Palermo (Italy), 18-21 September 2024

europe.americasinfo2024@gmail.com

 CALL FOR PAPERS

In recent years, historians and translation scholars have progressively refined and intertwined their respective methods and approaches. The linguistic relationships that Europeans established with indigenous people in America cannot be compared with the translations between European languages; in the former case there were asymmetrical relations with people who did not possess a common conceptual framework such as that which had formed in Europe. As a consequence, European people believed that their duty was to explain rather than translate their ideas to local populations, and in some cases the transfer of ideas became an instrument for the colonization of indigenous people. But this is only one aspect of the transfer of European ideas in America. In general, Europeans had to adapt their ideas in the new context in which they lived, independently of their relationships with local populations. Just as the plants that the Europeans brought in America had to adapt to the new climates found there, so too were their ideas transplanted into the new American cultural climate, transforming themselves and taking new shapes.

Though translations are our central concern, we also call attention to the importance of the transplantation of ideas and institutions between Old and New World via the same language. For example, an economic instrument such as the censo consignativo, which was widely used in Renaissance Europe, was transplanted in the Mexican economic environment and conditioned its development. Concepts and abstract ideas were transplanted from the Old to the New World in French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and other languages, tracing cultural paths which deserve to be examined in their specificity.

As the heterogeneous populations that had moved to America acquired new identities, the displacement of concepts, as it has been described, became ever more articulated. From the Eighteenth century onwards, the stabilization of European languages in the Americas opened up a new phase, thanks also to the work done by European exiles and scholars who moved to the New World. One need only think of the role German scholars played in the university culture of the United States between Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries. The general process of transplantation of European Ideas in the Americas has led to a synchronization of the history of the Old and New Continents and to the creation of what we call Western history.

 Main thematic areas:

1. The Concept of Time in History and Translation
2. Political Ideas: Intellectual History and Forms of Rule 

3. Economic Ideas: Authors, Translations, Institutions
4. Religious and Cultural Encounters: Receptions and Misunderstandings
5. Literature and Society: From Old to New Media.

Scientific Committee: Karen Bennett (Nova University Lisbon), Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, Cambridge), Valentina Favarò (University of Palermo), Javier Fernández Sebastián (University of the Basque Country, Bilbao), Umberto Gentiloni (Sapienza University of Rome), María Luz González Mezquita (National University of Mar del Plata), Helge Jordheim (University of Oslo), Gioacchino Lavanco (University of Palermo), Glory Liu (Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore), Manfredi Merluzzi (Roma Tre University), Daniele Monticelli (University of Tallinn), Antonio Álvarez Ossorio Alvariño (Autonomous University of Madrid), Maria Lúcia Pallares-Burke (Centre of Latin America Studies, Cambridge), Elías José Palti (National University of Buenos Aires), Chris Rundle (University of Bologna), Keith Tribe (University of Tartu).

Scientific director: Luigi Alonzi (University of Palermo).

Organizing Committee: Luigi Alonzi (University of Palermo), Gioacchino Lavanco (University of Palermo), Alessia Ceccarelli – director (Sapienza University of Rome), Blythe Alice Raviola (University of Milan).

Organizing Secretary: Elena Amerio (Autonomous University of Madrid), Juanita Jaramillo Rozo (Sapienza University of Rome).