The period between 1750 and 1914 was marked by change, motion, and mobility. Advances in transport and the expansion of imperial powers brought together an array of peoples and facilitated contact between different cultures. These cultural encounters spurred the discovery of new information and of efforts to transmit, mask, or contain it. Translation played a seminal role in informing the public about the changing world and its interconnections. Imaginative writings and scientific concepts were subject to transposition and adaptation across languages and cultures. Indeed, global modernizing processes were due, to some extent, to travel, translation, and transposition.
Over the course of four stimulating days, delegates from two dozen countries shared their research on "Translation, Transposition, and Travel in the Global Nineteenth Century" at the Society for Global Nineteenth-Century Studies' international symposium in Kuwait. Held at the Global Studies Center, Gulf University for Science and Technology, the symposium included three plenary addresses: Marwan Kraidy (Northwestern University Qatar) on “Decelerating Modernity: Neo-Anachronism and Retraditionalization in the Latin American-Middle Eastern Connection”; Sarga Moussa (CNRS, Paris) on “L’orientalisme au prisme du voile dans les Voyages en Égypte au XIXe siècle”; and Khaled Al-Bateni (Kuwait University) on “The Arabian Mission’s Effect on Kuwaiti Society, 1910-1920." There were also sixteen panels on topics ranging from "Travels in and through China" and "Egypt, Palestine, and the Arabian Peninsula" to "African Entanglements" and "Exchanges, Independence, and Informal Empire in the Revolutionary Era: Mobility in the Reconfiguration of the World." Simultaneous translation into English, the working language of the symposium, enabled presenters to share their work in French and Arabic.
Delegates also took part in two cultural activities -- a walking tour of pre-oil Kuwait and a visit to the impressive Arab Fund Building -- and an optional dinner serving up traditional Kuwaiti dishes.
The SGNCS is enormously grateful to the directors of the Global Studies Center, past and present, as well as the Gulf University for Science and Technology for enthusiastically and generously supporting this event.