NEWS and UPDATES:

9/21/08  More Press!

9/19/2008  Program available for download

Click HERE for the complete symposium program.  

Also, check out Honolulu Weekly's coverage of our event:

http://honoluluweekly.com/entertainment/2008/09/into-the-woods/

9/16/2008  Poster -- spread the word!

Click here to download flier

9/1/2008 Preliminary Events, Sept. 15-18

The CTLCS Research Cluster has planned some movie showings and a group discussion of selected readings in preparation for the symposium.  For details, click on the "event calendar" link on the sidebar.

8/29/2008  New Announcement

“Folktales and Fairy Tales: Translation, Colonialism, and Cinema” September 23-26, 2008A

7/17/2008  Reading List Online

Click the "download readings here" link on the sidebar --
to access a list of readings our main speakers have chosen as helpful background and supplementary material to their presentations.

5/7/2008  First Call for Participants

An International Symposium at the University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
“Folktales and Fairy Tales: Translation, Colonialism, and Cinema”
September 23-26, 2008
UHM Organizers: Cristina Bacchilega, Noenoe Silva, Vilsoni Hereniko

Stories are central to who we are as human beings; and it is often through apparently simple and authorless stories that we learn that words (trans)form us. In the nineteenth century, folktales were relegated to the premodern past and fairy tales to the nursery. However, these “traditional” narratives continue to exercise their powers on us in contemporary culture in ways that escape those confines, as very different but globally popular films such as Whale Rider and Pan’s Labyrinth exemplify.

“Folktales and Fairy Tales: Translation, Colonialism, and Cinema,” an international four-day symposium at UH-Manoa, proposes to explore the significance of folk and fairy tales within the contemporary world in a manner that is interdisciplinary and attentive to our location in the Pacific. Thus, this symposium seeks to stimulate conversations among scholars of contemporary culture by discussing social practices—translation and colonialism—that have, in different ways, shaped the history of both folktales and fairy tales, and by focusing on the role of cinema—from Disney to indigenous films—in the production and reception of magic and wonder today.

Featured presenters will include: Donald Haase (Wayne State University), Vilsoni Hereniko (Center for Pacific Island Studies, UHM), Sadhana Naithani (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Noenoe Silva (Political Science and Hawaiian Language, UHM),
Wazíyatawin (University of Victoria, B.C.), Steven E. Winduo (University of Papua New Guinea), and Jack Zipes (University of Minnesota).

Panelists leading discussions include: Heather Diamond, Wimal Dissanayake, ku‘ualoha ho‘omanawanui, Maria Kaliambou, S. Shankar, Caroline Sinavaiana, Robert Sullivan, Houston Wood, and John Zuern.

The symposium is structured around afternoon and evening lectures as well as afternoon working sessions that will include UHM faculty and graduate students actively engaged in studying folk/fairy tales and/or problems of history, colonialism and cinematic representation. We hope to have a core of 50 some participants committing to the working sessions. These working sessions will begin with brief comments by scholars in various fields, followed by an open discussion amongst gathered participants.

The organizers invite scholars (faculty and graduate students) interested in these topics and issues, and ready to commit to attending the four-day symposium to write in with a brief paragraph indicating desire to participate and the nature of their interest in translation. Please write to:
folkandfairytalesUHM@gmail.com by June 15, 2008.

A preliminary program and further information about speakers is available on this website.

Participation in and attendance at the Symposium as a whole will be free. The evening events will be free and open to the public.

These events are sponsored by the UHM English Department, co-sponsored by the UHM Center for Pacific Islands Studies, the Center for South Asian Studies, the Indigenous Politics Program in Political Science, and Pacific Islands Development Program. To date it is also supported by UHM Comparativism and Translation in Literary and Cultural Studies (CTLCS) Research Cluster, East-Asian Languages and Literatures, EWC-UH International Cultural Studies Program, History, Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures, Languages and Literatures of Europe and the Americas, Political Science, and Women’s Studies.

The symposium is made possible thanks to the generous support of the following at the University of Hawai‘i-Mānoa: UH Endowment for Humanites Conference Program, Diversity and Equity Initiative, University Research Council-UHM, and Distinguished Lecture Series; the UHM Center for Pacific Islands Studies, Center for South Asian Studies, Pacific Islands Development Program, College of LLL, and Department of English.

We look forward to hearing back from interested colleagues and students!