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A t a moment when ethnonationalist and heteropatriarchal narratives erase the intertwined histories of global Jewish and Muslim communities and portray us as inherently antagonistic\, diasporic scholars and artists connect thro ugh resonant forms and questions to find pleasure in differences.
On
September 19\, 2024 at 3:30 pm PT\, please join the Depart
ment of English Language & Literatures (EL&L)\, the Centre for European Studies (CES)\, and the Departme
nt of Central\, Eastern\, and Northern European Studies (CENES) for "
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This interdisciplinary roundtable bring s together three Muslim and Jewish scholar-translator-poets — Deni s Ferhatović\, Rahat Kurd\, and Anna Elen a Torres — to discuss the cross-currents of their work and the gen erativity of translation and multilingualism in Jewish and Muslim cultural work\, with particular attention to dissension from state-sponsored narrati ves.
Denis Ferhatović (Connecticut College) w ill discuss his new translations of sixteenth-century Ottoman Turkish and t wentieth-century Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) poetry\, as well as his original Bo snian-language poetry\, in the context of excavating a fuller and queerer h istorical multilingualism in Bosnia\, beyond modern South Slavo-centric het eronationalisms. Rahat Kurd\, award-winning Vancouver poet \, will share poems and research from her in-progress poetry collection\, t entatively titled THE BOOK OF Z\, on the Biblical/Quranic figure of Potipha r's wife\, known in multiple sources of Persian and Urdu poetry\, and Persi an/Mughal art\, as Zulaikha. Anna Elena Torres (University of Chicago) will discuss material from her new book Horizons Blossom\, Borders Vanish: Anarchism and Yiddish Literature\, on Yiddish anarchi st aesthetics from the nineteenth-century Russia through the modernist avan t-gardes of Warsaw\, Chicago\, and London to contemporary antifascist compo sers. Rather than focusing on narratives of assimilation\, Torres intervene s in earlier models of Jewish literature by centering refugee critiques of the border that cultivated stateless imaginations.
Whether you choose to join us in-person in Buchanan Tower 323 or virtually via Zoom\, please register for the event using the link below. We look forwa rd to sharing space with you.
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" Translation\, Multilingualism\, Poetics: Language Work in Muslim and Jewish Diasporas" is the inaugural event in the 2024-25 EL&L Visiting Speaker Ser ies and the inaugural 2024-25 CENES Ziegler Lecture. It is presented by the Muslim-Jewish Cultures in Europe Project based at UBC. This event is also c o-sponsored by the UBC School of Creative Writing.
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[accordion title="Denis Ferhatović (he/him)"]
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Denis Ferhatović (b. 1980) is a Bosnian-American scholar and writer\, working and playing w ith English\, French\, Turkish\, Indonesian\, South Slavic microlanguages\, and medieval Germanic and Romance languages. His interests include food\, graphic novels\, histories of Englishes\, immigrant writing\, postcolonial and queer theories\, and translation. Denis’s essays\, poems\, reviews\, tr anslations\, and co-translations have been published in Rumba under Fir e\, Index on Censorship\, The Riddle Ages\, Iber ian Connections\, Turkoslavia\, Trinity Journal of Litera ry Translation (JoLT)\, DoubleSpeak\, Asymptote\, an d Exchanges. His scholarly work appears in various journals and es say collections\, most recently in Exemplaria and InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies. Denis’s monograph Borrowed Objects and the Art o f Poetry: Spolia in Old English Verse (Manchester University Press\, 2 019) came out in paperback this spring.
Ferhatović will combine scholarship and personal reminiscen ces to illuminate the role Judeo-Spanish (or Ladino) might have in excavati ng a multilingual and queer Balkan past which counters South Slavic hetero- nationalist narratives and Western hegemonic construction of the Balkans as a site of unchanging savagery.
He will begin by looking at two indiv idual words (haver “friend” and arrajlanearse / razrahatlenisati se\, “to r each the point of complete relaxation”) and a rhymed saying (“Adorna un pal íko se azerá un ermozíko”/ “Uredi klip\, biće lip\,” “Dress up a [little] s tick and it will be a [little] beauty”) that have equivalents both in Judeo -Spanish and Bosnian. What common ideas of friendship\, relaxation\, and pe rsonal aesthetics do they embody?
Then\, he will consider the Judeo-S panish folk lyric\, “Sekretos kero deskuvrir\,” “I want to reveal secrets” (that figures prominently in Aleksandar Hemon’s latest novel\, The Worl d and All That It Holds [2023])\, alongside the Macedonian folk lyric\ , “По друм одав\, мајче\, по друм шетав\,” “I walked along the road\, Ma\, I strolled along the road.” They will help him think about the queer potent ial of shared Balkan cultural tradition of songs that employ the strategy o f gender-ambiguous language. He will argue that\, as texts and performances \, both lyrics present possibilities not only for queer readings but also f or a less restrictive understanding of gender relations in heteroerotic ent anglements.
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[accordion title="Rahat Kurd (she/her) "]
Rahat Kurd\, a poet and cultural critic based in Vancouver\, is currently at work on The Book of Z\, her second boo k of poetry. Kurd is a close reader who draws on multilingual poetics and t he ghazal tradition in Urdu and Persian literature. Her most recent essay\, "Elegiac Moods: Letters to Agha Shahid Ali" was published in river in an ocean: essays on translation (Ed. Nuzhat Abbas\, trace press: Toron to\, 2023). Her book The City That Is Leaving Forever: Kashmiri Letters (Talonbooks 2021)\, is a hybrid of correspondence and poetry exchange d between Vancouver and Kashmir over a five-year period with poet Sumayya S yed. Cosmophilia (Talonbooks 2015) was her first book of poems.
Rahat Kurd will share art images from her background research and read an excerpt from her in-progres s poetry manuscript\, THE BOOK OF Z\, written in the imagined voice of the woman identified as the wife of the Aziz in the Quran\, and as Potiphar's w ife in Biblical texts. In multiple poems in Persian\, Urdu\, Arabic\, Benga li\, and other languages\, and in Persian/Mughal visual art forms\, her sca ndal-causing "temptress" persona is redeemed and celebrated as Zulaikha\, s ymbolic of the soul's longing for the Divine. The patriarchal sources give us robust evidence of the way early prophetic stories migrated between reli gious communities before the 20th century\, and THE BOOK OF Z partly comes out of the wish to take this evidence into a reclamatory feminist/decolonia l direction - grounded in the Abrahamic traditions\, but certainly not limi ted to us as their inheritors.
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[accordion title="A nna Elena Torres (they/she)"]
Anna Elena Torres is an Assistant Professor in the departments of Compar ative Literature and Race\, Diaspora\, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. Torres is the author of Horizons Blossom\, Borders Vanish: An archism and Yiddish Literature (Yale University Press\, 2024) and co-e ditor of With Freedom in Our Ears: Histories of Jewish Anarchism ( University of Illinois Press\, 2023). Torres’ publications include work in Prooftexts\, Jewish Quarterly Review\, Nashim\, make/shift: a journal of feminisms in motion\, In geveb\, and ArtsEverywhere. Torres’ creative practice has included work as a community muralist\, poet and translator\, and participant in the Veni ce Biennale’s Yiddishland Pavilion (2022).
Torres examines Yiddish anarchist aesthetics from the ni neteenth-century Russian proletarian immigrant poets through the modernist avant-gardes of Warsaw\, Chicago\, and London to contemporary antifascist c omposers. She traces Jewish anarchist strategies for negotiating surveillan ce\, censorship\, detention\, and deportation\, revealing the connection be tween Yiddish modernism and struggles for free speech\, women’s bodily auto nomy\, and the transnational circulation of avant-garde literature. Rather than focusing on narratives of assimilation\, Torres intervenes in earlier models of Jewish literature by centering refugee critique of the border. Je wish deportees\, immigrants\, and refugees opposed citizenship as the prima ry guarantor of human rights. Instead\, they cultivated stateless imaginati ons\, elaborated through literature.
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CATEGORIES:Featured Graduate,Featured Homepage LOCATION:Buchanan Tower 323 GEO:49.260872;-123.113952 URL;VALUE=URI:https://english.ubc.ca/events/event/translation-multilinguali sm-poetics/ ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://engl.cms.arts.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/sites/39/2024/08/Translation-multilingualism-poetics-Digital-Signageposter.png END:VEVENT BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID:America/Vancouver BEGIN:DAYLIGHT TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 DTSTART:20240310T100000 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE END:VCALENDAR