‘Found in Translation’ was a one-day interdisciplinary conference held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts on the 30 May. The conference was aimed at postgraduate students from institutions within the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts in Southeast England, more commonly known as CHASE. It was a unique event in that it was the first of its kind, celebrating the newly formed partnership between the Universities of Kent, Sussex, East Anglia and Essex, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Goldsmiths College and The Open University. In 2013 CHASE was awarded 10 million pounds to support postgraduate students. The money will be spent over a five-year period and will fund 375 postgraduate students. In September 2014 the first round of students holding CHASE scholarships will begin or continue their studies at one of these 7 universities.
The Organising Committee was formed of two MA students from the School of English at the University of Kent (Frances Reading and James Robinson) and four PhD students from the University of Sussex (Camilla Bostock, Laura Fox Gill, Kiron Ward and Dominic Walker). The well-attended conference was funded by the Schools of English at both institutions and provided an excellent opportunity to network with academics and students from across the consortium. Delegates also attended from the University of Cambridge, University College London, King’s College London and Sheffield Hallam.
The day consisted of 6 intriguing three-person panels and a keynote speaker, Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvalán. Papers included ‘Translation of African Art: The Use of Translation Studies as a Methodology for the Reception of African Art in Imperial Germany’, ‘The Translated Self’ and ‘”Blood and Thunder”: The Heavy Metal Afterlife of Moby-Dick’. Topics spanned disciplines, genres, cultures and continents, concluding with Novillo-Corvalán’s paper, ‘Translation à la Pierre Menard: From Shakespeare to Beckett’. For more details on the papers and the speakers please visit the website.
The conference created a platform for intellectual exchange, exhibited by the fascinating dialogues that formed between the speakers and the audience, which continued into the evening at the ICA’s bar. The conference was extremely successful and the organisers all hope that this is just the first of many CHASE postgraduate conferences that will emerge from this new partnership.