EventS

Workshop 1 

Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures and Languages

Experiences Connected to Empires and Missions (1500-1700)

RoME 2024

July, 10th-12th, 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS

Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures and Languages

Experiences Connected to Empires and Missions (1500-1700)

Rome, July 10-12, 2024

This exploratory workshop has its roots in the PRIN 2022 (Projects of Relevant National Interest) “Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures and Languages: Experiences from the Missions connected to the Portuguese Empire (1540-1700)” (MAT), selected by the Ministry of University and Research (MUR, Italian Republic) and funded by the European Union (NextGenerationEU). This project combines the methods of history with those of linguistics and translation studies to advance an interdisciplinary analysis of the processes of cultural (mis)communication and (mis)translation among communities across the Portuguese Empire and Padroado (Royal Patronage) between 1540 and 1700. 

MAT develops two closely related research foci: 1. Collecting, cataloging and making available in open access the largest possible documentation of forgotten primary sources that attest to the first cultural and linguistic contacts between European languages and Amerindian, African and Asian languages, in particular, but non exclusively, in the spaces of the missions connected to the Portuguese Empire; and 2. Developing a comparative analysis of Sub-Saharan Africa and China from c. 1500 to c. 1700, as two paradigmatic case studies with respect to linguistic and cultural interactions, involving missionaries, local communities, merchants, imperial agents and travelers.

For more complete information about the MAT project see: https://sites.google.com/uniroma1.it/mapping-translating-prin22-cnr/ 

The goal of this first exploratory workshop is to place these two foci in the broader possible transdisciplinary research perspectives to compare, contextualize, connect, and conceptualize them in both diachronic and synchronic cultural contexts, within the other areas encompassed or connected to the Portuguese Empire (such as Brasil, India, Tonkin and Cochinchina, the Spice Islands, and Japan), and bordering it, such as Islamic Africa, Ethiopia, Persia, the Mughal Empire, Islamic Southeast Asia, and the territories encompassed by the Spanish Empire, in the period 1500-1700. 

We especially welcome papers or panels dealing with (but not limited to):

• Bilingual / trilingual / multilingual and metalinguistic works, analyzed from cultural and connected history perspectives; 

• Travel reports, letters and maps that result from or speak of multilingual and translational practices in non-European contexts;

• Linguistic and translational practices in religious proselytism and sharing (e.g. Christianity, Islam and Buddhism) from a comparative perspective;

• Agents and institutions of cultural and linguistic translation and their strategies, tools, and goals;

• Multilingual practices (trade, translation, teaching) within multilingual communities and societies;

• Exchange and/or transfer of scientific and technological knowledge as forms of linguistic and translational practices;

• Visual arts and the representation of linguistic and translational practices.

Proposals

We welcome proposals of individual papers and/or panels. Each paper will be allocated 25 minutes, in sessions with a total time length of one and a half hours. Please send abstracts (up to 250 words) together with a short CV (up to 200 words) for individual papers in one file. Panel proposals should also include an abstract of the panel’s theme (up to 250 words) as well as abstracts of each paper, and CVs of the organizer/s and each panelist, all in one file.

Abstracts and CVs should be sent to: mapping.translating.2024@gmail.com by March 31, 2024. 

For enquiries, please contact Angelo Cattaneo at angelomaria.cattaneo@cnr.it and Simone Celani at simone.celani@uniroma1.it. Presenters will be notified of acceptance no later than April 20, 2024.

The official language of the conference will be English, and all presentations must be in that language. 

A selection of papers could be considered for publication, either in a special issue of a scientific journal or in a volume edited by the organizers, in English, after a peer-review process.

Practical details

The conference will be held on July 10-12, 2024 in the Department of European, American and Intercultural Studies at Sapienza University of Rome and ISEM - Institute of European Mediterranean History of the CNR - National Research Council of Italy and hosted by the Project “Mapping and Translating Spaces, Cultures and Languages: Experiences from the Missions connected to the Portuguese Empire (1540-1700)”. There are no registration fees.