The ‘Behind the looking-glass: ‘Other’-cultures-within’ translating cultures international network will host an interdisciplinary conference, ‘Perspectives from ‘Other’ Cultures Translating Culture’, on 20-22 September, 2013 in collaboration with the Centre for Caribbean Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. This is the network’s final conference and we aim to engage a wide audience of scholars researching ‘other cultures’ from within a range of disciplinary fieldsand contexts which contribute to and/ or are affected by the definition of Britishness and the applicability of a poetics of creolization globally. At the core of our research is a concern with engaging or complicating Caribbean creolization as a poetics and practice that is also of transnational political significance – both in Europe and across the world – when examined and reconfigured as a paradigm of cultural translation for interconnected discourses.

Within the overarching theme of ‘translating Cultures’, we are concerned to address translation literally, culturally and ontologically. Our particular concern with the large question of ‘other cultures’ identified within our various practices aims to help us to consider not only the ways in which those cultures translate cultures, but also the new zones of cultural contacts that they open (albeit with tensions) that position us within a global ‘discomfort zone’ even as they offer representations of transnational interconnectedness, casting national identities within a shared globalization.  Among the key themes of the conference are:questions of ‘signifying minority’ narratives and politics, the role of women and issues of gender and sexuality, race, ethnicity and class politics that their differential histories and narratives raise, pan-European politics and the concerns of identity relating to ‘other’ cultures, communities and subjects within cultures, and their representation in artistic, literary and performance texts.

We encourage Proposals for papers and panels. Suggestions include:

• translational spaces: the >Caribbean outside/ in the metropolis

• translations within a creolised diasporic imaginary

• intercultural translation: the UK, Europe and its diasporic Creole ‘others’

• Caribbean poetics: translation and the politics/ poetics of ‘Relation’

• teaching in translation and/or teaching as translation: pedagogy and the challenges of multicultural and intercultural politics and discourses

The deadline for proposals is 12 July 2013.

For papers /panels, please submit title, a 300-word abstract, and short (75 words) bio.

All papers must represent new work, previously unpublished. Please include your full name, institutional affiliation, title, phone number and email address with your proposal. We strongly encourage panel proposals. Your panel proposal should include a detailed abstract for each paper, a designated chair, and a short statement as to why the submissions should be considered as a panel rather than as individual presentations.

Performance artists are also encouraged to submit proposals for music, film and/or theatre presentations.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words (for papers of 20 minutes maximum) should be emailed to:

The Conference Committee translatingcultures@gold.ac.uk

The conference will be held at Goldsmiths, University of London and is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).  Booking information will be posted here from mid-July 2013.

We acknowledge with thanks artwork by artist, Zoe Holloway.