Fall 2007 School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and Linguistics: the Creation of a Center for Translation Studies
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College of Liberal Arts & Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign A NEWSLETTER COVERING THE UNIT FOR CINEMA STUDIES DEPARTMENT OF THE CLAssIcs PROGRAM IN COMPARATIVE AND WORLD LITERATURE DEPARTMENT OF EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES DIVISION OF ENGLISH AS AN INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT OF FRENCH DEPARTMENT OF GERMANIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES DEPARTMENT OF LINGUISTIcs PROGRAM FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION DEPARTMENT OF SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURE AND DEPARTMENT OF SPANISH, ITALIAN AND PORTUGUESE CENTER FOR TRANSLATION STUDIES the College of Business as well as international journalism courses,” Kibbee said. TO BE ESTABLISHED AT ILLINOIS Also, the University Library is digitizing By Andrea Lynn translated works “as a way of supporting Humanities Editor, U of I News Bureau the study of translation, including multiple he U of I announced on June 13 in Douglas A. Kibbee will serve as interim director translations of a single work,” he said. New York that it is establishing a of the center, under the auspices of the newly “With the presence of Dalkey, we also will be T Center for Translation Studies. formed School of Literatures, Cultures and able to give our students a chance to work on Richard Herman, the chancellor of the Urbana Linguistics in the College of Liberal Arts and the business side of translation—editing and campus, announced the creation of the center Sciences. publicity, for example—and bring to campus a during a reception for another translation unit at Kibbee, a professor of French and linguistics at number of translators for short master classes,” U of I, Dalkey Archive Press. U of I, is Director of the School of Literatures, Kibbee said. Dalkey Archive Press moved to the Urbana Cultures and Linguistics. The center also will offer major international campus last December. It is the leading “There are three conferences on translation independent publisher specializing in literary or four significant issues and create a translations of contemporary international titles, translation programs publication series on mostly fiction. in this country,” issues in translation. The French Cultural Services of the French according to Dalkey Archive Press is Embassy in New York hosted the event to Kibbee, “but what a nonprofit organization celebrate its co-publication with the press of As we are proposing is whose mission is “to You Were Saying: American Writers Respond to significantly different promote international Their French Contemporaries. The book, released from any of them.” cultural understanding July 1, is a collection of short stories written by In addition to and provide a forum for some of the best contemporary U.S. and French offering literary dialogue for the literary authors. translation in arts,” said John O’Brien, The new center will be “a new academic conjunction with the director of the press. entity—a place where scholars and students will Dalkey and the English Dalkey publishes 30 study, perform, and enhance the complex act of department’s Creative titles a year in English transforming a literary experience created in one Writing Program, and has more than 350 language into an equivalent experience in another the center “will books in print, and its language,” Herman said. create other connections with our ‘full-service’ website has an annual readership of 600,000. “The knowledge of art and business will be University—such as machine translation with Dalkey has received many honors, and its authors one of Dalkey’s vital contributions to the center, computer science, simultaneous interpretation have won the Nobel Prize, the National Book giving students a real-world experience available in conjunction with the Fire Service Institute, Award, the Pulitzer Prize, and the National Book nowhere else.” and business translation in conjunction with Critics Circle Award. LETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR Dear Friends, With the opening of the school year in August came the opening of a new school, the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics. The 11 units of the School teach more than 30 languages, and promote understanding of the literatures and cultures that use them. Our distinguished faculty conduct exciting research on language and culture, and impart their own excitement to hundreds of graduate students and thousands of undergraduates every semester. The formation of the School is the culmination of a long process begun in the late 1990s. Through administrative consolidations realized in this way, we have been able to put more money towards academic endeavors, creating new courses and hosting scholarly conferences. In particular, the School encourages collaborations across departmental boundaries. Within the past two years we have been able to fund dozens of projects and conferences that have enriched the intellectual life of the building and the campus. In the past year we have hosted conferences on South Asian Linguistics, Violence in German Literature, Czechs in the New and Old Europe, among many others. In May we held our first joint graduation in the Smith Music Hall, next to the Foreign Languages Building. Retiring professors Hans Hock (Linguistics and Classics) and Michael Palencia-Roth (Comparative and World Literature) shared the wisdom from their careers and their hopes for our graduates. A lovely reception followed in the atrium of the Foreign Languages Building. Now we have embarked on a new endeavor that unites our interests in literature, culture Fall 2007 School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics and linguistics: the creation of a Center for Translation Studies. Part of this project has been to College of Liberal Arts and Sciences University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign welcome the Dalkey Archive Press to campus. The Dalkey Archive Press is a leading publisher of contemporary fiction and poetry from around the world. It has already been instrumental in This newsletter is published bi-annually by the School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, at the creating internships for our undergraduates and graduate students, introducing them to the world University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and is produced by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ of publishing. With these efforts, we hope to train the next generation of translators and pursue Office of Communications and Marketing (06.093). Suggestions and correspondence may be sent to the our mission of understanding the world, and bringing about world understanding. School of Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics: It’s an exciting time to be in the Foreign Languages Building, as we work more closely together 4072 Foreign Languages Building 707 S. Mathews Ave. and learn from each other. I am honored to be the first director of this new School, and look Urbana, IL 61801 (217) 244-3252 forward to working with many people to realize the promise of this adventure. Fax: (217) 244-8430 www.slcl.uiuc.edu Best wishes, Director: Douglas A. Kibbee Doug Kibbee Editor: Rick Partin Miss Julie and The Father, among them—both Swedish Playwright Strindberg regarded as his naturalist plays; and for A Dream Frustrated by 19th Century Gender Play and The Ghost Sonata—his expressionist or modernist plays. Conventions, Scholar Says In the United States, on the other hand, By Andrea Lynn Strindberg is read less widely than Ibsen— Humanities Editor, U of I News Bureau mainly in university theater departments and in Scandinavian studies classes. He also is isunderstood genius or misogynist? approach, Strindberg held out as a rebel, a occasionally performed in the “off-Broadway, Playwright or novelist? Alchemist radical, a challenger, and perhaps also as a more non-mainstream theater,” Stenport said. Mor artist? Beyond being the interesting writer.” “What I do in this book is offer a reading of the unquestioned father of modern prose drama— But he paid a dear price for his positions, prose that’s very little known outside of Sweden. who was the real August Strindberg, and what Stenport said. Not only was he essentially kept Strindberg—yes, he may have been the ‘father of was he really trying to communicate? out of the drama canon over the decades, but modern drama,’ but he wrote a very substantial A University of Illinois Germanic languages he also was not particularly well-received by his amount of prose in both Swedish and French,” and literatures professor who grew up reading readers, including literary critics. Stenport said. Strindberg in her native Sweden has taken on “I would say that his views on gender are the In her manuscript, Stenport compares the alternately venerated and vilified Swedish white elephant in his works,” said Stenport. Strindberg’s Swedish and French writings and playwright (1849-1912) as her intellectual “Everyone knows that he had some peculiar looks at “how he conceived of himself as a challenge. ideas. In a play like Miss Julie, for example, he cosmopolitan living on the European continent Anna Stenport, the director of the University’s appears to be wildly for a large portion Scandinavian studies program, has devoted misogynistic. The of his life.” He seven years to deconstructing and deciphering female protagonist typically wrote the brilliant, prolific, and controversial writer of in that play comes about Stockholm Stockholm and Paris. August Strindberg shocked across as a neurotic, when living in Paris audiences and readers with his raw realism— a not very serious and about Paris explicit references to lust and bodily functions, character who ends when residing in for example, and unapologetic writings on up killing herself.” Stockholm, she said. politics and religion—and still had time to marry While critics “He has a three times; father five children; become an have homed in complementary— accomplished artist and photographer; and even on Strindberg’s I’m not going dabble successfully in alchemy, spiritualism, and portrayals of to say radically the occult. women, Stenport and the authors in the new different—view on turn-of-the-century European Stenport, a co-editor of a published book of book of essays are trying to look at the writer modernity,” Stenport said.