"Translating the Middle Ages"
AN INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
SPONSORED BY THE PROGRAM IN MEDIEVAL STUDIES
AND CENTER FOR TRANSLATION STUDIES
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
OCTOBER 28 and 29, 2008

“Translating the Middle Ages,” an international, interdisciplinary conference co-organized by the Program in Medieval Studies, the Center for Translation Studies, and International Programs and Studies at the University of Illinois, will be held 28 and 29 October 2008 at the Illini Union. Invited presenters, listed below, include medievalists from North America and Europe whose scholarship focuses on translation in the Middle Ages, or on cultural “translation” of medieval ideas, images, and ideologies in both the Middle Ages and the modern era.

Thanks to funding from the Chancellor, both the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet W. S. Merwin and former U. S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will attend on 28 October to read from their translations of Dante’s Divine Comedy and to discuss them during a CultureTalk evening at the Krannert Arts Center, moderated by prize-winning novelist Richard Powers.

Two full days will be devoted to sessions. The CultureTalk event will take place during the evening of the first day. The Rare Book and Manuscript Library is mounting a display of the Merwin collection. The poet has agreed to give an informal talk at the exhibit during the conference. There will be a closing banquet on the evening of the second day.

The two days of sessions will be video-taped and made accessible through the Worldwide Universities Network website until the publication of the conference volume. The WUN is generously helping to fund this conference; the program features scholars affiliated with the WUN and contributors to the WUN collaborative project “Multilingualism in the Middle Ages.”

We are using this conference to engage the broader community. University faculty teaching pertinent courses during summer and fall 2008 have been contacted with information about the conference and publications by Merwin and Pinsky, so that they may integrate the conference into their courses. One faculty member is planning a public collective reading of the entire Divine Comedy in various languages. Local high schools, public libraries, and bookstores are being notified in the hope that that they will participate in events featured during the conference.

Description

Description [PDF, 85kb]

Invited Presenters

Abstracts

Sponsors