Undercurrents: Challenging the Mainstream

Research units Lilith, CIRTI, and CEREP will be organizing the 2022 conference of the Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education (BAAHE).

 

Call for Papers  |   Keynote Speakers   |   Programme   |  Abstracts

Registration   |  Travelling to Liège   |   Contact   |   Committee

Call for Papers

An “undercurrent” literally refers to a stream that runs beneath the surface of a body of water and, figuratively, the term has come to signify concealed tendencies and influences that defy dominant currents of thought. Whilst such subversiveness can be a welcome challenge to the intellectual and ideological status quo, the word “undercurrent” also regularly collocates with items that lend it a negative connotation – one thinks, for example, of “undercurrents of anxiety” or “undercurrents of concern,” phrases that both point to the suppressed nature of a hidden threat. These different associations – subsurface currents, movements that defy conventions, and concealed dangers – aptly capture how equally compelling and perilous it can be to “challenge the mainstream,” including in academia. This conference seeks to explore undercurrents in their different guises in the disciplines of English linguistics, literary criticism, and translation studies.

In the field of linguistics, we welcome submissions that challenge existing frameworks and propose case studies that deal with puzzling analytical, theoretical, or methodological issues. We are looking for innovative research and studies that deal with under-researched or neglected topics in English linguistics, both synchronic and diachronic.

In literary studies, we encourage proposals focusing on past and present challenges to mainstream literary and/or critical movements. Either through theoretical presentations or case studies, presentations may reflect on topics that include, but are not limited to, the following questions:

- How do newly established or emerging critical movements – e.g., environmental studies or fat studies – challenge (or perpetuate) dominant modes of thought, and what are the epistemological and methodological implications of such paradigm shifts?
- Is “going mainstream” a challenge in itself? In the past, to what extent did the institutionalization of artistic or critical movements lead to their decline? From a contemporary perspective, are (by now well-established) fields such as postcolonial studies or gender studies in danger of reproducing orthodoxies rather than advancing knowledge?
- How does the new relate to the traditional in literary studies, and vice-versa? This question may be examined through the analysis of contemporary or older literary works that experiment with form, that explore novel or original topics, that offer fresh approaches to conventional themes or, conversely, that challenge fashionable trends and promote more traditional worldviews.

The field of translation studies has undergone a series of “turns” since its inclusion into academia in the 1970s: the pragmatic (linguistic) turn, the cultural turn, the postcolonial turn, the empirical turn, the globalization turn, etc. These various trends have channelled translation studies into a sort of braided stream and defined it as an autonomous and highly cross-disciplinary scholarly field away from the backwater in the academy it used to be. The latest “turns,” such as the technological turn or the ecological turn, reflect the main, all-encompassing trends to be found in most areas of research. But do these recent developments display particular salient features within translation studies? How do these and other emerging trends run counter to previous theoretical discourses? Do they represent branching streams in a continuous flow or are they epistemological undercurrents generating new and challenging conceptual reframing? How do translation or interpreting practice(s) and theories overlap to anticipate and stimulate new directions?

In order to explore and foresee emerging “turns” in translation studies, we encourage papers tackling any topics related to the latest technological and paradigmatic developments and shifts (new technologies and automated translation, big data and corpus as CAT tools, ecology and sustainable translation practices, interspecies translation, inclusive translation, new translation economies such as localization or fan translation, translation in a time of global shifts of power…)  or related to new, redefining contours of the discipline itself, or “metaturns” (translation studies, translatology, adaptation studies, mediation studies…). 
 

The CFP has now closed. A PDF version is still available here.

Keynote Speakers

Kristin Davidse (KU Leuven, Belgium)

Douglas Robinson (Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China)

Programme

The programme is also available in PDF version.

 

9.30-9.50 Registration

Venue: Foyer, ground floor of building L3, Rue de Pitteurs, 20, 4020 Liège

 

9.50–10.00 Welcome and opening remarks (room L3/0/54)

 

10.00–11.00 KEYNOTE SESSION 1 (room L3/0/54)

Chair: Lieselotte Brems (ULiège)

• Kristin Davidse (KU Leuven), “Undermining or enabling climate action with language”

11.00–11.30 Coffee break (Foyer, building L3)

11.30–13.00 PANEL SESSIONS 1

 

PANEL SESSION 1A (room L3/0/54)

Chair: An Van linden (ULiège)

• Wout Van Praet (UCLouvain), “Insubordinate which: Ill-behaved pronoun or new-found conjunction?”
• Faye Troughton (UMons) and Lobke Ghesquière (UMons), “‘I never realized how controversial it was’: On the embedded exclamative”
• Jiqiang (Lucas) Lu (KU Leuven), “Interpersonal undercurrents conveyed by are you sure, do you think, is there a chance in interrogatives”

 
PANEL SESSION 1B (room L3/0/57)

Chair: Daria Tunca (ULiège)

• Yasmine Ait Abbou (ULiège), “On liminality and existences outside the binary in Akwaeke Emezi’s Freshwater”
• Sandy Reckmans (ULiège), “North and South: Margaret Hale’s dual identity and the transitioning image of the Victorian mother”
• Lena Bisinger (Berliner Schulsystem), “Black British theatre practice as a source of renewal: Kwame Kwei-Armah’s Elmina’s Kitchen in postcolonial studies and the foreign language classroom”

13.00–13.45 Lunch (Staff room, building L5, rue de Pitteurs, 18, 4020 Liège)

 

13.45–14.30 BAAHE Annual General Meeting (Auditorium L3/0/13A)

14.30–16.00 PANEL SESSIONS 2

 

PANEL SESSION 2A (Auditorium L3/0/13A)

Chair: Lobke Ghesquière (UMons)

• An Van linden (ULiège) and Dana Louagie (ULiège and FNRS), “Noun incorporation in present-day English: A corpus-based approach”
• Jesse Marion (UMons), “Three’s a charm: On negational modification as a third type of quantity modification of English all and French tout”
• Damien Hansen (ULiège), “Reappropriating translation technologies: Leveraging translator corpora for individual and creative uses”

 
PANEL SESSION 2B (room L3/0/57)

Chair: Lieselotte Brems (ULiège)

• Barbara Dancygier (University of British Columbia) and Lieven Vandelanotte (UNamur and KU Leuven), “Quotation in internet memes and other social media discourse”
• Sylvie De Cock (UCLouvain), “Defying the Q&A format in interviews? Exploring interrogatives in learner interviewee speech”
• Catherine Thewissen (UCLouvain and European School Brussels IV), “The banyan class: Universal design for learning in the English classroom”

16.00–16.30 Coffee break (Foyer, building L3)

16.30–17.30 KEYNOTE SESSION 2 (Auditorium L3/0/13A)

Chair: Marie Herbillon (ULiège)

• Douglas Robinson (Chinese University of Hong Kong), “Diving into the river: The somatic undercurrents of deverbalization”

17.30–18.30 WORKSHOP (room L5/2/5)

Coordinator: Valérie Bada (ULiège)

• Workshop (open to students and conference participants) on the ULiège MA2 students' translation into French of an excerpt from Douglas Robinson (2012), Becoming a Translator: An Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Translation. Third Edition, Routledge (excerpt: "The Shuttle: Experience and Habit,” pp. 61-62). Source text available on request (vbada@uliege.be).

Abstracts

The book of abstracts is available for download here.

Registration

You can register for the conference by filling in this Google form. The deadline is 24 November 2022.

If your registration involves a fee, here is the information needed to make the payment by bank transfer:

 

Travelling to Liège

Liège can easily be reached by train from destinations across Belgium (including Brussels Airport). You can plan your journey to Liège on the SNCB (national railway) website.

The conference will be held in the University of Liège's buildings L3 and L5, which are located at 18/20, rue de Pitteurs, 4020 Liège, in an area known as "Outremeuse."

You can plan your bus journey from Liège Guillemins to rue de Pitteurs on the TEC (public transport) website, or by using tools such as Google Maps. The conference venue is also within walking distance from Guillemins train station (30 minutes).

Contact

Any question about the conference can be sent to baahe2022@uliege.be

Organizing Committee

Valérie Bada
Lieselotte Brems
Marie Herbillon
Daria Tunca
An Van linden