Members’ Events

Speakers at the conference include Sara Barker (University of Leeds, United Kingdom); Davide Boerio (Medici Archive Project, Florence, Italy); Nicholas Brownlees (University of Florence, Italy); Brenda Hosington (University of Warwick, United Kingdom); Giovanni Iamartino (University of Milan, Italy); Polina Shvanyukova (University of Bergamo, Italy); Stefano Villani (University of Maryland, USA). The Chair include Alessio Assonitis (Medici Archive Project, Florence), Stefano U. Baldassarri (ISI Florence), Brendan Dooley (University College Cork, Ireland). For the programme, please contact nicholas.brownlees@unifi.it. Attendance is free, but for organizational reasons we kindly ask you to confirm your participation: please email  nicholas.brownlees@unifi.it by 1 February 2020.  

Legislative Drafting and Language Workshop London 7-8 July 2020  Law, Language, and Gender: the way forward  During the late twentieth century proposals to modernize legislative drafting have been choral and among the specific causes generally mentioned there are sentences of undue length, overuse of archaic expressions, a labyrinth of sentences and clauses, partiality of nominalizations, lack of gender neutrality. There are inherent factors that make it difficult for the drafter to convey the intentions of the legislator and ensure there are no ambiguities and misunderstandings in the words and expressions that have been chosen. This is particularly true when the legislator aims to avoid gender-specific terms. Gender-neutral language, also called non-sexist, gender-inclusive, or non-gender-specific language (UNESCO – Priority Gender Equality Guidelines 2011), refers to language which includes words or expressions that cannot be taken to refer to one gender only (OED). Many countries have pledged themselves to a gender-neutral language in legislation, and the need to reform the way in which laws have been written for more than one-hundred years has been particularly, yet not exclusively, felt in English-language jurisdictions. At this ‘Legislative Drafting and Language’ Workshop, scholars and experts in the field of law, legislative drafting, and linguistics are asked to explore the research space around law and language focusing on the strategies adopted by drafters in various jurisdictions, who are asked to write legal sentences aiming at gender fair and symmetric representation of genders. Our ambition is to envisage ‘a way forward’ in legislative drafting and to generate ideas that might challenge prevailing practices and beliefs, to cross the traditional boundaries of disciplines such as law and linguistics and eventually to interact successfully with scholars from different fields. 1st Theme: Gender neutrality and Westminster Gender-neutral drafting has been the norm for some years in many jurisdictions that use English language to draft legislation. In the UK gender-neutral language has been applied to all government Bills and Acts since 2007. But what exactly does a switch to gender-neutral language entail in legislative drafting? The gender-neutral language recommended by the UK Office of the Parliamentary Counsel (OPC) generally requires “[i] avoiding gender-specific pronouns (such as ‘he’) for a person who is not necessarily of that gender; [ii] avoiding nouns that might appear to assume that a person of a particular gender will do a particular job or perform a particular role (e.g. ‘chairman’)” (OPC Drafting Guidance 2018). These OPC’s provisions have recently generated an interesting debate on the applicability of some gender-neutral drafting techniques (i.e., terminology, pronouns, ‘singular they’, repetition) particularly when their application comes at the cost of clarity and precision of the statutory provisions. Topics that could be addressed in this domain include but are not limited to the following: challenging old and new trends in legislative drafting techniques. Can government cope with the problem?  exploring the recent legislative drafting techniques  experts’ perceptions of gender-neutral drafting. Should government be a leader or a follower?  comparing and contrasting (the accuracy of) definitions of key concepts proposing new research methods and developing innovative research practices 2nd Theme: Learning from other legislative experiences Apart from a lack of noun classification, English (namely, Modern English) can be considered a ‘gender language’ which resorts to a variety of linguistic means to construct and (re)present gender-related messages in a variety of discursive and communicative sites where issues of identity and power are involved. Likewise, international organizations such as the EU have recently shown some instances of a drafting style much more inclined to gender neutrality. However, it is interesting to see the strategies taken by countries with gender grammar language (Arabic, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew,  Hindi, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Polish , Romanian, Russian, Serbian/Croatian/Bosnian, Spanish, Swedish, Welsh) in which feminine-masculine pairs are recommended in order to avoid the masculine bias. Topics that could be addressed in this domain include but are not limited to the following: convergence-divergence of practices and findings in gender-neutral drafting techniques (empirical evidence) emerging real-world settings, goals and materials (empirical evidence) the availability of gender-neutral policies and the extent of their implementation transplanting gender-neutral language, is it possible? (Experience from other jurisdictions)  neutralization, feminization and/or a combination of the two. Is language ever a barrier? 3rd Theme: Gender, language and the law        Although gender biases exist in most, if not all, languages, they may be more or less apparent, depending on the structure of the language. In this regard, two types of languages can be distinguished: languages with grammatical gender (i.e., Italian, German, French) and languages that lack noun classification (i.e., English, Finnish, Turkish). In terms of grammatical structures, gender and linguistic gender asymmetries are much more visible in grammatical gender languages than in languages that lack noun classification. For this reason, it is interesting to explore the lexico-grammatical and discoursal strategies adopted by drafters over the last decades in different legislations (with different languages), who are asked to write legal sentences aiming at gender fair and symmetric representation of genders.  Topics that could be addressed in this domain include but are not limited to the following: assessing gender-neutral language in legislation from a linguistic point of view  challenging fixed old habits in gender-neutral legislative drafting techniques  discourse analysis and gender-neutral language convergence-divergence in legislative drafting techniques across languages  gender-based language reform and the law. Is there a dominant paradigm? Proposals for each individual paper should be approx. 250 words long. Please send also a 150-word bio for each participant.  Please send your proposal by 31 March (this is still a provisional deadline) 2020 to:  Giulia Adriana Pennisi pennisigiulia@gmail.com   giuliaadriana.pennisi@unipa.it Costantin Stefanou Constantin.Stefanou@sas.ac.uk

11th CERLIS CONFERENCE: “Translation and Gender in the Profession” (4th Valencia-Napoli Colloquium) Bergamo, 25-27 June 2020 CERLIS, the Research Centre on Languages for Specific Purposes of the University of Bergamo, organizes the next Conference on Translation in the Profession. After the successful 3rd Valencia/Napoli Colloquium on Gender & Translation, jointly organized by the GenText Research Group of the Universitat de València, the Dipartimento di Studi Letterari, Linguistici e Comparati of the Università di Napoli ‘L’Orientale’, and the GETLIHC Research Group (Grup de Estudis de Gènere: Traducciò, Literatura, Història i Comunicaciò), CERLIS takes over the initiative and proposes a Conference whose aim is to offer a broad view of research on Translation and Gender in the Profession around the world. The theme will be tackled from transdisciplinary and cross-cultural perspectives, with various methodological approaches for LSP analysis (Translation Studies, Translation Theory and Practice, Applied and Cognitive Linguistics, Social Semiotics, Corpus Linguistics, etc.), especially in regard to discourses of academia, law, business, science, medicine (and their popularized forms), as well as tourism and the media, with a specific focus on gender perspectives. Plenary lectures will be delivered by the following keynote speakers: David Katan (Università del Salento) José Santaemilia (Universitat de València) Pascale Sardin (Université Bordeaux-Montaigne) Jane Sunderland (University of Lancaster) Abstracts and presentations should reflect at least one of the following themes: – LSP translation, transcreation and gender issues – Interpretation, community interpreting and gender issues – LSP translation accuracy and gender issues – Audiovisual translation from a gendered perspective – Teaching translation and interpreting from a gender perspective – Methodological approaches and translation practices and gender issues – Corpus-based translation research and gender issues – LSP Terminology, translation and gender sensitivity – Language, gender and translation in business contexts – Translation and gender-based analysis in academic discourse – Translation and gender-based analysis in science/health research – Gender issues in scientific and technical translations – Translation, gender and participant roles in court interpreting – Language, gender and translation in popularized forms of LSP discourse – LSP, EU legal language and gender – Translation, gender and the Media – Gender issues in the translation of tourist texts. Official languages of the conference: English, French, German, Spanish. Deadline for proposals: 31st January 2020. Instructions for abstract submission can be found here: https://easychair.org/cfp/11thCERLIS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Larissa D’Angelo (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) Patrizia Anesa (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) Gabriella Carobbio (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) Stefania Consonni (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) Sara Amadori (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE: Stefania Maci (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) Michele Sala (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) Cinzia Spinzi (Università degli Studi di Bergamo) Eleonora Federici (Università Napoli Orientale) José Santaemilia (Universitat de Valencia) http://dinamico.unibg.it/cerlis/page.aspx?p=313

Il convegno “‘Imagine that you see the wretched strangers’. Sir Thomas More, from page to stage”, 2 dicembre, Teatro Beccaria Puntozero (via Calchi Taeggi 20) è organizzato dall’Università Statale di Milano, in collaborazione con Puntozero Teatro e IASEMS. Per partecipare al convegno occorre registrarsi al seguente link: http://www.puntozeroteatro.org/form-prenotazione-immaginat…/. Ecco il programma:

La cfp è disponibile e scaricabile al seguente link: Call for papers_enigma

Due giorni per riflettere sui molti modi in cui narrazione, arte e malattia possono intrecciarsi in un paradigma artistico efficace, che colmi i vuoti terapeutici e ci aiuti a restare umani. Le ali di Icaro, all’Università degli Studi di Milano. In collaborazione con AIA, Altre Modernità e il Centro di Ricerca Coordinato Criminal Hero.  

The Taboo Conference series (TaCo) is an interdisciplinary conference aimed at bringing together scholars of various aspects of taboo in a variety of academic fields. The project was originated at the Department of Interpretation and Translation of the University of Bologna, Italy, where the first edition was held in 2012. The following editions were held every two years in Durham (UK), Barcelona (Spain) and Bertinoro (Italy). For its fifth installment the conference will be held in Rome. We hope you’ll be able to join us next year to discuss all the multifaceted ramifications of taboo in language, culture and communication. For the Organizing Committee, Daniela Guardamagna CFP: In a world that seems continuously to be stretching the line of what is acceptable to the inhabitants of specific linguistic and cultural contexts, this interdisciplinary conference acknowledges the importance of investigating taboos and their reinforcement/breaking in various areas of language, culture, literature and society, and across different cultures. We propose to explore the delicate balance and subtle boundaries between the need for inclusion and respect for different ethnic, religious, sexual  backgrounds – which seem to be at the basis of modern multicultural societies – and a conscious (or unconscious) push towards the breaking of existing taboos, for example for shock value, as in the case of comedy and art. In such contexts, investigation of the linguistic, cultural, social, institutional and personal implications of taboo reinforcement/breaking appears of extreme value. For its 5th edition, the Taboo Conference series will specifically address the intricacies of taboo in language, culture, literature and communication in its various occurrences from the points of view of production, performance, and perception/reception. The subject of taboo in language, culture, literature and communication seems to have become especially relevant in the last few years, in which political correctness at both the institutional and individual level has been seen, on the one hand, as a crucial tool in protecting people from verbal abuse and in preventing the reinforcement of stereotypes and, on the other, as a set of measures and a way of thinking which significantly curtail free speech in many aspects of the public sphere. The 2020 conference seeks to explore the shifting boundaries of the acceptability of taboo in their various incarnations as produced and perceived in today’s multicultural society, from cinema and television, to news, videogames, literature and different kinds of online content. The study of taboo in the past, for example through the medium of literature, is also relevant to the conference. Possible areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to, political orientations and political satire, identity and gender politics, ethnic stereotypes, different kinds of non-normative behaviour, political correctness and the discourse surrounding it, and the debate between real and perceived offense through comedy. We welcome individual proposals or pre-organized panels from different disciplines pertaining – but by no means limited – to the following thematic areas and their intersections in various mediatic forms: Sex and sexuality (e.g. nudity, non-normative sexual practices, pornography) Racism and sexism (e.g. white supremacy, gender discrimination, transphobia) Death and dying (e.g. mortality, ageing, funerals and burials, fatal accidents) Sickness, disability, and deformity Scatology (e.g. excreta/effluvia) Politics (e.g. political corruption, political incorrectness, prejudice, gender discrimination) Religions and blasphemy (rituals, prejudice, afterlife) Addiction Money (greed, graft, exploitation, waste, extravagance, poverty) Changing social attitudes towards violence, exploitation and abuse (prostitution, slavery, trafficking, rape, children’s rights) Censorship, reactions to it, and its effects. http://taco2020.grupposymposia.it/

Il seminario dal titolo “La traduzione letteraria: il paratesto”, con un’introduzione della Prof.ssa Sara Laviosa e a cura del Dott. Marco Barletta, avrà luogo il 2 dicembre 2019 dalle ore 14.00 alle ore 16.30 presso la Biblioteca “Gaetano Ricchetti” (Via Sparano, 145 – Bari). In tale occasione, dopo una breve introduzione teorica sul nesso tra paratesto e traduzione letteraria, si svolgerà un’attività di analisi degli elementi paratestuali di alcune opere a cui le/i partecipanti prenderanno parte con l’uso di testi letterari tratti da opere di prosa in traduzione italiana e conservate presso la Biblioteca “G. Ricchetti” di Bari. Il seminario, che ha ricevuto il patrocinio dell’Associazione Italiana di Anglistica (AIA), è aperto a tutte/i fino a esaurimento posti (max. 60 posti). Per info, contattare: marco.barletta@uniba.it. https://www.uniba.it/eventi-alluniversita/2019/la-traduzione-letteraria-il-paratesto

Keynote speaker: Professor Suzanne Raitt, College of William & Mary This international conference explores the diversity of connections, inspirations and influences in the work of modernist writer, May Sinclair (1863-1946). It will be held at the University of Nantes (France) on Thursday 18th and Friday 19th June 2020. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, May Sinclair was one of the most successful and widely known of British women novelists (Wilson, 2001). She produced over twenty novels and six collections of short stories and collaborated with many modernist writers and poets, including Ford Madox Ford, Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, H.D. and Richard Aldington. Her life was also exceptionally rich. She took an active part in the women’s suffrage movement and published several pamphlets for women’s rights between 1908 and 1917. In the early 1910s, she got involved in medico-psychological research, and wrote half a dozen psychoanalytical research papers. In 1915, she spent two weeks near the Belgian front with an ambulance unit and her Journal of Impressions in Belgium was one of the first wartime women’s diaries published in Britain (Raitt 2000, 163). She was also the acclaimed author of two major philosophical essays on idealism (1917 and 1922) that led to her election to the Aristotelian Society. Last, she was an influential literary historian and literary critic and wrote several much-quoted articles and prefaces on the stream of consciousness, the Brontë sisters and imagist poetry. Many reviewers and critics have shown that May Sinclair’s modernism was not so much a derivation of other contemporary aesthetics but was rather a product of her idiosyncratic articulation of her many research interests and experiences. In addition, “the interdisciplinarity of Sinclair’s output […] eludes straightforward categorisation and this has arguably contributed to the traditional critical neglect of her writing” (Bowler & Drewery 2016, 1). As May Sinclair is now “gaining critical legitimacy” (Raitt 2016, 23), this conference seeks to explore Sinclair’s texts and contexts and aims to shed light on her place in literary history and on her contribution to “the radical modernist challenge to traditional assumptions about what it means to be human” (Bowler & Drewery 2016, 14). Papers comparing Sinclair and other writers are thus particularly welcome; suggested topics might include (but are not limited to): May Sinclair and her contemporaries: Thomas Hardy, Henry James, H. G. Wells, D. H. Lawrence, Ford Madox Ford, Charlotte Mew, H. D., Richard Aldington, T S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Richardson, Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bowen, Mary Butts, Olive Moore etc. May Sinclair and modernity/the modern/modernism May Sinclair & WW1 writers May Sinclair and Victorian and late nineteenth-century authors: the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, George Meredith etc. May Sinclair and romantic poets: Shelley, Byron etc. May Sinclair and philosophy: Henri Bergson, Bertrand Russell, Baruch Spinoza, T. H. Green, Arthur Schopenhauer, Samuel Butler, Francis Herbert Bradley etc. May Sinclair and psychology: William James, Sigmund Freud, C. G. Jung, Pierre Janet, Melanie Klein, Ella Sharpe, Joan Riviere, Alfred Adler, Charles Myers etc. May Sinclair and mysticism: Evelyn Underhill, the Society for Psychical Research, etc. May Sinclair and first-wave feminism Contemporary reception of May Sinclair May Sinclair and her literary legacy May Sinclair in translation May Sinclair and music May Sinclair and films or TV adaptations Proposals no longer than 350 words, together with a 200-word biography, should be sent to the conference organisers before January 15th, 2020. Conference organisers: Leslie de Bont, Université de Nantes        leslie.debont@univ-nantes.fr Isabelle Brasme, Université de Nîmes      isabellebrasme@gmail.com Florence Marie, Université de Pau            florence.marie@univ-pau.fr CFP: Networking May Sinclair / Les réseaux littéraires de May Sinclair | Université de Nantes, 18th-19th June 2020