CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS
"Reading Old English to Filth": Queer Approaches to Translation
Morgan, Spicer, Meyer, Headley— sure, there have been queer translators of Old English before, but how could the intersections of queer theory with linguistics, codicology, & translation praxis reveal new facets & aspects of texts we’ve all come to know? Erik Wade explored the implications of academic attempts to “straighten up” these hoary traditions of interpretation. Such efforts undoubtedly influence how translations of Old English have sounded & how they have attracted new audiences.
Yet this is a contest that is far from over — and this generation of scholars have a stake in the future of this field. So the editors of this project would like to invite contributors to help answer these & other questions: How can we translate beyond the constraints of an anachronistic heteronormative “fidelity”? How do we re-open the fields of language to a state of polymorphous perversity? What could we learn by honoring our sensuous connection to the text, to finger each other in the moment of contact. How may we be receptive to a text as a bædling?
We encourage contributions that dance on the rift between philological & poetic, scholarly & creative, historicized & anachronistic, Anglophone or otherwise — for we are here to travesty the binaries that keep these endeavors separated. Sometimes serious play is what’s required to remind us that the past is not univocal and not driven towards only one set of genital desires. Sometimes one has to get shady to see these texts contain shades of many voices & registers, facets of language effaced by dominant discourses.
We would like to encourage radical & challenging translations of short Old English works—poetry, prose, or in-between—accompanied by introductory/explanatory essays of roughly 5 pages each, preferably in a voice that bridges the personal & scholarly. We especially encourage & welcome scholars of diverse identity & experience, in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, & academic position. Translations do not all have to be in standard American Modern English by any means.
Contributors should contact Ophelia Eryn Hostetter (she/her) (akh58@camden.rutgers.edu) or Denis Ferhatović (he/him) (ferhato@conncoll.edu) with questions & suggestions. We’d like to have a book proposal to shop by summer’s end, so we’d like a more-or-less complete contributor list to share.