Language as Embodiment

Language is commonly considered a tool for self-expression and communication. But language is also importantly a body-centred phenomenon. Language can inform an embodied experience and, in other cases, contradict embodied experience. How does language in storytelling and translation shape how the speaker relates to or embodies a story? In what ways does language inform embodied experiences in, for, and beyond the body?

Join us for this second event of the Embodiment as Knowledge Translation series, featuring Vancouver-based Nigerian storyteller, designer, and poet Olúwáṣọlá Kẹ́hìndé Olówó-Ake and Irem Ayan, Assistant Professor of Translation (UBC) with moderator Sara Ann Knutson, Assistant Professor of Teaching (UBC) as we engage in a dynamic performance and conversation and share reflections on embodied language in storytelling and translation.

Olúwáṣọlá Kẹ́hìndé Olówó-Ake is a designer, artist, storyteller and an independent researcher. She studied Fashion Design at Nottingham Trent University and completed her Master of Design at Emily Carr University. Her design practice focuses on using Yorùbá storytelling methods to tell stories about her experiences as she lives and works in the diaspora and additionally depict these narratives through dance, song, ways of wearing and poetry.

She also has a podcast on anchor.fm called '...into words with Sola.'

As a trained conference interpreter, Assistant Professor Irem Ayan (French, Hispanic and Italian Studies) works at the intersections of feminist standpoint theory, settler colonialism, and theories of resistance to investigate how the implications of dominant ideologies of gender, class and racialization affect the way interpreters perform and/or resist their task of becoming the voice of the speaker. Irem explores the dark side of being a marginalized interpreter, looking at the various ways in which interpreters are sexualized, harassed, discriminated against and treated as non-persons, drawing also on frameworks that analyze emotional labour and worker exploitation. Current ethnographic research explores the experiences of Indigenous interpreters in British Columbia.

Organized by Green College Leading Scholars, this series invites perspectives on how to locate, understand, experience, enact and care for embodiment. How is the body activated as source and repository of knowledge? Where do we find generative inquiry into the affective and social dimensions of producing and exchanging knowledge? This series of lectures and roundtables explores the performance of care; relational accountability; and the emotional labour involved in archival work, storytelling, translation, healthcare, creative practices and teaching.

Series Conveners: Abdul-Fatawu Abdulai, Nursing; Irem Ayan, French, Hispanic and Italian Studies; Stephen Dabugblor, Journalism, Writing and Media; Julia Henderson, Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy; Sara Ann Knutson, History; Jillian Lerner, Art History, Visual Art and Theory; Jasmin Ma, Kinesiology; Elif Sari, Anthropology; Rosanne Sia, Gender, Race Sexuality and Social Justice; Logan Smilge, English Language and Literatures; Helena Zeweri, Anthropology; and Mila Zuo, Theatre and Film