jewishmultilingliterature 2012 - international conference Around the Point: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of Jews

Call for Papers: Around the Point: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of Jews
Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, 17th-19th December 2012
Applications are invited to the international conference Around the Point: The Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of Jews, to be held on the Department of Literature of the Jewish People, Faculty of Jewish Studies, Bar-Ilan University, Israel, December 17-19, 2012.
Deadline for submission: May 1st, 2012.
The conference’s objective is to promote multilingual research on Jewish literature, in order to put it on a sound theoretical and historiographical foundation. This advanced discipline is based on the assumption that there are no obvious commonalities among literature, language and nationality, and that the interrelations between them may be changed and reset in every culture, time period or region, and even in a particular work, as a result of, and not prior to, the study thereof.
The presumption is that the Jewish Holy Scriptures, their language and ethos ? the Bible and its successors ? direct the core moves of Jewish literature, both as positions and as oppositions, in fiction as well as non-fiction. The limits of the Jewish literatures and of literatures that respond to the Jewish presence do not coincide with linguistic boundaries. Compared to the five-thousand years of literary history, the two-hundred years of modern nationalism are quite a short period, and even within this period the interrelations between literature, language, and nationality remain complex and open in most cultures. This is surely the case with Jewish literature with its ancient consciousness of one People, which is and has been written, at present as in the past, in different languages, focused around the Hebrew language as the undisputed center.
This multiplicity of languages, in their geographical and historical diversity, and as observed in the fictional works of multi-lingual writers, should serve as the basis for research into this literature. Such an advanced research program requires the kind of foundational work that can be carried out by this conference. In addition, the conference may also signal the beginning of a tradition of annual or bi-annual conferences centering on the above-mentioned subject, and lay down the foundations for an international research association.
Main domains and subjects:
The Languages of Hebrew Literature (Non Hebrew Texts in Hebrew Literature)
Yiddish (New and Old)
Ladino
Languages of the Islamic Counties
Ancient Languages (Aramaic, Greek, Latin)
Slavic Languages
Germanic and Romance Languages (French, German, Italian, English, etc.)
Theory and Historiography
Cultures ? Multi-disciplinary
Theatre and Cinema
Conference secretariat: Dr Anat Aderet, Dr Moshe Shimony, telephone: +972-3-5318630.
Email: multi.ling.jewish.literature-AT-gmail.com.
Website:https://sites.google.com/site/jewishmultilingliter...