27 May Migrations
Keynote: Efraín Kristal (University of California, Los Angeles)
Friday, May 27, 2016 / 8:30 AM
McCune Conference Room, HSSB 6020
The Graduate Center for Literary Research’s third annual graduate conference seeks to explore the topics of translation, memory and exchange within the context of migration. We are interested in how questions of cultural transfer and linguistic translation—using translation in an expansive sense of the term—inflect textual and media representations of migration. Efraín Kristal, Chair of Comparative Literature and Professor of Spanish and French at UC Los Angeles, will deliver the keynote address on philosopher and cultural theorist Peter Sloterdijk’s engagement with narrative via his seminal notion of the sphere. Sloterdijk’s expansive and open-ended work highlights the shift from the fiction of a unified sphere to a plurality of contemporary, cross-cultural spheres—spaces that Kristal analyzes in relation to their varying degrees of continuity and discontinuity. In light of increased migration in globalized situations, the complexity of these heterogeneous spheres demands our attention as scholars, in order to address dilemmas and challenges of our moment. Papers analyze the translative practice of migrant writers, artists, filmmakers and intellectuals as they navigate the increasingly ephemeral and shifting spheres of co-existence in the age of globalization.
Sponsored by the CGLR and the IHC.