Constructing the ‘public intellectual’ in the premodern world
Co-hosted by
Genealogies of Knowledge & Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies, University of Manchester, UK
5-6 September 2019
First call for papers
http://genealogiesofknowledge.net/events/public-intellectual/
A notable feature of intellectual history has been the role of translation in the evolution and contestation of key cultural concepts, including those involved in the negotiation of power. We may think here of the extent to which modern terms such as ‘politics’ and ‘democracy’ derive ultimately from classical Greek, often mediated through different languages. Translation and other forms of mediation are similarly implicated in renegotiating the concept of the public intellectual in different historical and cultural locations.
The role and future of the public intellectual in the contemporary world continues to inspire academic and non-academic debate. In his 1993 Reith lectures, Edward Said gives voice to what might be called a ‘common-sense’ vision of the public intellectual. At first glance, Said’s description of the fiercely independent, incorruptible intellectual whose writing and thought serve as a lifelong calling to relentlessly and selflessly oppose injustice has a timeless quality. Closer examination reveals, however, that Said’s vision is very much a product of his time and personal circumstances. Several assumptions underlie Said’s vision. For example, Said insists on a strict division between the public and the private sphere. He declares that the public intellectual’s main task is making enlightened representations in language that assess actual states-of-affairs against the prescriptions of universal moral precepts. For Said, the public intellectual must be secular, being staunchly opposed to religion spilling outside ‘private life’. Finally, Said holds that the norms that serve as the public intellectual’s moral compass are the principles of liberal democracy. These ostensibly universal elements of Said’s portrait – the division between public and private realms, the view of democratic liberalism as a universally valid moral system, and a robust secularism that staunchly opposes religion spilling outside ‘private life’ – are all in reality the product of the particular historical experiences of Western Europe.
Research undertaken by the Genealogies of Knowledge team serves as a challenge to such contemporary constructions of the public intellectual as a timeless and culturally ubiquitous figure in human societies, and demonstrates that the figure of the public intellectual has also been inscribed into historical representations of premodern society and politics. In the premodern world, perhaps more than today, the status of ‘public intellectual’ derived from access to cultural capital associated with particular bodies of knowledge – often but not necessarily religious as well as secular – and in particular from the construction of intellectual authority via expertise in a privileged learned language (Greek, Latin, classical Arabic, Sanskrit).
‘Constructing the public intellectual in the premodern world’ is based on the premise that the term ‘public intellectual’ can meaningfully be used either of individuals or of groups in the premodern world. It has two aims. The first is to examine the specific historical conditions, including both the continuities but also the changes in conceptual and cultural categories, which served to construct this figure in the premodern world. The second is to understand how modern representations of the premodern ‘public intellectual’ have been used to inspire and shape modern ideas about the role and remit of public intellectuals in the contemporary world.
The conference welcomes proposals for individual papers or panels (ideally of three papers) that grapple with how the ‘public intellectual’ was constructed in premodern societies, and how their legacy influences how we understand the public intellectual today. The conference invites scholars to present research on, but not limited to, the following broad themes:
Submissions are welcome from diverse fields, including but not limited to: history, linguistics, translation studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, political science, religious studies, development and regional studies, and classics. Abstracts should be sent to Kamran Karimullah (karimullah.kamran@manchester.ac.uk) by 1st February 2019.
Keynote Speakers
Khaled Fahmy, University of Cambridge
Title: To Whom Does the Body Belong: Modern Medicine and Medical Professionals in Times of Upheaval
Chris Stray, Swansea University
Title: The Politics of the Classical: language and authority in the 19th century
Important dates
Deadline for submission of abstracts: 1st February 2019
Notification of acceptance: 15th March 2019
Registration opens: 6th May 2019
Early registration closes: 28th June 2019
Standard registration closes: 30th August 2019
Registration
| Delegate fees | ||
| Before 28th June (early registration): | Standard rate: | £110 |
| Student rate: | £80 | |
| After 28th June (late registration): | Standard rate: | £130 |
| Student rate: | £80 | |
Registration fees include a hot lunch, tea, coffee and refreshments on both of the two days.
Venue
The conference will be held at Chancellors Hotel, Manchester.
More details regarding accommodation options will be made available here soon.
Contact
For more information about this event, please contact Kamran Karimullah (karimullah.kamran@manchester.ac.uk).
APTIS25 Online Conference at the UCL Centre for Translation Studies (3–4 November 2025) “Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?” The UCL Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) is looking forward to hosting the APTIS25 online conference. The APTIS25 conference (“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”) will take place on 3–4 November 2025 via Zoom Webinar. We encourage submissions from both academic and industry speakers. Please see our Call for Contributions as well as the Types of Contributions section to know more about the contributions that APTIS25 will be welcoming. If you would like to contribute to APTIS25 by presenting a talk or a roundtable, please visit the Submit a Proposal section, where you will find the link to send your abstract. Please kindly refer to the Key Dates to know more about submission and registration deadlines. https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/aptis25ucl
APTIS25 Online Conference at the UCL Centre for Translation Studies (3–4 November 2025)“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”The UCL Centre for Translation Studies (CenTraS) is looking forward to hosting the APTIS25 online conference. The APTIS25 conference (“Better together: how can industry and academia collaborate to empower future language professionals?”) will take place on 3–4 November 2025 via Zoom Webinar.We encourage submissions from both academic and industry speakers. Please see our Call for Contributions as well as the Types of Contributions section to know more about the contributions that APTIS25 will be welcoming. If you would like to contribute to APTIS25 by presenting a talk or a roundtable, please visit the Submit a Proposal section, where you will find the link to send your abstract.Please kindly refer to the Key Dates to know more about submission and registration deadlines.https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/aptis25ucl
Hieronymus is the first Croatian journal dedicated exclusively to publishing research and professional articles in the field of translation studies and terminology. The journal has the following key goals: (1) to promote translation studies and terminology in Croatia and the broader region, where these two disciplines are not always recognized; and (2) to enhance local researchers’ visibility in the international translation studies community. For the Research Section of the journal, we welcome empirical studies with clear goals and well-defined methodology in any area of translation studies or terminology. In addition, papers presenting and discussing any area of professional translation or terminological practice are invited for the Professional section. Contributions by early career researchers (pre-Ph.D. or recently obtaining a Ph.D.) as well as young professionals are gladly accepted. In both sections of the journal, contributors from Croatia and the broader region are particularly welcome, in line with the journal’s mission outlined above. The preferred languages are English and Croatian. We accept submissions throughout the year, but for consideration in issue 12 (to be published in December 2025), submissions need to be sent by 30 March 2025 at the latest. Submissions will first be considered by the Editorial Team and, if they pass this initial screening, they will be forwarded for a double-blind peer review. Authors whose papers are accepted for publication must certify that their work has not been previously published. All papers are published in Open Access under the Creative Commons 4.0 open license. For information on citation style and formatting, please consult our Contributors page and Submission Guidelines. Please send your contributions to the following addresses: knikoli@ffzg.unizg.hr sveselic@ffzg.unizg.hr If you have any queries regarding this call, please do not hesitate to contact us
Call for Contributions: " Translation as a means of resistance, resilience and activism, the case of Palestine and the broader Arab region” Activism and Translation are at the core of recent research. For example, Shwaikh (2020) published a chapter on Gaza Strip highlighting the importance of speaking a different language in a war-zone country and emphasising the power of witness and of translating the voices of the oppressed. Mona Baker pioneered the movement of translators’ activism in the Arabic-speaking region through her seminal publications (2006a, 2006b, 2010, 2016a, 2016b, 2018, 2020). Other scholars followed in her wake such as, inter alia, Doerr (2018), Evans and Fernández (2018) Fernández (2020a), Valdeón and Calafat (2020), and Tesseur (2022). Similarly, other scholars highlighted the social and political weight translation can exert on shaping and reshaping the worldviews in an activist spirit such as in the works of Juli Boéri (2010, 2019, 2020). Hence, the expression the ‘activist turn’ of translation studies was coined, driving scholarly interest to an understudied, yet monumental, area of research (Wolf, 2012). Indeed, activist translators and interpreters amplify oppressed voices and make them audible for all stakeholders through language and translation (Baker, 2013). Translators, with their voice-giving ability, are vested with the power of influencing political and social change by introducing new knowledge and ideologies through their translations. This translator’s visibility, manifested via the deliberate inclusion of personal worldviews and politics in translations, can breed change at any societal level, challenge dominant narratives and mobilise translation receptors (Tymoczko, 2010). In the global era of Web 2.0/Translation 2.0 and the rise of social media, translation has shifted into a more social activity bringing about new community or crowdsourcing-based concepts into the realm of translation such as online translation, concurrent translation, collaborative translation, volunteer translation, fansubbing and fandubbing, and many other forms of amateur and professional web-based translation (O'Hagan, 2009; O'brien, 2011a; O'Hagan, 2011; Brabham, 2013; Jiménez-Crespo, 2017; Krimat, 2021, to name a few). By the same token, web 2.0 technologies have revolutionised activist translation through amplifying voices and facilitating real-time online collaboration that are enabled via the easy and hard-to-monitor content access, creation and dissemination. The Arab Spring is a prime example where the impact of language and translation, magnified by Web 2.0 and its social mobilisation, had a significant contribution to ideation and shaping the Arab Spring’s narratives (Baker, 2016; Morgner & Aldreabi, 2020). This has also brought about a qualitative change in the Arabic language itself as a result of globalization, creating and framing, therefore, the concept of “e-Arabic.” (Daoudi, 2011a; Daoudi, 2011b; Daoudi & Federici, 2011; Daoudi, 2017). With the semantic web or Web 3.0 gaining momentum with the ubiquity of AI technologies, activism, in its broader sense, is very likely to reach a new dimension with AI generative capabilities. Activist translation will be no exception though this area remains scholarly uncharted and holds considerable prospects and novel research pathways. Against this rich background, we are pleased to announce a call for contributions to an upcoming edited volume on the theme of “Translation as a means of resistance, resilience and activism, the case of Palestine and the broader Arab region.” This book aims to delve, synchronically or diachronically, into the multifaceted role of translation, including volunteer translation, in empowering activist movements, fostering resilience, and resisting oppression in the Arab region while focusing on Palestinian struggle for justice and survival. Scope and Themes This volume seeks to explore how translation acts as a versatile tool for resistance and resilience, enabling the dissemination of narratives, fighting propaganda, fostering intercultural understanding, counteracting dehumanization and demonization campaigns such as in the case of Palestinians, and challenging dominant biased discourses. We invite scholars, translators, activists, and practitioners to submit proposals on topics including, but not limited to: Feminist translation in the midst of resistance: the role of feminist translation in highlighting the suffering of Arab women in wars and commending the efforts and endeavours pertaining to political activism concerned with defending women and upholding their legitimate rights, especially Palestinian women who are suffering the atrocities of war. The role of translation in acting as witness to atrocities, shaping resistance and supporting resilience: examining how translation has been used to amplify oppressed voices and support resistance movements. Case studies of translation projects that have supported activism related to the Arab region: specific examples of successful translation initiatives that have furthered Palestinian, and broader Arab, causes. Volunteer translation and its impact on activism and community engagement: analysing the contributions of volunteer translators in activist movements and their impact on local and global communities. Translation strategies for conveying local oppressed voices and narratives to global audiences: effective methods and strategies for translating the texts of the oppressed to reach a wider audience. Ethical considerations and challenges in translating politically sensitive texts: navigating the ethical dilemmas and challenges faced by translators working with politically charged materials. The impact of translation on international solidarity with just causes, particularly, the Palestinian cause: exploring how translation fosters international support and solidarity with just struggles such as the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom. Historical perspectives on translation, resistance, and resilience in the Palestinian context: Historical analysis of translation efforts in the context of Palestinian resistance. The intersection of translation, media, and activism in the narratives of struggle: examining how translation intersects with media and activism to shape the narratives of struggle. Challenges faced by volunteer translators in conflict zones: discussing the unique challenges and risks volunteer translators encounter when working in politically sensitive and conflict-ridden areas. Translation as a form of cultural resistance and preservation for the oppressed: exploring how translation helps preserve oppressed culture and resist cultural erasure. Crowdsourced and volunteer translation networks and their role in social and political activism: detailed studies on the structure, functioning, and impact of volunteer translation networks dedicated to activism under different forms such audio-visual translation and fandubbing. The use of translation in the digital age to mobilize support for just causes: examining the role of digital platforms and social media in translating and spreading oppressed facts and repressed narratives. Web 2.0 and activist translation: exploring the use of Web 2.0 technologies such as social media, blogs, wikis, and collaborative platforms in activist translation efforts. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine translation in activism: exploring the current and/or prospective role and impact of AI-driven translation tools in activism, including both benefits and challenges. The working languages are Arabic, French and English. Submission Guidelines We welcome contributions from various disciplines, including Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, Political Science, Media Studies, and related fields. Both theoretical and empirical studies are encouraged. Submissions should be original and not previously published. Proposal Submission Please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words outlining the scope and main arguments of your proposed chapter, along with a brief bio (100-150 words) to n.krimat@univ-boumerdes.dz By the 30th /09/24. Timeline Abstract Submission Deadline: 30th /09/24 Notification of Acceptance: 30th /10/24 Full Chapter Submission: 30th /04/25 Expected Publication Date: 31st /12/25 Contact Information For any queries or further information, please contact the editors at [email address]. We look forward to receiving your proposals and to the opportunity to collaboratively explore the powerful intersection of translation, resistance, resilience, activism, and volunteerism in the context of Palestine and the broader Arab region. Sincerely, Co-editors Dr. Anissa Daoudi University of Birmingham, UK a.daoudi@bham.ac.uk Dr. Noureddine Krimat University of Boumerdes, Algeria n.krimat@univ-boumerdes.dz
Contributions are welcome on topics such as the translation policy of the GDR as a state as well as of individual organizations in the GDR, examining the extent to which the political situation during the GDR’s existence led to an increase in translation activities; the motives behind the translation policies to be observed are just as crucial as the effects on a translation culture. Following on from this is the question of relations between the GDR and other countries or institutions that were established and maintained through translation. This does not only include bilateral relations with the FRG, for example, but also institutional networks such as the involvement in (inter)national professional associations and organizations. Furthermore, we encourage an examination of the actual practice of translation, as it forms a significant part of translational culture and can be understood within diverse networks.We invite you to submit contributions on these topics or related issues:Translation policy of the GDR and/or institutions in the GDR: What was translated? Who were the individuals involved in the translation process? What were the motives behind the translation policies? What effects did these policies have on the institutions and professional practice? To what extent were they influenced by the political situation?Translational relations and networks of the GDR and/or institutions in the GDR: What translational relations existed with other states and/or institutions on a national and international level? How did these relationships develop? What roles did these relations and networks play?Translation practice: What were the working conditions of translators and interpreters and how were they influenced? What role did professional organizations play in shaping professional practices?Investigating translation cultures always also includes insights derived from case studies, especially in the sense that they serve as a starting point for further questions and ultimately contribute to the abstraction of findings, enabling researchers to make more general statements about the respective translation culture.Please send your abstracts of no more than 300 words to hanna.blum@uni-graz.at by 31 July. The abstracts can be written in English or German. There is no conference fee for presenters. The conference will be held on site. Please note that the details are subject to change without notice.
