Un/Translatables

An interdisciplinary conference at the University of Pennsylvania April 7 - 9, 2011.

Keynotes: Azade Seyhan (Bryn Mawr) and Lawrence Venuti (Temple University)

In a present driven by a rhetoric of planetarity and globalism, the local emerges as a possible site of resistance. In a market of global letters, Un/Translatables—cultural moments that deny transfer—offer an analytic through which to conceive sites of local cultural production. Un/Translatables refuse easy migration across languages, media, spaces, and histories. Even as they migrate abroad, Un/Translatables retain a residue from their origins. Their trajectories produce intellectual property, without home or final destination. They elude claims of national or linguistic ownership, without resorting to the cant of globality. Tracing these trajectories also compels a return to origins, prompting us to remap the site of departure.

Generously supported by the Mellon Cross-Cultural Fund, the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the University Research Foundation, the Departments of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Cinema Studies, English, History, History of Art, the Jewish Studies Program
and the Program in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory.

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