CFP: "Global Language, Local Cultures," Annual Meeting, American Comparative Literature Association, Harvard University, March 26-29, 2009.

From the early spreading of languages such as Greek, Chinese, Latin, and Arabic across broad regions to the present age of globalization, local literary cultures have long had to interact with hegemonic languages and literatures of foreign origin. As Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett argued in his book Comparative Literature as early as 1886, world literature first arose in antiquity long before the rise of the individual national literatures. The theme of “Global languages, local cultures” can offer avenues into many lines of inquiry: explorations of “minor literatures”; regionalism and transregional relations; empires and postcolonial situations; interactions of literature with religious and philosophical traditions; classical literatures and modern offshoots or responses; “standard” languages, creoles, and vernaculars; movements of genres into new cultural spaces; translation theory and practice; relations of literature, music, film, and other arts. The ACLA’s annual conferences have a unique structure in which most papers are grouped into 9-12 person seminars that meet two hours per day, for the three days of the conference, in order to foster discussion. Some 8-person seminars meet the first two days of the conference. Previous conference programs that show this structure are available at the ACLA website. The conference will also include plenary sessions, workshops, a business meeting, a banquet, and other events on and off the Harvard campus. We invite proposals for seminars as well as individual paper proposals. Seminar Proposal Deadline: September 15, 2008 Paper Proposal Deadline: November 1, 2008 Visit the conference homepage here: http://www.acla.org/acla2009/.