The annual 2018 boundary 2 conference from November 1-3 at University of Pittsburgh is on the subject of “Does Attention to Language Matter?”
Philology, criticism, and translation are three techniques that reveal the constant importance of language to all forms of humanistic activity and artistic creativity. This conference is a reminder of the risks that come from forgetting the realities of language and an important reminder of these disciplines’ vital role in regulating the relation between meaning and word, between power and value.
The event schedule is listed below. Events are free to the public and in the Cathedral of Learning, Room 501. Nuruddin Farah’s talk on November 1st will be at City of Asylum and is free with an online RSVP.
November 1
7:00 PM Nuruddin Farah, reading and Q&A at City of Asylum
November 2
1:00 PM Jeffrey Sacks (UC Riverside), “The Philological Thesis: Language Without Ends”
2:00 PM Anita Starosta (Penn State University), “We Are All Migrants! / Migrants Go Home!”
3:00 PM David Golumbia (Virginia Commonwealth University), “The Deconstruction of Philology”
November 3
10:00 AM Leah Feldman (University of Chicago), “Embodying Philology: Theater Adaptation in Post-Soviet Central Asia”
11:00 AM Annette Lienau (Harvard University), “Between Pride and Scorn: The Conceptual Limits of the ‘Arabophone’ and Its Challenge to (post)-Orientalist Philologies”
2:00 PM Howard Eiland (MIT), “No Getting Around It”
3:00 PM Jonathan Arac (University of Pittsburgh), “Ways of Working with Language”
4:00 PM Susan Gillespie (Bard College), “The Possibility of Translation”
