Center for Language Studies
Brown University
Cross-Talk:
Conversations on
Race and Language
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
February 24-25 2022
Cross-Talk: Conversations on Race and Language
Brown University’s Modern Languages ‘22 conference showcases panelists and participants discussing and dialoguing on issues of race and language in the field of modern languages.
Please join us either virtually or in-person as we discuss and question how events related to race, racial justice and social justice have become transnational and impact the languages, literatures, and cultures that we study, teach, research and learn. The conference program includes engaging sessions on curriculum design and critical pedagogies, activism, transnational mobilities, racial politics, the Global South and several on translation.
You may register here.
The conference is a collaborative event between the following departments and centers at Brown University -- Africana Studies, Brazil Initiative, Comparative Literature, East Asian Studies, French Studies, German Studies, Hispanic Studies, Italian Studies, Literary Arts, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Portuguese and Brazilian Studies, Slavic Studies, Middle East Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies and the Center for Language Studies.
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Keynote:
Antonia Carcelén-Estrada
Amazonian Indigenous and Black Pacific History: Intercultural Translation and Orality
In her keynote address, Professor Antonia Carcelén-Estrada (Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador and Sarah Lawrence College, New York) will discuss race and language in the context of oral histories and intercultural translation in the Amazon and the Black Pacific. She will compare her translational work in these two geographies, to highlight how orality operates differently for Afro-descendant-black women mobilizing memory in Ecuador's Esmeraldas Province in the Pacific and for the various Amazonian Indigenous nations defending the Living Forest from a colonial and depredatory resource extraction. What these projects show is that orality and intercultural translation feature prominently in these processes of resistance to a racial and linguistic coloniality.
Schedule
Thursday, February 24, 2022
Click here to download the schedule as a PDF. You may find a linked final schedule here.
Registration
1:45-3:45 pm
Onsite Registration, Petteruti Lounge, Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center, 75 Waterman St., Room 201.
Opening Remarks
2:00 pm
Welcoming remarks by Zachary Sng, Professor of German Studies
Session 1: Race, Language and Curriculum Design
2:30-3:30 pm, Petteruti Lounge
Moderator: Zachary Sng
Facilitator for Virtual Questions: Jeremy Lehnen
Naemi McPherson, East Asian Studies, Brown University.
Promoting Anti-Racism in Japanese Language Education: Microaggressions in “Everyday Conversation”
Andressa Maia, Portuguese & Brazilian Studies, Brown University.
Transnational Racial Dialogues in an Accelerated Portuguese Course
Makana Kushi, Native American & Indigenous Studies, Brown University.
Supporting Indigenous Heritage Language Study
Session Two: Teaching Practices and Critical Pedagogies
3:45-4:45 pm, Petteruti Lounge
Moderator: Jane Sokolosky
Facilitator for Virtual Questions: Zachary Sng
Anke Biendarra, European Languages and Studies, University of California, Irvine.
Critical Pedagogies of Teaching Black Germany in the European Context
Jesse Van Amelsvoort and Marrigje Paijmans, European Studies & Dutch, University of Amsterdam.
Teaching Diversity at a Dutch University
Keynote Address
5:00 pm, Metcalf Research Building, Friedman Auditorium, 190 Thayer Street.
Kevin McLaughlin, Dean of the Faculty, Professor of English, Comparative Literature and German Studies, Brown University.
Welcoming Remarks
Jane Sokolosky, Director, Center for Language Studies, Brown University.
Introduction
Jeremy Lehnen, Associate Director, Center for Language Studies and Director, Brazil Initiative, Hispanic Studies and Portuguese and Brazilian Studies.
Virtual Moderator
Antonia Carcelén-Estrada, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador and Sarah Lawrence College, New York.
Amazonian Indigenous and Black Pacific History: Intercultural Translation and Orality
Reception
6:15 pm
Reception following keynote address
Schedule
Friday, February 25, 2022
Registration
8:30-10:30 am
Conference Registration in Kasper Multipurpose Room, Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center
Session 3: Transnational Cultural Mobilities
9:15-10:30 am, Kasper Multipurpose Room
Moderator: Jeremy Lehnen
Facilitator for Virtual Questions: Jane Sokolosky
Roopam Mishra, Center for Language Studies, Brown University.
Tracing Mobilities through Dialogues of Power
Paulo Dutra, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, University of New Mexico.
Racionais MC’s, Ice Cube, and the Language of Rap
Andrew Colarusso, Literary Arts, Brown University.
Half-lives: Cagots, Cacos, and a Recrudescence of Medieval European Racism in Reggaeton
Silvia Bermúdez, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Remei Sipi Mayo and the Emergence of Black Feminisms in Contemporary Spain
Session Four: New Forms of Knowledge and Expression: Languages and/in Activism
10:45-11:45 am, Kasper Multipurpose Room
Moderator: Paulo Dutra
Facilitator for Virtual Questions: Elsa Belmont Flores
Katherine Goldman, Latin American & Caribbean Studies, Brown University.
Las Tesis and the Performance "A Rapist in Your Path": Translation and Resistance beyond Borders
Corine Tachtiris, Comparative Literature, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Beyond US-Centric Anti-Racism through Translation
Ana Marques Garcia, Department of Spanish & Portuguese, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Intersectional Pedagogy and Counter-Hegemonic Spanishness in "Ser mujer negra en España" (2018) by Desirée Bela-Lobedde
Lunch and Undergraduate Poster Presentations
11:45-1:00 pm, Kasper Multipurpose Room
Join undergraduates who will share their research and projects relating to indigenous languages as well as memory, history, jazz and public health. You may see their presentations here and find out more about their studies here.
Session Five: Racial Politics of Translation
1:00-2:00 pm, Kasper Multipurpose Room
Moderator: Anke Biendarra
Facilitator for Virtual Questions: Olga Blomgren
Adrian Hernandez-Acosta, Hispanic Studies, Brown University.
Translation Across the Black Atlantic: Lose Your Mother, a Case Study
Remo Verdickt, English Literature, KU Leuven, Belgium.
“The beat of the language of the people who had produced me”: Racialized Language in European Translations of James Baldwin
Nina Simon & Nada Al-Addous, Herder Institute, Leipzig University.
On the Potential of Cultural Studies: Reflections on the Question of Gorman's Poem's Translators for German as a Foreign Language
Session Six: Translating Culture and Reception Studies
2:15-3:15 pm, Kasper Multipurpose Room
Moderator: Olga Blomgren
Facilitator for Virtual Questions: Jeremy Lehnen
Le Li, Translation Studies, Binghamton University - SUNY.
What is “Chinese”? Politics of Global Prizes and Transnational Production
Jaeyeon Jeon, Comparative Literature, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Is The Vegetarian Korean? What English Translation Allows and Withholds
Nishant K. Narayanan, Center of German Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and The English & Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India.
Unequal Conversations: Destabilizing Race and Language in Yoko Tawada’s “Das nackte Auge”
Session Seven: In Dialogue with the Global South – Race, Language, Literature, and Culture
3:30-4:30 pm, Kasper Multipurpose Room
Moderator: Jeffrey Niedermaier
Facilitator for Virtual Questions: Jane Sokolosky
Olga Blomgren, Center for Language Studies, Brown University.
Archipelagic Poetics and Narratives of Dis-location: Isaac Julien’s "Ten Thousand Waves" (2010)
Jay Gao, Literary Arts, Brown University.
The Legacy of the Avant-Garde: Haunting Language and Nation in Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's DICTEE
Deanna Ren, Chinese Language & Literatures, Washington University, St. Louis.
Decolonizing Madness of the Mind and Body: Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman" in Translation
Session Eight: Transdisciplinary Connections
4:45-6:00 pm, Kasper Multipurpose Room
Moderator: Jane Sokolosky
Facilitator for Virtual Questions: Olga Blomgren
Kevin Ennis, Portuguese & Brazilian Studies, Brown University.
Confronting Neocolonial Violence in Brazilian Extractivist Narratives
Samuel Johnson, Modern Languages & Literatures, University of Miami.
Extraction in the Amazon, Indigenous Media, and Intercultural Networks
Ahngeli Shivam, American Studies & English, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany & Georgia State University.
Race, Language, and the Political Agenda
Yurika Tamura, East Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara.
Politics of Forgetting and "Americanization" in Contemporary Japanese Diasporic Discourses
Concluding Remarks
6:00 pm
Jeremy Lehnen, Director of the Brazil Initiative, Associate Director of the Center for Language Studies, Affiliated Faculty in Portuguese and Brazilian Studies and Hispanic Studies, Brown University
Reception
6:15 pm
Reception to follow concluding remarks.
Register
Registration is Open!
To request special services, accommodations or assistance for this event, please contact the Center for Language Studies at languages@brown.edu or 401 863 5674 as far in advance of the event as possible. Thank you.
Our Presenters
Sponsors
The Center for Language Studies
The Cogut Institute: The Humanities Initiative Programming Fund
The Charles K. Colver Fund
In Collaboration with:
Department of Comparative Literature
Department of East Asian Studies
Department of French and Francophone Studies
Department of German Studies
Department of Hispanic Studies
Department of Italian Studies
Department of Portuguese & Brazilian Studies
Department of Slavic Studies
Department of Literary Arts
Native American & Indigenous Studies Initiative
Center for Middle East Studies
Center for Latin American & Caribbean Studies
The Brazil Initiative
Conference Locations
Petteruti Lounge and the Kasper Multipurpose Room are located in the Stephen Robert '62 Campus Center at 75 Waterman St., Providence, RI 02912. The Friedman Auditorium is located in the Metcalf Research Building at 190 Thayer Street, Providence, RI 02912.
Logistics
Brown University is located on College Hill, just east of Downtown Providence.
Getting to Brown
Brown is conveniently located near I-95 and I-195, TF-Green Airport, Providence Train Station, and about an hour from Boston Logan Airport. Click the links below for more information.
Traveling by Car:
Traveling by Air:
Traveling by Train:
Amtrak Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority
Hotel
Guests may inquire about room availability at the special Brown rate at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Downtown Providence.
58 Weybosset Street
Providence, RI 02903
401 608 3500
Book online or via phone. The deadline to reserve at this rate is: February 02 2022.
Click here to make a reservation.
