About this event:
Dr Gallien’s presentation focuses on a specific literary corpus, namely the poetry and prose of multilingual writers, who navigate between English, Arabic, in its classical and vernacular forms, and other languages of translation. It then challenges the default assumption that these writers publish in English and add elements of their Arabic mother tongue in their texts. Building on Abdelkébir Khatibi’s statement that ‘1. We only ever speak one language and 2. We never speak only one language’ and Jacques Derrida’s reflections in Monolingualism of the Other, her talk thinks through the implications of considering English not as a language welcoming in its midst other tongues, but as a born-multilingual and born-heterolingual language.
Rather than periodically hybridizing monolithic entities (be they script, language, or representation), heterolingual practices of writing showcase politically and aesthetically charged questions, such as to whom does a language belong and who has the right to define what a language is, what it should look like, how it should be spoken and written?
The seminar will be online and you will receive the Zoom link a day before the event.
Dr Claire Gallien biography:
Claire Gallien is a Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Montpellier 3. She has also had a lifelong engagement with Arabic languages and literatures. Her research interests are anchored in the critical study of orientalist discourse, postcolonial, comparative, and world literatures and theories, as well as in translation studies and decolonial theory and practices. She is currently working on two book projects – a monograph titled From Corpus to Canon: Eastern Literary Traditions and Orientalist Reconfigurations in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain and a co-edited volume on Islam and New Directions in World Literature, contracted with Edinburgh UP. She has published numerous chapters in collective books and articles in international journals including Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and Translation Studies. She also guest-edited a special issue on Refugee Literature for Journal of Postcolonial Writing and on contemporary Anglo-Arab literature for Commonwealth Essays and Studies.
Dr Claire Gallien Bio:
Claire Gallien is a Senior Lecturer in English Studies at the University of Montpellier 3. She has also had a lifelong engagement with Arabic languages and literatures. Her research interests are anchored in the critical study of orientalist discourse, postcolonial, comparative, and world literatures and theories, as well as in translation studies and decolonial theory and practices. She is currently working on two book projects – a monograph titled From Corpus to Canon: Eastern Literary Traditions and Orientalist Reconfigurations in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Britain and a co-edited volume on Islam and New Directions in World Literature, contracted with Edinburgh UP. She has published numerous chapters in collective books and articles in international journals including Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, and Translation Studies. She also guest-edited a special issue on Refugee Literature for Journal of Postcolonial Writing and on contemporary Anglo-Arab literature for Commonwealth Essays and Studies.
Tickets for this event available on Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.ie/e/dr-claire-gallien-in-conversation-with-dr-rita-sakr-tickets-126418313579