Translating across Time

Symposium: Translating across Time and Space: Endangered Languages, Cultural Revitalization, and the Work of History

The Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) at the American Philosophical Society (APS) is hosting an academic symposium on October 13-14, 2016 to coincide with the APS Museum’s 2016 exhibition, "Gathering Voices: Thomas Jefferson and Native America." The exhibition traces the story of Native American language collection at the APS from Thomas Jefferson’s Indian vocabularies to the anthropological fieldwork of Franz Boas and his students to the language revitalization and community-based initiatives supported by CNAIR today. In doing so, the exhibition also explores the themes of translation across cultures and borders, the politics of representation, practices of language collection and study, cultural continuity and change, and the transformation of the material archives.

The accompanying symposium will feature scholars and practitioners whose work expands upon and deepens understanding of the core themes of the exhibition. The work of these presenters deals with:
1) the preservation of endangered languages, both historically and in the present day;
2) cultural practices surrounding translation and translators over time;
3) the work of language and cultural revitalization; and
4) current and/or collaborative Native language projects.

Some sessions will feature interdisciplinary papers and presentations.

The symposium will begin with a keynote address sponsored by the Penn Humanities Forum on Thursday evening, October 13. On Friday, October 14, panels will convene at the American Philosophical Society. The McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania will also provide support for the conference.

More about the APS Library, Museum, and CNAIR:


As president of the APS from 1797 to 1814, Thomas Jefferson helped form the Society’s Historical and Literary Committee, charged with collecting “American Antiquities,” including vocabularies and artifacts from Native American communities across the North American continent. The APS became a repository for ethnographic, linguistic, and anthropological research on Native American cultures. Today, CNAIR uses materials from the APS collections to work in partnership with community members and scholars to revitalize language and culture in the Indigenous communities where the languages, stories, and songs originated. The APS Museum offers imaginative programs that interpret the historical themes and objects on view and connect them to relevant issues in the world today.

The exhibition "Gathering Voices," which runs from April 15 through December 18, 2016, will be the final installment in a three-part series exploring Thomas Jefferson’s legacy as a statesman, a proponent of science and exploration, and as a collector and student of Indigenous languages.

For more information on the Jefferson exhibitions, visit the APS site.

For more information on the Conference and a full schedule, see the APS Conference website.