ACLA 2006 Annual Meeting: The Human and Its Others

Studies of exile that focus on homelessness as the impetus for the émigré’s scholarship neglect two key aspects. First, this tendency has resulted in overlooking the significance of what Bruce Robbins calls the “situatedness-in-displacement.” Secondly, the interest in the epistemological value of exile has foregrounded its value for Western scholarship and neglected the bearing of émigrés in the non-Western world. In an effort to reevaluate the link between exile, Otherness, and critical consciousness in view of these considerations, this seminar seeks to examine the ways in which intellectual emigrants engage with their new surroundings. The first panel critically re-examines the question of exile vis-à-vis Erich Auerbach and Leo Spitzer and their crucial role in the formation of Comparative Literature. The second panel raises questions concerning exile, language, and memory with regards to Rifa’al-Tahtawi, Eva Hoffman, Adam Zagajewski and Salman Rushdie.

Friday, March 24

Kader Konuk, University of Michigan
“Turkish Modernism and Jewish-German Exile: The Case of Erich Auerbach”
Anna Guillemin, Princeton University
“’Islands of Style’: Romanistics, Art History, and Premonitions of Exile”
Corine Tachtiris, University of Michigan
“Mimesis, Root Books, and Foundational Myths: A Glissantian Re-evaluation of Exilic Consciousness”

Saturday, March 25

Burcu Gursel, University of Pennsylvania
“The Import of Exile: Rifa’a al-Tahtawi’s Stay in Paris”
Johannes Evelein, Trinity College
“Double Vision-Exile, Language, and Meaning in Eva Hoffman’s ‘Lost in Translation’”
Maria-Sabina Alexandru, University of East Anglia, Norwich
“Nomadic Locations and Salman Rushdie’s Criticism of Power”
Karen Bishop, UC Santa Barbara / École Normale Supérieure, Paris
“Still-Life: The Anti-Nostalgia of Adam Zagajewski”