hello list,
i thought some may find this interesting.
best,
kevin
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 11 Jul 1998 13:23:02 -0400 (EDT)
From: "f.e. somerset" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: conference on vernaculars (fwd)
Hi Kevin, here's the call for papers:
Vernacularity: The Politics of Language and Style
Thursday March 4 to Sunday March 7, 1999
The term vernacular suggests a range of sometimes conflicting meanings.
It can describe a "mother tongue", a local language or style, accessible
only to a specific group, and associated with the regional or the
national. Or it can have overtones of the popular and the oral, and, as a
"common tongue", bear the promise of universal accessibility. The term is
now widely invokes not only in literary, language and translation studies,
but in architecture, musicology, dance studies, philosophy, theology, and
other fields. Yet its use is often emotionally laden and unreflective:
its implications are the topic of this conference.
The major theme of the conference will be historical, concerned with the
ideological and cultural arguments that have been articulated through
appeal to notions of the vernacular. We expect there to be a principal
focus on the literature and languages of medieval and early modern western
Europe -- on the processes by which writers in French, Spanish, Italian,
Provencal, English, German, Dutch, Norse, Czech, Polish, and other
languages and literatures constructed an idea of the "mother" or "common"
tongue in relation to Latin and to one another, and the extent to which
these were controversial (and often, of course, argued over not in the
vernacular but in Latin). But the conference's success will largely
depend on our success in attracting papers in areas where other models of
the relationship between the vernacular and its alternatives obtain, for
example from scholars of medieval Hebrew, early Chinese, Indian, East
Asian, Persian, Arabic, Ottoman, Greek, Russian, African, and North and
South American literatures and languages; of premodern art and music, as
well as philosophy, history and theology; and from a limited number of
those whose concern is with the modern world, e.g., with the relation
between English or Spanish as "world" languages and the vernaculars (e.g.,
Amerindian languages) they often threaten to displace; with the status of
and politics surrounding native North American languages; with black
American vernacular culture; or with language theory.
The conference will be of moderate size (probably about fifty papers)
held over four days at the University of Western Ontario in London,
Ontario, Canada, and will be organized with a view to publishing some of
the papers in book form. Rather than dividing the topic up by period,
discipline, or geographical region, most sessions will bring together
scholars from different fields and periods, so that similarities and
differences between these fields can be explored by the participants. We
are looking for two-page proposals for thirty-minute papers, to reach us
(preferably by email) by September 30. (We will continue to consider
later submissions for as long as possible, but with a diminishing
likelihood of being able to fit them in.) When submitting proposals,
please bear in mind, first, the conference's emphasis on vernacular
ideology rather than praxis (although many papers will of course approach
ideology through study of praxis); second, the conference's concern with
the comparative study of vernaculars, and thus the need to present
specialist work in an accessible way. Please feel free to discuss
possible papers with us by email, and to suggest themes and issues that
seem to you relevant to the topic of vernacularity that we may not have
thought of.
The conference's own common tongues will be English and French, although
we will attempt to make arrangements to assist people who have reason to
wish to present papers in other languages. We are hoping to receive
funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of
Canada; if we do so, we may be able to provide some financial assistance,
especially to graduate students and those without other sources of
funding. We plan to provide daycare for anyone who may need it.
Please write to Nicholas Watson or Fiona Somerset, Department of English,
University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A3K7, or
preferably email [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask]
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