Happening @ Michigan https://events.umich.edu/list/rss RSS Feed for Happening @ Michigan Events at the University of Michigan. Looking at Naturalist Fiction and the I-Novel Transnationally (October 8, 2020 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77827 77827-19933616@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, October 8, 2020 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

After the naturalist approach to writing fiction crystallized in France in the 1860s, writers around the world embraced it. By the 1920s this kind of realistic fiction could be found from the Americas to East Asia, including the Japanese version known as the I-novel. Far from a story of influence, a close look at naturalist novels and stories written in different parts of the world shows writers departing from metropolitan models as they confronted new social conditions.

Christopher Hill is an Associate Professor of Japanese Literature in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. With a background in comparative literature, he writes frequently on literature and intellectual history from a transnational or global perspective. His first book, National History and the World of Nations (Duke University Press, 2009), was on the impact of nationalism on historical writing in late nineteenth-century Japan, France, and the United States. He has just published Figures of the World: The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form (Northwestern University Press, 2020), on the global history of naturalist fiction. He is currently writing about postwar Japanese writers' responses to the decolonization of Africa and Asia.

Discussant: Christi Merrill, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature; Associate Professor of South Asian Literature and Postcolonial Theory.

Please register for the Zoom webinar at: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_7XkNE5-uSRSBcB9uuBkggw

The University of Michigan Library has Professor's Hill's book, Figures of the World The Naturalist Novel and Transnational Form, available in E-book format at: https://search.lib.umich.edu/catalog/record/018261248

If you are a person with a disability who requires an accommodation to attend this event, please reach out to us at least 2 weeks in advance of this event. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.

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Lecture / Discussion Mon, 28 Sep 2020 13:13:15 -0400 2020-10-08T12:00:00-04:00 2020-10-08T13:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Lecture / Discussion Book Cover
EIHS Symposium: Thinking with The Country and the City: Revisiting the Raymond Williams Classic (January 29, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/79657 79657-20438375@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, January 29, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies

Originally published in 1973, Raymond Williams's The Country and the City has generated concepts that have influenced generations of cultural critics. His magisterial survey of the construction of archetypical images of the country and the city in English literature in the context of the shift from agrarian capitalism to the industrial metropolis has justly acquired canonical status. The book’s analysis of how these images obscured the actual historical and social relations that shaped them continues to remain relevant today. Join our panelists as they discuss how the book continues to inform their own work. They explore the city/country opposition and the political interests it serves in contexts quite different from Williams’s original English focus.



Panelists:
Kathryn Babayan
Professor, History, Middle East Studies, University of Michigan

Stephen A. Berrey
Associate Professor, American Culture, History, University of Michigan

Christian de Pee
Associate Professor, History, University of Michigan

Mrinalini Sinha (chair)
Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History, University of Michigan

Free and open to the public. This is a remote event and will take place online via Zoom.

This event is part of the Friday Series of the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.

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Conference / Symposium Tue, 19 Jan 2021 11:39:36 -0500 2021-01-29T12:00:00-05:00 2021-01-29T13:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies Conference / Symposium
Mellon Sawyer Seminar Launch: Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest (February 1, 2021 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/81312 81312-20885823@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Monday, February 1, 2021 2:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

Join the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan as we launch our 2021-22 Mellon Sawyer Seminar: Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest.

Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the seminar series draws on interdisciplinary resources within and beyond the University of Michigan to explore various midwestern histories, practices, and cultures of translation.

Join us via Zoom to meet the Sawyer Seminar team, learn about our shared project, and hear about this semester’s seminars: Jewish Multilingualism in the Midwest: Yiddish Translations of Urban Experience and Translation and Memory: Hispanofilipino Literature and the Archive in the US Midwest.

Presenters will include Barbara Alvarez (UM Library), Maya Barzilai (Middle East Studies and Judaic Studies), Kristin Dickinson (German and Middle East Studies), Julie Evershed (Language Resource Center), Julia Irion Martins (Comparative Literature), Marina Mayorski (Comparative Literature), Philomena Meechan (Language Resource Center), Christi Merrill (Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature), Benjamin Paloff (Slavic Languages and Comparative Literature), Yopie Prins (English and Comparative Literature), Marlon James Sales (Critical Translation Studies), and Silke-Maria Weineck (German and Comparative Literature).

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Livestream / Virtual Wed, 27 Jan 2021 10:56:57 -0500 2021-02-01T14:00:00-05:00 2021-02-01T15:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Livestream / Virtual Map of the Midwest
Jewish Multilingualism in the Midwest: Yiddish Translations of Urban Experience (February 4, 2021 2:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/77490 77490-19875787@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, February 4, 2021 2:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

The study of modern Jewish cultural production in the United States has focused on the East and West coasts, particularly on the “center” of New York City. This Mellon-Sawyer seminar spotlights the Midwest as an interconnected region where Jewish writing and art flourished, addressing pressing social and political issues: urban sprawl, industrialization and worker abuse, gender, and racial inequalities.

The participants in the seminar, hailing from Midwestern institutions, will be presenting their research on Yiddish writers in urban contexts such as Detroit or Chicago, while also asking how might we reassess the landscape of Jewish American culture in view of these newly discussed materials? What contributions did Midwestern artists or those who observed this region make within the field of Yiddish letters? What role did translation and multilingualism play in Jewish writing about Midwestern society and how can we translate twentieth-century Yiddish literature for a contemporary audience?


Event Schedule:

Thursday, February 4th

2:00-3:30 pm
Maya Barzilai, University of Michigan:
Opening remarks

Julian Levinson, University of Michigan:
Ezra Korman and Jewish Detroit

4:00-5:15 pm
“Ezra Korman, Poet of My City”
Performance by Mikhl Yashinsky, followed by Q&A with Mikhail Krutikov


Friday, February 5th

9:00-9:50 am
Erin Faigin, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Centers and Provinces: H. Leivick & I. I. Segal

10:00-10:50 am
Jessica Kirzane, University of Chicago:
Pessie Pomerantz-Honigbaum’s Poetry: In-Progress Translations

11:00-11:50 am
Anna Torres, University of Chicago:
Malka Heifetz Tussman and the Chicago Anarchist Press

1:00-1:50 pm
Sunny Yudkoff, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Lune Mattes: Miniature Skyscrapers

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 21 Jan 2021 15:05:40 -0500 2021-02-04T14:00:00-05:00 2021-02-04T17:15:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Workshop / Seminar Mellon Sawyer Seminar 2021
Ezra Korman, Poet of My City (February 4, 2021 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/81504 81504-20901747@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, February 4, 2021 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

The author and anthologist Ezra Korman was born in Kiev and later adopted Detroit as his home, becoming the city's dean of Yiddish letters. Mikhl Yashinsky, born in Detroit a few decades later, has claimed an inheritance of thought and poetry in the author's life and work. At this event, Yashinsky shares that inheritance and performs Korman's Yiddish poetry in his own translation, inviting us to visit libraries and dusty synagogue vaults, guiding us through the author's possessions, his voice, his writing, his grave.

Mikhl Yashinsky has taught Yiddish at the University of Michigan, YIVO, and The Workers Circle, and is known to Yiddish theatrical audiences for his performances in Joel Grey's production of Fiddler on the Roof and the title role of The Sorceress.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 29 Jan 2021 11:06:01 -0500 2021-02-04T16:00:00-05:00 2021-02-04T17:15:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Lecture / Discussion Poet of my City
Jewish Multilingualism in the Midwest: Yiddish Translations of Urban Experience (February 5, 2021 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/77490 77490-19875788@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, February 5, 2021 9:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

The study of modern Jewish cultural production in the United States has focused on the East and West coasts, particularly on the “center” of New York City. This Mellon-Sawyer seminar spotlights the Midwest as an interconnected region where Jewish writing and art flourished, addressing pressing social and political issues: urban sprawl, industrialization and worker abuse, gender, and racial inequalities.

The participants in the seminar, hailing from Midwestern institutions, will be presenting their research on Yiddish writers in urban contexts such as Detroit or Chicago, while also asking how might we reassess the landscape of Jewish American culture in view of these newly discussed materials? What contributions did Midwestern artists or those who observed this region make within the field of Yiddish letters? What role did translation and multilingualism play in Jewish writing about Midwestern society and how can we translate twentieth-century Yiddish literature for a contemporary audience?


Event Schedule:

Thursday, February 4th

2:00-3:30 pm
Maya Barzilai, University of Michigan:
Opening remarks

Julian Levinson, University of Michigan:
Ezra Korman and Jewish Detroit

4:00-5:15 pm
“Ezra Korman, Poet of My City”
Performance by Mikhl Yashinsky, followed by Q&A with Mikhail Krutikov


Friday, February 5th

9:00-9:50 am
Erin Faigin, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Centers and Provinces: H. Leivick & I. I. Segal

10:00-10:50 am
Jessica Kirzane, University of Chicago:
Pessie Pomerantz-Honigbaum’s Poetry: In-Progress Translations

11:00-11:50 am
Anna Torres, University of Chicago:
Malka Heifetz Tussman and the Chicago Anarchist Press

1:00-1:50 pm
Sunny Yudkoff, University of Wisconsin-Madison:
Lune Mattes: Miniature Skyscrapers

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Workshop / Seminar Thu, 21 Jan 2021 15:05:40 -0500 2021-02-05T09:00:00-05:00 2021-02-05T14:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Workshop / Seminar Mellon Sawyer Seminar 2021
Translation and Memory: Hispanofilipino Literature and the Archive in the US Midwest (March 12, 2021 9:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/77488 77488-21034701@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 12, 2021 9:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

Seminar coordinator: Marlon James Sales (U-M Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Translation Studies)

Although Filipino migration has historically converged in other places across the US, it is in the Midwest, particularly at the University of Michigan, where some of the most extensive archival sources on this Southeast Asian nation can be found. These sources are generally used to examine US imperialism in Asia-Pacific, often glossing over the fact that the American period in the Philippines also led to the flourishing of Filipino literature in Spanish as a nationalist response. In this second installment of our Mellon-funded Sawyer Seminars, we shall analyze the archive as a site of translation and historical memory as a multilingual construct, focusing specifically on Hispanofilipino texts in the libraries of the University of Michigan and the broader Midwest. Translation here means two things. Since Spanish has never been spoken widely in the Philippines despite three centuries of colonial rule, translation may refer to the rendering of texts in another language supposedly understood by a majority of local readers. But given the limitations in how archival data is stored in the Philippines, translation may also refer to the movement of the archival sources themselves, whether physically or digitally, thus reclaiming them as objects of cultural memory. How has translation contributed to a monolingualized commemoration of multilingual pasts? What are the stakes of reconstructing a nation’s history through texts written in colonial languages? In which ways can translation help in recuperating a peripheral literary tradition in Spanish?

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 15 Feb 2021 12:44:47 -0500 2021-03-12T09:00:00-05:00 2021-03-12T17:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Workshop / Seminar Translation and Memory: Hispanofilipino Literature and the Archive in the US Midwest
Translation/Transnation: Translation as a Critical Practice for Writing a Nation in Transit (March 12, 2021 3:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/82095 82095-21034702@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 12, 2021 3:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

In the afternoon, the public is invited to a book talk between Harold Augenbraum, editor, translator, and former executive director of the National Book Foundation, and award-winning author Gina Apostol. The conversation will revolve around Augenbraum’s translations of the novels Noli me tángere and El filibusterismo by Philippine national hero José Rizal, and Apostol’s The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, which won the 2010 Philippine National Book Award and has recently been republished in the US. Apostol is also the author of Insurrecto, which has been included in the list of the ten best books for 2018 by the magazine Publishers Weekly.

Register here: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_L50hQhumR_GoQ45jVwQPtA

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 15 Feb 2021 10:41:02 -0500 2021-03-12T15:00:00-05:00 2021-03-12T16:00:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Workshop / Seminar Translation/Transnation: Translation as a Critical Practice for Writing a Nation in Transit
Translation, Memory and the Archive: The Literary Worlds of the Spanish Philippines (March 12, 2021 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/82097 82097-21034705@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, March 12, 2021 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

Immediately after the book talk, join us for the launch of the virtual exhibit about the history of translation in Filipino literature in Spanish. This virtual exhibit, curated by Professor Sales with assistance from Barbara Alvarez and Fe Susan Go of the U-M Library, Charlotte Fater (U-M Library Scholar), Júlia Irion Martins (U-M Comparative Literature), and Colin Garon (U-M Anthropology) coincides with the 500th anniversary of the Magellan-Elcano voyage.

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Workshop / Seminar Mon, 22 Feb 2021 14:52:33 -0500 2021-03-12T16:00:00-05:00 2021-03-12T16:15:00-05:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Workshop / Seminar Translation, Memory and the Archive: The Literary Worlds of the Spanish Philippines
Frieda Ekotto and Lewis Gordon in Conversation: Frantz Fanon in the Times of BLM (March 18, 2021 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/82893 82893-21211376@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Thursday, March 18, 2021 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Department of Afroamerican and African Studies

Frieda Ekotto is a Francophone African woman novelist and literary critic. She is Lorna Goodison Collegiate Professor of Afroamerican and African Studies, Comparative Literature, and Francophone Studies of AfroAmerican and African Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. She is best known for her novels, which focus on gender and sexuality in Sub-Saharan Africa, and her work on the writer Jean Genet, particularly her political analysis of his prison writing, and his impact as a race theorist in the Francophone world. Her research and teaching focus on literature, film, race, and law in the Francophone world, spanning France, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Maghreb.

Lewis Ricardo Gordon is an American philosopher at the University of Connecticut who works in the areas of Africana philosophy, existentialism, phenomenology, social and political theory, postcolonial thought, theories of race and racism, philosophies of liberation, aesthetics, philosophy of education, and philosophy of religion. He has written particularly extensively on Africana and black existentialism, postcolonial phenomenology, race and racism, and on the works and thought of W. E. B. Du Bois and Frantz Fanon. His most recent book is titled: What Fanon Said: A Philosophical Introduction To His Life And Thought.

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Lecture / Discussion Tue, 09 Mar 2021 14:12:55 -0500 2021-03-18T16:00:00-04:00 2021-03-18T18:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Department of Afroamerican and African Studies Lecture / Discussion
"Cultural Mediation as Humor in Selected African Fiction" (May 5, 2021 12:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/83935 83935-21619167@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, May 5, 2021 12:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Department of Afroamerican and African Studies

Dr. Adwoa Opoku-Agyemang received her PhD from the University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature. Her research currently centres on humour and laughter in African literatures. She finds primary material in many traditional sources, and has started exploring less-conventional ones. Adwoa also works for the Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry. She is interested in translation studies and has taught classes in French and in English.

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Lecture / Discussion Fri, 30 Apr 2021 14:27:20 -0400 2021-05-05T12:00:00-04:00 2021-05-05T13:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Department of Afroamerican and African Studies Lecture / Discussion
(Counter) Narratives of Migration - Virtual Conference (May 14, 2021 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/83999 83999-21619328@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Friday, May 14, 2021 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

Keynote Speaker: Hadji Bakara (U-M English Language and Literature and the Donia Human Rights Center)

Join us on Friday and Saturday, May 14-15, for the annual Comparative Literature Intra-Student Faculty Forum (CLIFF). The conference will be held on Zoom.
This Year's CLIFF investigates the visibility, narratives, and media of migration. We will explore circulation in a variety of forms—bodies, ideas, and material goods—through its manifestations in the arts, critical theory, and new media.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 07 May 2021 13:31:46 -0400 2021-05-14T10:00:00-04:00 2021-05-14T12:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Workshop / Seminar CLIFF
(Counter) Narratives of Migration - Virtual Conference (May 15, 2021 10:00am) https://events.umich.edu/event/83999 83999-21619329@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Saturday, May 15, 2021 10:00am
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Comparative Literature

Keynote Speaker: Hadji Bakara (U-M English Language and Literature and the Donia Human Rights Center)

Join us on Friday and Saturday, May 14-15, for the annual Comparative Literature Intra-Student Faculty Forum (CLIFF). The conference will be held on Zoom.
This Year's CLIFF investigates the visibility, narratives, and media of migration. We will explore circulation in a variety of forms—bodies, ideas, and material goods—through its manifestations in the arts, critical theory, and new media.

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Workshop / Seminar Fri, 07 May 2021 13:31:46 -0400 2021-05-15T10:00:00-04:00 2021-05-15T12:30:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Comparative Literature Workshop / Seminar CLIFF
Nineteenth Century Forum (NCF) Fall Welcome Event (September 8, 2021 4:00pm) https://events.umich.edu/event/85970 85970-21630620@events.umich.edu Event Begins: Wednesday, September 8, 2021 4:00pm
Location: Off Campus Location
Organized By: Nineteenth Century Forum

NCF invites you to our first meeting of the fall semester, a virtual welcome back event which will take place via Zoom.

Join us on Wednesday, September 8th, at 4pm to
check in as a group after the summer and welcome new members
discuss events for the year
read some autumnal nineteenth century poetry!

For a link to our Zoom event, please send an email to Emma Soberano (soberano@umich.edu), Dana Moss (danamoss@umich.edu), or Elizabeth Reese (eareese@umich.edu).
Similarly, email us if you cannot make it but would like to contribute to the discussion.

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Meeting Mon, 30 Aug 2021 13:18:02 -0400 2021-09-08T16:00:00-04:00 2021-09-08T17:00:00-04:00 Off Campus Location Nineteenth Century Forum Meeting