Call for Papers: OSL PhD Day
Registration for the OSL PhD Day opens on April 2nd, 9am VIA THIS LINK
Dear OSL PhDs,
We are excited to announce that the upcoming OSL PhD day will take place in Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit, NU 5A57) on Friday, 13 June 2025.
The day’s theme will be “Crossing Borders.” The program will consist of a keynote lecture by Dr Yasemin Yildiz (UCLA) and two panels, each consisting of fifteen-minute presentations in which OSL PhDs can present their work in progress. The PhD day will close with an interactive workshop on interdisciplinary PhD research, facilitated by Dr Naomi De Ruiter (University of Groningen).
We welcome proposals from OSL PhDs addressing the overarching theme of this year’s PhD day (border crossing) in relation to a broad range of topics, including but not limited to the following:
- Literature, migration and multilingualism;
- Crossing gender borders;
- Beyond the human: ecocriticism, posthumanism and Artificial Intelligence;
- Traveling concepts in interdisciplinary research.
We warmly invite you all to consider presenting either a fully-fledged paper or your work in progress! Please send a 250-word abstract and a short bio to osl@rug.nl by Friday 11 April at the latest.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at osl@rug.nl.
Organizers:
María Isabel Marín Morales (m.i.marin.morales@rug.nl)
Marit van de Warenburg (m.b.vandewarenburg@uu.nl)
Britt Corporaal (b.corporaal@student.rug.nl)
Keynote speaker’s bio
Yasemin Yildiz is Associate Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. A specialist in 20th and 21st century German literature and culture, she is the author of the award-winning monograph Beyond the Mother Tongue: The Postmonolingual Condition (2012) as well as of essays on multilingualism, migration, Holocaust testimonies, memory activism, and discourses on Islam and gender in Europe. She has also translated Turkish-German literature into English. Her most recent publication is the special issue, co-edited with Bettina Brandt, of Studies in 20th and 21st Century Literature on the topic “translating multilingualism.” Likewise co-edited with Bettina Brandt, the 2022 volume Tales that Touch: Migration, Translation, and Temporality in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century German Literature and Culture showcases the immense impact of Leslie Adelson’s work and mentoring. A recipient of the 2016 DAAD Prize for Distinguished Scholarship in German and European Studies for her work to date, Yildiz is currently writing a book, co-authored with Michael Rothberg, on immigrant engagements with Holocaust memory in Germany.
Keynote abstract
Writing for Translation: A Practice between Border-Crossing and Containment
Migration creates cultural products that defy easy categorization yet are often shoehorned into narrow categories. What borders do they cross and by what borders are they contained? By addressing both of these questions simultaneously and in relation to each other, we can gain a better understanding of the larger field in which such works operate and which inflect their very conditions of possibility. In this talk, and through the case of Turkish-German author Aras Ören, I turn specifically to writing for translation as such a migration-engendered practice whose consideration allows for insights into broader cultural dynamics. Istanbul-born Ören (b. 1939), who settled in West-Berlin in 1969, had his literary breakthrough in Germany with his epic poem Was will Niyazi in der Naunynstrasse [What Does Niyazi Want in Naunyn Street] (1973) a work about migration composed in Turkish in Berlin but published first in German translation. In fact, Ören wrote almost his entire oeuvre in Turkish, yet came to be incorporated into German literature via the formula of “writing for translation.” While this appears to be a striking case of the institutional inclusion of linguistic border-crossing, a closer look reveals a series of containments to which his work, that of other migrant authors, as well as the practice itself have been subject. As I will show, the notion of writing for translation counterintuitively becomes a means of closing off rather than opening up categories, even as the practice itself challenges them. Zooming in and out of texts and contexts, the talk argues for a multi-scalar methodology in order to account for both sides of this dynamic and ultimately render a textured picture of the cultural impact of migration under conditions of its disavowal.
Credits
It will be possible to obtain 1EC either by giving a presentation during the PhD Day, or by attending the event and submitting a reflection (approximately 1000 words) to osl@rug.nl by July 4th, end of day. The reflection should primarily engage with Prof. Yildiz’s keynote lecture, and with the readings that will be shared beforehand with all registered participants.
