpublished texts of such better- and lesser-known writers as Moyshe-Leyb Halpern, Nathan and Solomon Birnbaum, Alfred Döblin, Franz Kafka, Malka Lee, and Itzik Manger, and, in so doing, turn attention to writing that is often unfinished and unsettled, that testifies to experiences of displacement and migration, that resists standard hermeneutic approaches, and that, as Elizabeth McHenry writes in a different but related context, “suggest[s] another way of understanding literary history, a way that recognizes literary production, even when that literary production did not culminate in literary publication.”
Seminar with the Dawit Isaak Library
On Wednesday, November 29th, the Komplitt seminar is joined by Emelie Ive and Ulrika Ahlberg from the Dawit Isaak Library in Malmö, for a presentation of the library's collections and work with censored literature and banned authors.
Time and place: 15–17 in H140, the Centre for Languages and Literature.
Information about the Dawit Isaak Library can be found here.
Queer, Indigenous, Multilingual: Postcolonial Literature in Taiwan
In this talk, lecturer and award-winning novelist Chi Ta-wei 紀大偉 takes his 1996-novella The Membranes (膜) out of the context of late 20th century Taiwanese science fiction and explains how he was actually inspired to write this localized queer fiction and imagine creolized queer theory when he took classes on Gayatri Spivak and other postcolonial scholars at National Taiwan University. He goes on to give a chronological survey of postcolonial literature in Taiwan with a focus on how local authors and academics were inspired by, and helped further develop, postcolonial theory.
Time and place: Tuesday, Oct. 24. 15–17 in H339.
The event is co-organized with Korridor small press, who recently published Chi’s novel Membraner, translated into Danish by Astrid Møller-Olsen, and is sponsored by the National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan.
Literary Translation and Language Policy: Resisting Russification in Soviet Ukraine
DATE & TIME: 28 November, 13:15–15:00
VENUE: Centre for Languages & Literature, room H339.
Guest lecture with Valentyna Savchyn, Associate Professor of Translation Studies (Ivan Franko Nationa University, Lviv). Co-organized with the seminar for translation and YES: Yiddish, East European and Slavic Studies.
ABSTRACT: The Soviet totalitarian regime not only violated human rights and sought to control all spheres of life, but also pursued an aggressive policy of assimilation, seeking Russian cultural and linguistic hegemony over all Soviet republics. Literary translation was no longer viewed as an apolitical activity and became ideological weapon and an efficient “means of forced cultural change” (Monticelli). Regime ideologues sought control over both the selection of “reliable” authors / texts for translation and the ways that these texts were interpreted in the target languages. This policy led to the appearance of massive translations from Russian literature and a widespread practice of indirect translations, with Russian intermediary texts as a criterion of fidelity. In Soviet Ukraine, however, this Russification policy went further and targeted the language itself, resulting in lexicographical deactivation of many authentic Ukrainian words and their substitution with Russian counterparts. Extensive repressive practices and tight ideological constraints gave rise to translators’ activism and cultural resistance and inspired translators to take on new roles. The case of Mykola Lukash (1919-88), whose name went down in the history of Ukrainian translation as a symbol of resistance, illustrates some of the social roles performed by translators in a totalitarian society to resist Russification, not least of which are translation gatekeeper, cultural custodian, and language guardian. Lukash’s story also exemplifies the importance of personal agency and a firm occupational identity for translators who opposed assimilation.
Intertextuality, World Literature and Global Migration
DATE & TIME: 7 December, 14:15–16:00
VENUE: Centre for Languages and Literature, room H104
The 2022 Komplitt Lecture, presented by Dr. Núria Codina Solà (University of Leuven)
This talk explores the textual implications of globalization. It looks at the increasing similarities between literary texts that emerge from the experience of migration and cultural displacement but are located in disparate contexts. By characterizing migration literature as a genre characterized by an open-ended web of intertextual relations, the lecture will bridge the gap between the fields of world literature and literary theory. While rethinking Julia Kristeva’s notion intertextuality in the context of today’s global literary production, I will show how world literature’s focus on circulation and center-periphery dynamics favors an understanding of intertextuality as an intended world literary device that does not fully capture the unexpected thematic, structural and formal crossings arising from globalization. The talk will offer examples of such global intertextual entanglements through a comparative analysis of A Concise-Chinese English Dictionary for Lovers (2007) by the Chinese-British author Xiaolu Guo and L’últim patriarca (2008) by the Catalan-Amazigh writer Najat El Hachmi.