Internationell konferens och workshop vid Slaviska avdelningen 11–12 juni 2024

De tidskrifter för utländsk litteratur som under olika perioder gavs ut i Sovjetunionen utgör ett spännande material för forskning inom olika fält: översättningsvetenskap, världslitteratur, censorship studies, periodical studies m.fl.  En övergripande aspekt som materialet aktualiserar  är anknytningen till frågor som rör språk och makt. Dessa tidskrifter bidrog till kulturellt utbyte mellan språk och nationella kulturer över kontinenterna, men tjänade samtidigt som kanaler för ideologi och propaganda, vilket gjorde den litterära översättningen till en ideologiskt laddad aktivitet och ett instrument för ideologisk påverkan. Tidskrifterna var också en del av skapandet av en sovjetisk världslitterär kanon. Konferensen fokuserar på denna ambivalens och presenterar ny forskning om några av de viktigaste tidskrifterna: Internacional´naja literatura [Internationell literatur], som utkom 1933–1943 i fyra parallella utgåvor: på ryska, på engelska, på tyska och på franska; Inostrannaja literatura [Utländsk litteratur] som började utges 1955 och blev emblematisk för den s k  tövädersperioden; den ukrainskspråkiga Vsesvit [Universum] som började komma ut i Kyjiv 1958 och hade att navigera i en kolonial situation med ryskan som överordnat imperiespråk. 

Konferensen kombineras med en workshop, där två av forskarna (efter februari 2022 verksamma utanför Ryssland) presenterar en ny forskningsresurs som är resultat av deras projekt med digitalisering av tidskriften Internacional´naja literatura [Internationell litteratur] i samtliga dess utgåvor (ryska, engelska, tyska, franska) under perioden 1933–1943. De kommer att demonstrera vilka nya möjligheter och perspektiv denna resurs kan öppna för forskningen. 

Konferensen och workshopen finansieras av forskarnätverket Språk och makt och är öppna för alla intresserade men riktar sig kanske särskilt till forskare vid SU med intresse för språk och makt inom exempelvis översättningsvetenskap, världslitteratur, transkulturella litterära studier m.m. 

Varmt välkomna!

Susanna Witt, professor
Slaviska avdelningen

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Språk: engelska

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CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Literature and Politics, Language and Power: Translational and Multi-Language Journals in the Soviet Union

Tuesday, 11 June, 2024
Venue: Stockholm University, Building E, E 497

10.00 Welcome (Susanna Witt)

10.10 Introduction (Elena Ostrovskaya and Elena Zemskova): Language, Literature, Politics: Translational and Multi-Language Periodicals in the USSR 

10.30–11.20 Brian James Baer (Kent State U, Ohio): Translation Journals and Cold War
Politics: Inostrannaia Literatura [Foreign literature] and Encounter

COFFEE BREAK

11.40–12.30 Elena Ostrovskaya (U of Strasbourg): English Literature and the Editorial Policy of International Literature during WWII

12.30–14.00     LUNCH BREAK

14.00–14.50 Elena Zemskova (George Washington U). Western Crime Fiction in Soviet Journals and Magazines in 1960-1980: Beyond the ‘Soviet School of translation’

15.00–15.50 Susanna Witt (Stockholm U): Translation, Language and Power: The Ukrainian Journal Vsesvit [the Universe] as Cultural Mediator During Late Socialism

16.00–16.50 Concluding discussion: Post-2022 Perspectives

17.00 – 18.00 NETWORKING

Wednesday 12 June, 2024
Venue: Gula villan, Ninox

13.00–15.30 WORKSHOP

Periodical Studies and Digital Humanities: New Tools, New Challenges
Elena Ostrovskaya and Elena Zemskova will demonstrate their collective project, an online bibliographic database of the multilingual journal project International Literature (1928–1945) in five different versions (Russian, English, German, French, Spanish) and discuss the new perspectives introduced by the use of digital methods and the challenges they face in the post-2022 context.

PARTICIPANTS:

Brian James Baer is Professor of Translation Studies at Kent State University, Ohio, USA. He is founding editor of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies and co-editor of the book series Literatures, Cultures, Translation (Bloomsbury), with Michelle Woods, and Translation Studies in Translation (Routledge), with Yifan Zhu. His recent publications include the monographs Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature and Queer Theory and Translation Studies: Language, Politics, Desire, and the collected volumes Translation in Russian Contexts, with Susanna Witt, and Teaching Literature in Translation: Pedagogical Contexts and Reading Practices, with Michelle Woods. His recent translations include Culture, Memory and History: Essays in Cultural Semiotics, by Juri Lotman, Introduction to Translation Theory, by Andrei Fedorov, and Red Crosses by Sasha Filipenko. Recent scholarly publications include: “Translation and Bildung: Siting Translation in Nation-based Anthologies.” Translation Studies, forthcoming;  “A Tale of Two Skopos Theories: (Re-)Siting Translation Theory” (with Philipp Hofeneder). Target, forthcoming; “Translation and Biosemiotics: The Soviet Context.” In The Complexity of Social-cultural Emergence: Biosemiotics, Semiotics and Translation Studies, edited by Kobus Marais, Reine Meylaerts and Maud Gonne (eds.), 157–172. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2024; “The Rhetoric of Indirect Translation: Out from the Shadows.” Translation Studies, Special Issue, 2 (2024): 21–36; “Editorial Purgatory. The English Translation of José Lezama Lima’s Paradiso.” In Translation als Gestaltung: Beiträge für Klaus Kaindl zur translatorischen Theorie und Praxis, Mira Kadric, Waltraud Kolb, and Sonja Pöllabauer (eds.), 133–148. Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto, 2024. 

Elena Ostrovskaya is a Pause researcher at the Laboratory of Oriental, Neo-Hellenistic and Slavic studies at the Strasbourg University (GEO).  Until 2022 she used to be an Associate Professor at the Faculty of the Humanities at the NRU Higher School of Economics. Her research interests include Translation Studies and Comparative and Russian Literature. Recently she has published articles mainly on literary translation in the USSR in the 1930s, addressing cultural and ideological aspects of translation history, such as: “W. H. Auden and Translation in the USSR of the 1930s: From the Soviet Press to An Anthology of New English Poetry”. 2022. Slavic and East European Journal. 66 (1): 62–80; “Perevod i kanon: «Antologiia novoi angliiskoi poezii» (1937)” [Translation and Canon: The Anthology of New English Poetry]. 2022. Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie [New Literary Observer].  176 (4): 162–177; (with Elena Zemskova, Evgeniia Belskaia, Georgii Korotkov) “International literature: A Multi-language Soviet Journal as a Model of “World Literature” of the Mid-1930s USSR”. 2023. World Literature in the Soviet Union, ed. by Galin Tikhanov, Rossen Djagalov, and Anne Lounsbury. Academic Studies Press. 137–163.

Elena Zemskova is a scholar of Russian and Comparative Literature and Translation Studies. Her research areas are the history of literary translation in the Soviet Union, the sociology of literature, international literary contacts of the 20th century, and Digital Humanities. Until August 2022 she worked as an associate professor of the School of Philology at the HSE University in Moscow. Having left her country after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, she is currently a non-residential fellow of the Russia Program at George Washington University and lives in Israel. Her most recent publications are: “Soviet ‘folklore’ as translation project: a case of Tvorchestvo narodov SSSR, 1937”.  Brian J. Baer, Susanna Witt, eds. Translation in Russian Contexts: Culture, Politics, Identity. NY & London: Routledge, 2018: 174 – 187; “From International Literature to World Literature: English translators in 1930s Moscow” (in co-authorship with Elena Ostrovskaya). Translation and Interpreting Studies. 2019. 14 (3): 351–37;  “‘Kak bolit ot vas golova’: poeticheskie perevody v biografii Arseniya Tarkovskogo” [Poetic translation in the biography of Arseny Tarkovsky]". Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie [The New Literary Observer]. 2022. 4(175): 178 – 195. 

Susanna Witt is Professor of Slavic Languages at the Department of Slavic and Baltic Languages, Finnish, Dutch and German at Stockholm University and Editor-in-Chief of Scando-Slavica. She is the co-editor of Translation in Russian Contexts: Culture, Politics, Identity (Routledge, 2018) and has written extensively on the history of literary translation in the Soviet Union.  Her recent publications include “Translating Inferno: Mikhail Lozinskii, Dante and the Soviet Myth of the Translator” – a chapter in the volume  Translation under Communism (Palgrave Macmillan 2022) and “Mėtr i metr: piatistopnyi variant perevoda ‘Don Zhuana’ G.A. Shengeli” [A maître and his meter:  a pentameter variant of G.A. Shengeli’s  Don Juan translation]  ­– a chapter in the volume Khudozhestvenno-filologicheskii perevod 1920–1930-kh godov [Literary-philological translation during the 1920s–1930s]  (St. Petersburg: Nestor-Istorija, 2021) and “Institutionalized Intermediates: Conceptualizing Soviet Practices of Indirect Translation”, a chapter in Indirect Translation: Theoretical, Methodological and Terminological Issues, eds. Alexandra Assis Rosa, Hanna Pieta & Rita Bueno Maia (New York and London: Routledge, 2019).