So far I’ve just got one thing on the books for early May, but it’s a doozy: a two-day conference at the CUNY Graduate Center entitled Translation Theory Today: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Critical Theory. All events will be held at the CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave. Registration is not required except for the second keynote on Friday (more info here). Update: Aha, there’ll be more events this month, starting with the BTBA Awards on May 4. So here are the listings, in chronological order:
Thursday, May 4:
Awards ceremony for the Best Translated Book Award in poetry and fiction, winners to be announced promptly (that’s what they tell me) at 7:00 p.m. More information here. The Folly, 92 W. Houston St., 6:30 p.m.
Thursday, May 5:
Translation Theory Today: An Interdisciplinary Conference on Critical Theory
10:00-11:20 AM First Panel Session
Graphic Transformation (Room 8301)
Chair: Professor Siona Wilson
“Double Double, Play and Novel: Mairghread Scott’s Comic Book Adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth”
Melissa Vipperman-Cohen (PhD Candidate, University of California, San Diego)“Such with Voice Bear Forth: Translating Vergil’s Aeneid as a Graphic Novel”
Dr. R. Drew Griffith (Professor, Queen’s University, Kingston)“Graphic Onomatopoetics”
Edward Gauvin (Independent Translator)
“The Visual Aspect in the Translation of the Swedish Cultural Code into Polish”
Dr. Sylvia Liseling-Nilsson (Assistant Professor, University of Leuven)
Cinematic Translation (Room 8304)
Chair:Professor Paul Julian Smith
“Born Legible: Navigating Cultural Translation through Latin American Queer Cinema”
Gabriella Martin (PhD Student, Washington University)“Resistance or Subservience? The Fictional Representation of Translation and Globalization”
Dr. Klaus Kaindl (Associate Professor, University of Vienna)“How can we put into words that which the image tell us? A filmosophic answer through the lens of Nietzsche and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis”
Paul Kurek (PhD Student, University of California, Los Angeles)“Translation and Yiddish? Yiddish and Media?? Or What Does it Take to Read Joel and Ethan Coen’s Film, A Serious Man?”
Dr. Dror Abend-David (Lecturer, University of Florida)
Music and Movement (Room 8402)
Chair: Professor Anne Stone
“Refiguring Translation as Material Practice”
Dr. Margaret Schwartz (Associate Professor, Fordham University)“Performing Translations between Literary Narrative and Ballet Choreography in La Cafetière by Théophile Gautier”
Brittany C. Prescott (PhD Student, Brown University)“Translation as Impersonation: Liszt’s Piano Transcriptions of Beethoven’s Symphonies”
Dr. Tekla Babyak (Independent Scholar)“Brodsky and Walcott: Music, Meaning, and ‘Twists of Language’ in Translation”
Dalia Bolotnikov (PhD Candidate, University of California, Santa Barbara)
11:30 AM-12:50 PM Second Panel Session
In Her Own Words (Room 8301)
Chair: Professor Alyson Cole
“Commenting and Translating the ‘Letter’ of the Text: How Women Have Rendered Biblical Texts”
Dr. Luise von Flotow (Professor, University of Ottawa)“The Translating Woman: The Question of Agency in Contemporary Religious Discourse”
Sindhu Jose (PhD Candidate, English and Foreign Languages University)“The Translator’s Visibility, Neologism, and Gender in Literary Translation”
Sima Sharifi (PhD Candidate, University of Ottawa)
Absence, Authority, & Autotranslation in Russian Literature (Room 8304)
Chair: Professor Elizabeth Beaujour
“At a loss for words: Paul Celan’s translation of a poem by Osip Mandelstam”
Irina Kogan (PhD Student, Yale University)“Framing Joyce: Ulysses and Socialist Realism”
Zachary King (PhD Candidate, University of Chicago)“What does a translation say? Agency in an early English-language Anna Karenina”
Geordie Kenyon Sinclair (PhD Candidate, Harvard University)“The Curious Case of Vladimir Nabokov: cross-cultural adaptation through the prism of literary creation and autotranslation”
Alexandra Cheveleva Dergacheva (PhD Student, Autonomous University of Madrid)
Pop Media in the 21st Century (Room 8402)
Chair: Professor Giancarlo Lombardi
“The Demand for ‘Love’: Translating the Language of Romance in Reality Television”
Dr. Lara Merlin (Assistant Professor, Vaughn College)“When the Self Is the Other: Algonquin Rap Music in Québec”
Antoinette Williams-Tutt (PhD Candidate, The Graduate Center, CUNY)“Re-sounding the Visual Archive of Konkow Maidu Artist Frank Day: A Translation through Metaphor in Four Parts”
Ryan Rhadigan (PhD Student, University of California Berkeley)“Translating or Traducing Images: The Case of Charlie Hebdo”
Saiful Saleem (PhD Student, The Graduate Center, CUNY)
2:00-3:20 PM Third Panel Session
Revolution and Critique in Asian Literature (Room 8301)
Chair: Professor Ying Zhu
“The Theory and Practice of the Translated Academic Novel in China”
Dr. Joseph Poon (Associate Professor, University of Hong Kong)“The Melancholy of Language and the Logic of Translation”
Dr. Yoon Jeong Oh (PhD Recipient, Cornell University)“Translation of Revolution: Lu Xun’s Hard Translation Revisited”
Eunyeong Kim (PhD Student, Stanford University)“On Translator’s Narrative Interference in English Version of Lu Xun’s Novels by William Lyell under the Translator’s Voice”
Shen Li (Faculty Member, Hunan University)
Echoes of the Classics in the Postcolonial World (Room 8304)
Chair: Professor Lía Schwartz
“As purificações ou O sinal de talião: Translating Collective Memory Writing as an Archaeology”
Chloe Hill (PhD Student, Brown University)“Translating Classical Presences in Afro-Brazilian Literature”
Dr. Andrea Kouklanakis (Professor, Bard High School and Early College)“Emancipation by translation? Al-Bustānī’s Iliad and cultural imperialism in the Middle East”
Evelyn Richardson (PhD Student, University of Chicago)“Arabic Philology and British Romantic Desire: Translation, Adaptation and Imitation in William Jones’s Moallakat (1783)”
Suleiman R Hodali (PhD Student, University of California, Los Angeles)
Translating Queerness within Contemporary Global Contexts (Room 8402)
Chair: Professor Michele Wallace
“Translating Otherness: The Queer Women of Marvel’s X-Men”
Melinda Borchers (PhD Student, University of Tennessee, Knoxville)“Translating the Futurity of Queerness: The Black Queer Body in the Short Fiction of Lindiwe Nkutha and Makhosazana Xaba”
Heather Williams (PhD Candidate, University of Tennessee, Knoxville)“The Translation of Queerness Across the Black Diaspora”
Jewel Williams (PhD Student, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
3:30-4:50 PM Fourth Panel Session
The Sacred and the Profane (Room 8301)
Chair: Professor Monica Calabritto
“Translation, Comparative Religion, and Comparative Concepts of Truth and Power”
Dr. Sinkwan Cheng (Lecturer, University College, London)“The Proverb as a Cultural Translation Tool: Some Examples from the Ancient World”
Zachary Domach (PhD Student, Columbia University)“And my Bowels were Moved for Him: Some Notes Toward a New Translation of the Song of Songs”
Kerry Carnahan (PhD Student, University of Connecticut)“Possibilities of Difference: Bible Translation, Literary Deconstruction, and Benjamin’s ‘Task’”
Dr. Sage Anderson (PhD Recipient, New York University)
Reexamining the Task of the Translator (Room 8304)
Chair: Professor John Brenkman
“Mythologies of Translation: From Babel to Orpheus”
Nora Carr (PhD Candidate, The Graduate Center, CUNY)“The Translator as Shadow Figure in Benjamin’s Arcades Project”
Jordan Daniels (PhD Student, Emory University)“Historicizing Translation Theories”
Dr. Dan Mills (Independent Scholar)“Agamben’s Idea of Translation”
Liesl Yamaguchi (PhD Candidate, Princeton University)
Hybrid Perspectives in Postcolonial Literature (Room 8402)
Chair: Professor Sonali Perera
“Translator: a Mind Reader?”
Mulin Wang (PhD Student, Louisiana State University)“‘Citizens of the World’: History, Hybridity, Transnationalism and Translation”
Magdala Desgranges (PhD Student, State University of New York, Stony Brook)“Translating ‘Poetry of Witness’ Emerging from ‘the Syrian Crisis:’ On Translation of Political Engagement during Times of Conflict”
Hassan Al-Mohammad (PhD Candidate, University of Ottawa)“Translating Taboo: Homosexuality and Violence in Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy and Sugathapala de Silva’s Amutu Ilandariya”
Prabha Manuratne (PhD Candidate, State University of New York, Buffalo/Lecturer, University of Kelaniya)
6:30 PM Keynote Lecture with Edwin Frank
(Skylight Room, 9th Floor)
Reception to Follow (Room 5414)
Friday, May 6:
10:00-11:20 AM Fifth Panel Session
Translation in the Digital Age (Room 8301)
Chair: Professor Cheryl Smith
“Dangerous Words: The Threat of Translation in a Global Age”
Dr. Elizabeth Kelley (Post-Doctoral Fellow, Georgetown University)“Between Translation, Reinterpretation, and Rewriting: Vilém Flusser’s Multilingual Work”
Britta Meredith (PhD Candidate, University of Connecticut)“Binary Absorption and Transformation: Digital Experiments as Translation”
Anne Sophie Voyer (PhD Candidate, University of Ottawa)Stephen Slessor (PhD Candidate, University of Ottawa)
“Cultural Translation and Digital Pedagogy”
Cristina Migliaccio (PhD Student, St. John’s University)
Impossible Translation, Impossible Language (Room 8304)
Chair:Professor Mary Ann Caws
“The Im/Possibilities of Translating Multilingual Poetry: Ivan Blatný and Ivan Martin Jirous”
Dr. Veronika Tuckerová (Preceptor, Harvard University)“Language as Incantation and Cryptograph: the Hexed Texts of Unica Zürn”
Dr. Christina Svendsen (Mellon Junior Fellow, University of Pennsylvania)“Translating a Slap on the Back into a Punch on the Nose: Rendering Puns in Queneau, Perec, and Brisset”
Marc Lowenthal (Acquisitions Editor, MIT Press/Owner, Wakefield Press)
Engendering Relationships in Translation (Room 8402)
Chair: Professor Sarah Chinn
“Translating Relationships: Amis and Amoureux in Hélisenne de Crenne’s Les Angoysses douloureuses qui procèdent d’amour”
Benjamin Fancy (PhD Student, Brown University)“‘Toi et Moi’: Foreignized Phrasing in Translating Sexuality”
Nicholas Kahn (PhD Student, Brown University)“What’s So Queer About Theorizing Translation Studies?”
Dr. Christopher Larkosh (Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth)“‘Sodonymizers’ and Style: Linda Asher’s Translation of Milan Kundera’s Essay on Translation, ‘Une Phrase’”
Dr. Michelle Woods (Associate Professor, State University of New York, New Paltz)
11:30 AM Keynote Roundtable of Practice with
Barbara Epler, Jonathan Galassi, & Jill Schoolman
(Skylight Room, 9th Floor)
Reception to Follow (Room 5414)
2:00-3:20 PM Sixth Panel Session
Multiple Afterlives (Room 8301)
Chair: Professor Caroline Rupprecht
“Homer in the Realms of Gold:” Robert Fagles’s Sources in English Poetry”
Dr. Elyse Graham (Assistant Professor, State University of New York, Stony Brook)“Translating Class and Dialect in Theodor Fontane’s Stine (1890)”
Dr. Priscilla Layne (Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill)“The Polyglot Pygmalion: A Text’s Journey”
Dr. Peter Conolly-Smith (Associate Professor, Queens College, CUNY)“Translating Poetry Variously”
Dr. Mary Ann Caws (Distinguished Professor, The Graduate Center, CUNY)
Movements Across the Early Modern World (Room 8304)
Chair: Professor Clare Carroll
“Étienne Dolet and the Ciceronian Stylistics of the Vulgar Tongue”
Chris Clarke (PhD Candidate, The Graduate Center, CUNY)“‘Omnia nostre esse, et nihil’ and the Crafty Art of Early Modern Translation”
Dr. Adrian Izquierdo (Doctoral Lecturer, Hunter College, CUNY)“Translation Theory as Cartography: The 15th-Century Origins of Translation Studies”
Dr. Katharina Piechocki (Assistant Professor, Harvard University)“Packing Saints’ Lives in Print: Materialities of Translation across the Early Modern Globe”
Rachel Stein (PhD Candidate, Columbia University)
Publishing in the Cross-Cultural Market (Room 8402)
Chair: Professor Esther Allen
“Gregory Rabassa, Translation, and the Rise of Inter-American Literature”
Dr. Earl Fitz (Professor, Vanderbilt University)“Colombia Reduced and Revised: The Marketability of The Sound of Things Falling”
Dana Khromov (PhD Candidate, University of Pennsylvania)“Rethinking the Cultural Position of Modern Arabic Literature in English”
Norah Alkharashi (PhD Candidate, University of Ottawa)“Translating (for) the World: Cosmopolitanism and Exile in Danilo Kiš and the Post-Yugoslav Diaspora”
Dr. Gorica Majstorovic (Associate Professor, Stockton University)
3:30-4:50 PM Seventh Panel Session
Translating the Self (Room 8301)
Chair: Professor Vincent Crapanzano
“Translingual Writer as Translator in Rabih Alameddin’s Novel An Unnecessary Woman”
Dr. Natasha Lvovich (Professor, Kingsborough Community College, CUNY)“In the Light of a New Language: Translating Writers who Write in a Second Language”
Tess Lewis (Independent Translator/Advisory Board Member, The Hudson Review)“From Self-Translation to ‘Parallel Poem’: The Bilingual Oeuvre of Andrey Gritsman”
Dr. Adrian Wanner (Professor, Pennsylvania State University)“What Leslie Marmon Silko asks of English”
Dr. Reid Gómez (Assistant Professor, Kalamazoo College)
The Future of Translation Studies (Room 8304)
Chair: Professor Martin Elsky
“Scaling failing: negotiating the ‘dirty’ work of translation today”
Tomas Elliott (PhD Candidate, University of Pennsylvania)“After the Turn”
Naomi Nicolas Kaufman (PhD Candidate, Université Paris 3 Sorbonne Nouvelle)“Catherine Malabou’s Plasticity: An Idiom for the Life of Translation in our Time”
Dr. Carolyn Shread (Instructor, Mount Holyoke College)
19th Century Romance & Beyond Across the Globe (Room 8402)
Chair: Professor Bettina Lerner
“Putting the Islam back in: The Reappropriation of Persian Sufi Poetry in Translation”
Dr. Roger Sederat (Associate Professor, Queens College, CUNY)“Translating the West and the Rest”
Dr. Corine Tachtiris (Visiting Assistant Professor, Earlham College)“Translation and Social Transformation”
Mohamed Farhat (PhD Student, State University of New York, Binghamton)“Can Domesticating Translation be Ethical?”
Dr. Heekyoung Cho (Assistant Professor, University of Washington)
5:00-6:00 PM Reception (Room 5414)
6:30 PM Keynote Lecture with Homi Bhabha
(Proshansky Auditorium, C-Level) Registration required.
For the complete conference program and more information, visit the conference website.
Sunday, May 8:
Mammas, Mares, Mères & Mutters: Mother’s Day Around the World: A reading jointly sponsored by the PEN Translation Committee and KGB’s Sunday Night Fiction Reading Series, featuring translators Mary Ann Newman, Vivian O’Shaughnessy, Michael F. Moore, Sophie Seita, and Uljana Wolf. More information here. KGB Bar, 85 E. 4th St., 7:00 p.m.