Roundtable: Women, Rewriting (and) Authority: Critical Approaches to Feminist Translation

The organizers of the roundtable Women, Rewriting (and) Authority: Critical Approaches to Feminist Translation, are seeking participants. The roundtable will be held at the annual Northeast Modern Language Association meeting, held in Baltimore, Maryland March 23-26, 2017.

This roundtable addresses the negotiation of the textual authority of those who call themselves or are called “women” vis à vis critical approaches in feminist and translation theory. The convergence of feminist and translation studies allows for the examination of power differentials in relation to women’s roles as authors, translators, and activists. Moreover, this criticism has been useful in revealing the historical and present silencing of women’s contributions as cultural agents. The goal of this roundtable is to consider how translation brings global and historical feminisms into dialogue, and in doing so, challenges legacies of hegemonic cultural authority. This panel seeks an interdisciplinary array of voices from fields such as literary and language studies, sociology, history, African-American studies, and anthropology. Some questions that the organizers would like to discuss include: How can translation disrupt or dismantle systems of power? What is the historical role of women translators? How does translation rewrite or question historical definitions of authorship? What are the areas of intersectionality between feminist and translation theories as they continue to evolve?

For further information, please contact Siobhan Marie Mei at siobhanander@umass.edu.