Title: “The Only Game in Town: Early Buddhist Translations Into Chinese”

The talk examines the earliest translations of Buddhist doctrine into Chinese, apparently by teams of translators working with secondhand sources. These texts show attention to the contexts of reception— in other words the cultural situation into which Buddhist ideas would be integrated. It is cohosted by Comparative Literature and the Willson Center at UGA. For the Willson Center's overview of Dr. Saussy's work, click here.

Haun Saussy is University Professor at the University of Chicago, teaching in the departments of comparative literature and East Asian languages as well as the Committee on Social Thought. His work uses a comparative perspective to interrogate literary texts from premodern China, ancient Greece and Rome, and modern Europe, with a particular leaning toward poetry and poetics. His books include The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic (1993), Great Walls of Discourse (2001), The Ethnography of Rhythm (2016), and edited collections such as Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization (2006), The Chinese Written Character as a Medium of Poetry: A Critical Edition (2008), and the recent translation of writings by the sixteenth-century Chinese iconoclast Li Zhi, A Book to Burn and a Book to Keep (Hidden) (with Rivi Handler-Spitz and Pauline Lee, 2016). Other activities of his include participating in the design of public artworks with Mel Chin and co-editing the journals CLEAR and Critical Inquiry.

Dr. Ben Frey, Assistant Professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina, will give a talk titled ""Negotiating with Giants: Agency and Interaction in Language Shift" as part of the “Linguistic Identity in the Americas” Faculty Research Seminar taking place at UGA during 2016-17. These events are co-organized with the Germanic and Slavic Studies Department.

Thursday, September 8th, at 3:30pm

250 Miller Learning Center



When communities transition from using one language to another, we often look toward individual agency as the deciding factor in the transition. Common discourse assumes that people choose to give up one language for another - but how real are these choices, given the sociological, economic, religious, and political circumstances that constrain these individuals?. This talk combines Wallerstein’s (2004) description of the capitalist world system with the notion of verticalization-driven language shift and orients shift within colonialism and the construction of race. I argue that language serves as an indicator of the larger global context in which communities find themselves, and the degree to which they have been able to retain their languages despite seemingly inexorable forces. Drawing on data from Wisconsin German, North Carolina Cherokee, and Pennsylvania Dutch, I show that while individual agency is constrained by global forces, many communities have leveraged factors such as religion and political sovereignty to negotiate with giants.





 

Department professors, current undergraduate and graduate students, and new students are welcome!

Open to majors, heritage speakers, and all interested students, the Japanese Conversation club provides space for conversation practice and cultural events related to the study of Japanese at UGA. For more information, contact President Rio Watson (riowatsn@uga.edu).

Open to everyone, the Korean Language Society provides students a space for conversation practice and cultural events related to the study of Korean at UGA. For more information, contact President Emily Seulgi Lee (emily.lee89@uga.edu).

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