[Annette Damayanti Lienau]

This panel seeks papers that engage with questions, concepts, and histories of the “vernacular” or “vernacularization” beyond Europhone languages and contexts.

Submissions that address one or more of the following questions are encouraged.  How might we explore (and move beyond) the insufficiencies of Europhone terms —such as the “vernacular”—to frame non-Europhone literatures and literary histories across comparative contexts?  If we suspend (or provisionally displace) Europhone terms of analysis as conceptual categories, what alternatives emerge in their stead, arising from other (non-Europhone) languages and source materials?  In the absence of alternatives or equivalents, what remains at stake (or at play) in the “space” of untranslatable concepts?  How do we manage the risks of anachronism, the politics of incommensurability, the challenge of untranslatability when Europhone terms (“vernacular”/”vernacularization”) are applied to non-Europhone texts and contexts?

Please send by email: 250-300 word abstracts with “MLA 2017” in subject line by March 24th, 2016 to Annette Damayanti Lienau (alienau@complit.umass.edu).

Guaranteed Panel Sponsored by the CLCS 20th and 21st Century Forum Executive Committee.

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