CfP: Navigating Epistemic, Cultural, and Legal Translations: Processes, Hierarchies, Spaces

All cultural, social, political and legal exchanges involve processes of transfer and translation. They include not only linguistic and cultural transfer, but also the transposition and therefore resemantization of meanings, symbols, institutions, norms, practices, and discourses across time, spaces and legal systems.

For instance, avantgarde movements, such as surrealism, as a transregional phenomenon comprising Europe and the Americas, translated cultural meaning back and forward within and between regional or linguistic contexts and artistic forms. Other processes of transfer and translations include networked social and political movements such as Latin American or East European feminisms. Legal orders – both domestic and international – are also shaped by processes of transfer and translation. Recent approaches in comparative law seek to take into account movements of norms and their contextualization. And even the language and vocabulary of international law, which is associated with the idea of universality, seems to be approached, adapted and applied differently by state and non-state actors in different locations. All these processes of cultural, social, and legal transfer and translation can be analyzed in terms of traveling ideas, practices, and aesthetics whose meanings, functions, and reception change in their new surroundings, particularly when polycentric, post-colonial, or post-imperial settings are at play.

Individual and collective actors – who navigate, renegotiate, and challenge interpretations and meanings – play important roles as intermediaries. Alongside social and cultural structures, they make transregional transfer processes interactive, interconnected, and productive. However, these processes also go hand in hand with substantial scopes for at times unexpected adaptations, contestatory re-appropriations, or creative re-translations. They evolve in contexts of local, regional and global power imbalances, cultural differences, and historical legacies of colonial or imperial inequalities, which engender frictions (Tsing), effects of mimicry (Bhabha), but also spark potential for cultural and social innovation. Hence, moving beyond the idea of translation processes conceived as uncontested one-way streets in neutral spaces, our aim is to shed light on the multifaceted implications of translation, transfer, and circulation of culturally situated knowledge and (legal) norms from different disciplinary, theoretical, and empirical perspectives.

Combining area studies-focused research in the social sciences, cultural studies, media studies, and literary studies, “Navigating epistemic, cultural, and legal translations” seeks to attract a wide range of papers that analyze processes of transfer and translation in polycentric contexts. It focuses on the transatlantic entanglements of the Americas with Western and Southern Europe, as well as the Americas with Eastern Europe – broadly defined to include Eastern and East-Central Europe, Southeastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia – from the 18th century to the present. Our aim is to foster a multidisciplinary dialogue on the analysis, the theoretical frameworks, and the broader narrativization of transfer and translation processes.

Fields of interest may include: 
  • Creative potential and hierarchies of translations and transfer in the circulation of knowledge(s);
  • Hegemonic discourses and contestation in the ordering and re-ordering of international relations and international law;
  • Processes of transfer and translation of legal norms and legal knowledge in a polycentric world;
  • Textual, visual, and auditive narrativization of transfer and translation in media;
  • Comparative international law and recent debates on the regionalization of international law that attempt to navigate the polycentric world order;
  • Translation processes and struggle in phases of political and social transition, e.g. law-making, peace-making, memory(-making);
  • (Transregional) transfer of knowledge and aesthetics in contestatory feminist, anti-racist, and ecological projects;
  • Multi- and interdisciplinary transfer of theories of translation.
Proposals on other topics in line with the general conference theme and call for papers are also welcome.

The conference marks the conclusion of the first phase of the ScienceCampus (www.europeamerica.de), inaugurated in 2019, and the beginning of its second funding period to 2028. The conference seeks to take stock of the work done so far within the ScienceCampus while giving an impulse to its development over the next four years.

Submission

The working language of the conference is English. All interested authors should send their paper proposal (300 to 350 words) including a preliminary title, five keywords, the author’s full name, e-mail, institutional affiliation, and a short biography (of ca. 100 words) in one PDF-file by 31 October 2024 to the following address: info@europeamerica.de using the subject line “Translations 2025”.

Participants will be informed about the outcome of the selection process no later than 29 November 2024.