2023

CFP: Storytelling, Identity Formation, and Resistance in North American Indigenous Culture Through stories, knowledge and culture within and between communities is passed from generation to generation. Oral narratives were used and are still used to share rituals, customs, and traditions of a community. The truths within Indigenous communities are reflected and grounded within their stories and Elders play a key role in passing knowledge. They “mentor and provide support and have systematically gathered wisdom, histories, skills, and expertise in cultural knowledge” (Iseke 561). Their stories shape identity and empower Indigenous communities and peoples. Stories indicate beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions of people. For instance, Datta emphasizes that “stories can vary from the sacred to historical, some focus on social, political, and cultural ways, some are entertaining, even humorous, some tell of personal, family, community, or an entire nations’ experience” (37). Indigenous stories represent Indigenous knowledge and can be a way to resist colonial power, through memories of the past. Additionally, memories as expressed through story for the basis for … the future. Elders “use their knowledge for the collective good” (Iseke 561). A person’s identity is shaped not only through their experience and knowledge of life but also by what is passed through community. Identity is shaped through cultural memory of the groups and communities. A common shared knowledge serves to connect individuals to the community. Memory can maintain the identity of the people who live within a community. The shared memory that passes from generation to generation, fashions culture and history. According to Assmann, “the term is cultural memory, it is ‘cultural’ because it can be realized institutionally and artificially, and it is ‘memory’ because its relation to social communication it functions in exactly the same way as individual memory does in relation to consciousness” (9). Culture connects history, myth, tradition, and identity which are bound together through story. Through memory, one can preserve the past and shape the future. With the aid of memory, communities can remember their traditions, history, and values and while making them speak to the present. One recalls not only what he learned and experienced but also how others have reacted to this knowledge; therefore, there is always interaction between an individual and their community. Storytelling is a way to share memories between generations. This call for papers will focus on the importance of storytelling in Indigenous communities, specifically within the context of North America. The storytelling can function as a method to overcome the past traumas, shape identity, resist colonial power and resurge the community. Moreover, storytelling helps the Indigenous community to avoid the false information spread about their culture while bringing awareness to both the community and outsiders. Fake news is widespread by colonializers has been damaging Indigenous peoples’ rituals, history, and identity while stories told by Elders can be a way to inform the people about the true facts remained untold, masked, or deformed. Some previous books focused on the importance of stories. Fagundes and Blayer’s edited book Oral and Written Narratives and Cultural Identity: Interdisciplinary Approaches (2007) contains 6 sections which emphasize on place, autobiographical voices, oral identities, textualized identities, and children’s stories. The book emphasizes on a general understanding of identity and storytelling. Archibald’s Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Soul (2008) is an attempt to bring in storytelling in educational context. In her book, she emphasizes on the power of stories in teaching about Indigenous people. Christensen et al. edited a book entitled Activating the Heart: Storytelling, Knowledge Sharing, and Relationship (2018) that deals with understanding, sharing, and creating stories. They use various mediums such as autobiography, poetry, and scholarly books to indicate how storytelling educates people. Besides, Xiiem et al. also edited a book related to Indigenous studies entitled Decolonizing Research: Indigenous Storywork as Methodology (2019) and focused on Indigenous communities in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand and shared some knowledge on how stories work as a method of decolonizing Indigenous history. Perspectives on Indigenous writing and literacies (2019) edited by Cocq and Sullivan explored Indigenous literacy across five continents. It deals with challenges that Indigenous writers face and new approaches that can pave the path for hopeful future for Indigenous writing. These books tackled the importance of storytelling and the current call for paper will focus on the role of storytelling among Indigenous peoples in Canada to heal the trauma, shape the subjectivity, and resist the colonial power. The call for paper seeks contributions from literary and non-literary disciplines such as memoirs, novels, diaries, movies, tv series, and documentaries to give a more holistic view of the power of the stories among Indigenous peoples in Canada. Through storytelling, the Indigenous people are not passive victims of colonization but active participants of shaping their own culture, rituals, and traditions. Hence this CFP for a volume, tentatively titled Storytelling, Identity Formation, and Resistance in North American Indigenous Culture, seeks expand the existing literature on the concept of storytelling as healing and identity formation by seeking for contributors from a range of different fields. Therefore, this call for papers seeks to gather proposal exploring literary and non-literary texts (including but not limited to feature films and documentaries) that exploit the power of storytelling, among Indigenous people of North America, as a therapeutic tool in different contexts. In this light, we are seeking contributions that engage with but not limited to Canadian Indigenous Studies and related disciplines. Contributions are sought concerning, but not limited to, issues such as: • Storytelling as an act of resistance and empowerment • Storytelling and notion of self in relation to others • Storytelling as a testimonial act • Stories and historical construction of events • Stories and representation of Indigenous knowledge The papers will be peer-reviewed. Interested contributors should send their proposals to Kamelia Talebian Sedehi (Kamelia.talebiansedehi@uniroma1.it). Please write in the subject: abstract for CFP on Storytelling. The manuscript collection will be submitted to John Benjamins press for consideration for publication. Timeline Deadline: 30/09/2023 – Abstracts (300 words) Notification of acceptance: 15/10/2023

Guest editors: Sofía Sánchez-Mompeán, University of Murcia, Spain; Serenella Zanotti, Università Roma Tre, Italy Streaming platforms have marked a watershed in today’s film industry, revolutionising mainstream TV distribution systems and reshaping viewers’ consumption habits (Jenner, 2018; Pedersen, 2018). Users are now holding the reins of their own entertainment experience and enjoy relatively more freedom in deciding when, where and how to view media products. The way in which this new reality is impacting audiovisual translation (AVT) and media accessibility (MA) with respect to producers, practitioners, audiences and workflows is worth bringing into focus. The global success of subscription-based services—such as Netflix, HBO Max, Amazon Prime, Hulu and Disney+—has brought with it a growing demand for localised content, substantially increasing the availability of audiovisual products translated into multiple languages through captioning and revoicing techniques (Chaume, 2019). According to Los Angeles Times, in 2021 Netflix released 5 million minutes of dubbed programming and subtitled 7 million minutes (Lee, 2022). Localisation has thus become a game changer for streaming companies wishing to attract a wider audience and to lead an international market that is no longer dominated by English-language originals (Hayes, 2021). As a matter of fact, many of the latest most-watched on-demand series are non-English shows from South Korea (Squid Game), France (Lupin) or Spain (La Casa de Papel), to name but a few. This new AVT landscape has exerted a dramatic impact on localisation demands and trends such as the rise in the consumption of dubbed material in English-speaking markets (Chaume, 2018; Ranzato & Zanotti, 2019; Hayes, 2021; Sánchez-Mompeán, 2021; Spiteri Miggiani, 2021) or the faster speed at which fan-based translations are being generated to anticipate professionally released versions (Díaz-Cintas, 2018; Dwyer, 2021). The surge in the popularity of AVT and MA practices has favoured the expansion of non-local productions beyond their language barriers, but it has also left translated content increasingly prone to comparisons and criticism due to the relative easiness of access to the different localised versions. Although negative comments are not always justified, especially when disregarding the nature of translation and the constraints attached to it (Orrego-Carmona, 2021), some have served to fight for higher quality levels, up-to-date conventions and better working conditions (Spiteri Miggiani, 2021, 2022), thus turning AVT and MA into hot topics of discussion nowadays. Notwithstanding that the work of translators seems to be gradually raising its visibility in society, the challenges faced by practitioners as well as the dominant trends in the production and consumption of localised content for over-the-top platforms and the current technological developments such as cloud-based localisation services (Bolaños-García-Escribano & Díaz-Cintas, 2020; Chaume & de los Reyes Lozano, 2021; Georgakopoulou, 2021) are still unexplored from the point of view of academic research and practice. We are interested in both theoretical and practical approaches that focus on AVT and MA in the current streaming era. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: Dubbing research and practice Voiceover research and practice Subtitling research and practice Subtitling for the d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH) research and practice Audiodescription (AD) research and practice Fan-based translations (e.g., fansubbing, fandubbing, parodic dubbing…) Reception and perception studies (e.g., audiences’ profile, challenges…) New consumption habits (e.g., binge-watching, virtual communities…) Quality parameters and conventions (e.g., use of automatic translation, use of a pivot language…) Creative practices in AVT and MA Cloud-based platforms and workflows and technological trends Production and distribution tools in AVT and MA Training, pedagogical approaches and new professional profiles  Key dates 1 September 2023: abstract submission to the guest editors (300 words; references not included in wordcount). Please email your abstract to both guest editors: sofia.sanchez@um.es and serenella.zanotti@uniroma3.it. 30 September 2023: notification of abstract acceptance/rejection. 31 March 2024: submission of full papers via the journal website. Stylesheet: https://www.trans-int.org/index.php/transint/about/submissions#authorGuidelines. April-October 2024: peer-review and revision period. 1 January 2025: deadline for submission of revised versions. July 2025: publication of special issue. http://www.trans-int.org/index.php/transint/announcement/view/23

Information The French University Sorbonne Paris Nord in collaboration with the Italian University of Bologna, is organising a one-day International Conference on the 25th of October devoted to postgraduate students and early researchers on the topos of return in African literatures.   Context After years spent in the USA as a migrant, Ifemelu, the protagonist of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah (2013), realises that her home country, Nigeria, “became where she was supposed to be, the only place she could sink her roots in without the constant urge to tug them out and shake off the soil.” This “gravitational pull,” as Maximilian Feldner (2019) calls it, has been perceptible in African literatures throughout the years so much so as to represent one of its constitutive features. In the still ongoing “age of the refugee, the displaced person, mass migration” (Said 1984), the need to return found in African Literatures seems, at first glance, to be at odds with the postcolonial debates around hybridity, cosmopolitanism, and rootlessness or route-oriented belonging. As Salman Rushdie (1983) declared, “roots […] are a conservative myth, designed to keep us in our places.” On a similar note, drawing from the Igbo knowledge system, Chinua Achebe (1994) employs the concept of rootlessness as a metaphor for writing: “If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world’s stories should be told — from many different perspectives,” he argued. Thus, how can return be tackled without mooring it to discourses imbued with essentialism, nationalism, and exclusion, all of which could potentially be derived from rootedness? Perhaps, however, it is the very tension between routes and roots that should be overcome. It is what James Clifford (1997) attempted to do in his work Routes: Travels and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century. With the return, the homonymic opposition is resolved because coming back to one’s roots involves the act of travelling – routes. But can one ever come back home? As beautifully shown by the novel On Black Sisters’ Street (2011), originally written in Dutch by Nigerian writer Chika Unigwe, migrants, while abroad, might experience a kind of nostalgia. After their return, however, this nostalgia might morph into disillusion and even alienation, as shown by Obi, the protagonist of Chinua Achebe’s No Longer at Ease (1960). Also, it is important to underline that people who come back are not the same as when they left: after having had to adapt to different – and sometimes hostile – environments and socio-cultural systems, returnees might face the same difficulty seen during the initial migration as they are reintegrating into their home country. The eponymous character of Kehinde (1994) by Buchi Emecheta, is precisely an example of such discomfort: once she comes back to Nigeria, she is forced into a polygamous relationship she struggles to accept after her husband decides to marry a second, younger woman in secret. The return can either convey a sense of agency when triggered by the desire or need to escape from the racism and injustices of the host country, as in Sefi Atta’s A Bit of Difference (2012), or, on the contrary, a failure when it is imposed by the authorities of the host country as in Helon Habila’s Travellers (2019). Drawing on all these issues, the conference aims to analyse how the phenomenon of return migration has been addressed and continues to be addressed in African Literatures. Indeed, while in migration studies, from the 1990s onwards, there has been a growing interest in return migration and the ways in which it shapes individuals in terms of identity changes and cultural shifts (King and Kuschminder 2022), the same cannot be said for literary criticism. While early migration studies conducted on return mobilities tended to offer a simplistic view of such phenomena (i.e., migrants moved from their native country to the place of destination and stayed for good or decided to return back after a while), today’s mobilities paradigm is way more complex and intricate. This complexity is mirrored in the recurrent topos of return in African literatures, which has taken multiple forms: from permanent reverse migration to brief “reconnections”, i.e., provisional returns (Knudsen and Rahbek 2019) or what is perceived as a return to an ancestral land by U.S. descendants of enslaved people, as in Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing (2016). Ideas of return, whether implemented or only intentional, re-emerge in different historical periods and places across the African continent: from Kwamankra, the protagonist of Ethiopia Unbound (1911) by Fante writer J. E. Casely Hayford, which might be the first fictional work dealing with return from the so-called mother-country, to the omnipresent figure of what in the Anglophone post independent period was called the “been-to” i.e. a member of the elite, generally male, who undertook a period of study abroad and returned to contribute to the building of the newly sovereign states. This is the case of Baako, the protagonist of Fragments (1970) by Ghanaian writer Ayi Kwei Armah. Similar figures can also be observed in the francophone context in works such as Climbié (1956) by Ivorian writer Bernard Binlin Dadié or L’Aventure ambiguë (1971) by Senegalese writer Cheikh Hamidou Kane. Today, more than ever, characters who return abound in African literatures: Nina in Loin de mon père (2010) by Franco-Ivorian writer Véronique Tadjo, Ike, the anti-hero of Foreign Gods, Inc. (2014) by Nigerian writer Okey Ndibe and Christine, one of the characters of Tropical Fish: Stories Out of Entebbe (2006) by Ugandan writer Doreen Baingana, to cite only a few examples. Like their authors, these returnees are part of a transnational context and straddle multiple nations in a way that not only makes them overcome the dichotomy between home and host country but also negotiate and redefine the meaning of “home”.   Aim This one-day conference aims to investigate how the different forms of return to the African continent are represented in African literatures. We hope to welcome a