Liberating Voices: Negotiating the Challenges of Representing the "Other"
Location
Massey Board Room
Presentation Type
Panel Discussion
Start Date
16-9-2011 12:00 PM
Description
Each panelist will discuss a particular example of the challenge of recovering and translating the experience of an “other” to an audience. Dr. Ecke will discuss the poetic representation of women in Old English literature and explore the ways in which modern female poets and scholars have begun to rework the feminine through their translations and adaptations; he will also argue that male poets from Old English literature were concerned with giving voice to the feminine experience, noting the importance of translating and transmitting this part of our literary heritage. Dr. Sisson will discuss 19th-century British novels that illustrate women with particular sets of experiences and qualities who are able to identify with and translate to others the experiences of the working class – and, in the process, to point to the possibility of female liberation through their public voices. These novels also question the idea of the “other” being liberated through these women’s efforts, leading to complex ideas about effectuality and honest recognition of inadvertent damage that may be inflicted. Finally, Dr. Cox will discuss her current ethnographic fieldwork as a means of “liberating voices” among Native Americans, using her experiences in collecting the life stories of Lakota elders on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. In doing so, she will explore the myriad difficulties that attend the work of any responsible researcher, who must make every effort to minimize (if not erase) the presence of cultural biases in the collection and interpretation of oral history data.
Recommended Citation
Cox, Cynthia; Ecke, Jeremy; and Sisson, Annette PhD, "Liberating Voices: Negotiating the Challenges of Representing the "Other"" (2011). Humanities Symposium. 17.
https://repository.belmont.edu/humanities_symposium/2011/2011/17
Liberating Voices: Negotiating the Challenges of Representing the "Other"
Massey Board Room
Each panelist will discuss a particular example of the challenge of recovering and translating the experience of an “other” to an audience. Dr. Ecke will discuss the poetic representation of women in Old English literature and explore the ways in which modern female poets and scholars have begun to rework the feminine through their translations and adaptations; he will also argue that male poets from Old English literature were concerned with giving voice to the feminine experience, noting the importance of translating and transmitting this part of our literary heritage. Dr. Sisson will discuss 19th-century British novels that illustrate women with particular sets of experiences and qualities who are able to identify with and translate to others the experiences of the working class – and, in the process, to point to the possibility of female liberation through their public voices. These novels also question the idea of the “other” being liberated through these women’s efforts, leading to complex ideas about effectuality and honest recognition of inadvertent damage that may be inflicted. Finally, Dr. Cox will discuss her current ethnographic fieldwork as a means of “liberating voices” among Native Americans, using her experiences in collecting the life stories of Lakota elders on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. In doing so, she will explore the myriad difficulties that attend the work of any responsible researcher, who must make every effort to minimize (if not erase) the presence of cultural biases in the collection and interpretation of oral history data.
Comments
Convo: AL