An international conference at Cornell, April 27-28, will look at how the English language is being reclaimed and transformed in postcolonial South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere.

Rich with vitality, multiple meanings and political undertones, the new "world Englishes" are not only evident in the works of prize-winning contemporary writers but also are redefining everything from power and politics to economic survival.

"Going Global, Going Vernacular: Appropriation and Disowning of English in Post-Colonial Contexts" brings together scholars from India, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland and the United States. Free and open to the public, it takes place Friday at the A.D. White House on Cornell's campus and Saturday at the Africana Studies and Research Center on North Triphammer Road.

The conference is organized by Ithaca City of Asylum (ICOA), with key Cornell co-sponsors, the Society for the Humanities and the Africana Studies and Research Center.

"Some of the questions we hope to address, are: How does the politics of language, be it of domination or resistance, affect communities at large?" says conference coordinator and ICOA member Anne Berger, Cornell professor of French. "In what ways does it intersect with gender politics? How does it affect and inform public languages as well as particular literatures? And does the spreading and diversification of the English language challenge our received notions of the international, the national and the vernacular?"

A key speaker at the conference will be Srinivas Aravamudan, professor of English and director of the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University and author of "Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688-1804," which won the Modern Language Association's first-book prize in 2000, and "Guru English: South Asian Religion in a Cosmopolitan Language."

"Having a voice speaks to the right to be a person," says ICOA writer-in-residence Sarah Mkhonza, a visiting scholar at the Africana Center who fled her native country, Swaziland, after being attacked for publishing stories that criticized the treatment of women and other oppressive policies there; she will speak on "Voice Throwing and Women's Texts in Southern Africa," at the conference.

ICOA, which works in partnership with Cornell and is affiliated with the CRESP Center for Transformative Action, is part of a network of cities of asylum that supports writers whose works are repressed and whose lives are endangered in their native countries. For more information, call (607) 257-6970, ext. 15, e-mail kb@momentummedia.com or http://www.cresp.cornell.edu/projects/ithaca_city_asylum.php.