Reading Matters, Vol. XIII, No. 6

Announcements

An article from the Chronicle of Higher Education's online edition focuses on the work of Aviya Kushner, a student in the MFA Non-Fiction Writing program and General Education Literature teacher.

November/December issue of "Poets & Writers": Saving the art of translation

John Henry Twachtman, Winter Harmony

American literary translation is in crisis, writes Aviya Kushner in her introduction to a special section on the discipline. In order for it to recover, argues Ms. Kushner, a poet and journalist, translation must be recognized as a legitimate and valuable art form.
Ms. Kushner consulted a number of experts in the field, all of whom confirmed a bleak outlook. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, translations now make up less than 2 percent of all literary publishing. Even so, she says, translators, editors, and publishers believe that the "quality of translations by American writers is quite high," and that translated works represent a greater variety of regions than ever before.
Although translation projects receive significant financial support, she notes that within academe the opportunities for scholars to pursue translation remain limited. At most institutions, she says, translations are not considered original scholarship and therefore do not count toward tenure for candidates in English or creative writing. Many translators, she adds, believe that this discourages interest in their field and, by extension, world literature.
"The task of bringing literature into another language means transporting an entire culture, its shame as well as triumphs," she says. "Through that process, important political and social ideas travel, too." In spite of this value, she concludes, "the art of literary translation in America remains mostly in the shadows."Ms. Kushner's essay can be read online at: http://www.pw.org/mag/0211/kushner.htm

Kathleen Diffley will read from To Live and Die: Collected Stories of the Civil War, 1861-1876 at Prairie Lights on Friday, November 22, at 8:00.

Lectures

Book Culture Brown Bag, Thursday, Nov. 21: "Prehuman Reading Behaviors and Haptics of the Print Mode," Gary Frost, UI Libraries Conservator. Gary Frost
will conclude this semester's brown bag series with a talk on book structures and reader response. Frost will present historical exemplars of
bindings to complement the lecture. Gary is one of the preeminent binders in the U.S., and is a Fellow of the American Institute for Conservation; he has taught at the Newberry Library, and for the library schools at Columbia University and the University of Texas. Please join us at 12:15 in the IMU, Room 257.

Graduate Matters

Congratulations to the following Ph.D. students who defended their dissertation this semester and to their directors and committees!

Jodi Byrd: “Colonialisms Cacophony: Settlers, Arrivants and the Limits of Postcolonial Theory”
Mary Lou Emery (Ch)
Pater Nazareth
Florence Boos
Phil Round
Anne Donadey (formerly of Women’s Studies)

Amy Lilly: “This Way to the Exhibition”: Woolf, Joyce, Rhys, and the 1930s Fascist Culture of Exhibitions”
Mary Lou Emery (Ch)
Ruedi Kuenzli
Cheryl Herr
Tom Lutz
Cinzia Blum (French and Italian)

Joann Quinones-Perdomo: “A Splendid Little Postcolonial War: Colonial Theory and Popular Images of the Spanish American War”
Bluford Adams (Ch)
Mary Lou Emery
Doris Witt
Rob Latham
Jane Desmond (American Studies)

James Tweedie: “Moving Pictures, Still Lives: Neobaroque Cinema, Visual Culture, Theory”
Garrett Stewart (Ch)
Corey Creekmur
Cheryl Herr
Louis Schwartz (Cinema and Comparative Literature)
Dudley Andrew (formerly at Iowa)

Jessica Walsh: “The Writing Cure: Women, Poetry and Madness, 1880-1940”
Florence Boos (Ch)
Teresa Mangum
Mary Lou Emery
Laura Rigal
Tom Lewis (Spanish and Portuguese)

Martin Buinicki: “Negotiating Copyright Authorship and the Discourse of Literary Property Rights in Nineteenth Century America”
Ed Folsom (Ch)
Kathleen Diffley
Laura Rigal
David Wittenburg
Mark Janis (Law)

Note: Martin will defend his dissertation on December 13, 2002, and be awarded his degree in the Spring 2003 Semester

 

Reading Matters will appear on the Web and in faculty inboxes every other Wednesday as a combination of memos from the chair, announcements, deadlines, publication announcements, notices of speakers, conferences, and visitors of interest to the department. To be included in Reading Matters, announcements should be e-mailed to Amanda at am_17@hotmail.com by Monday afternoon.

Copyright © 2002, The University of Iowa. All rights reserved.