11 December 2025, 1.30-4.30pm
The seminar celebrates the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the British Comparative Literature Association (BCLA) by bringing together scholars whose interdisciplinary work offers new perspectives on literature, history, and translation.
Everyone’s welcome to attend, but prior registration is required.
Registration page: https://essex-university.zoom.us/meeting/register/mn3yyRG8QAW-Cp6nD1jVKg
Programme:
Session 1: 1.30-3pm
Christopher Rundle: ‘Translation under Fascism’
In this presentation I will look at four fascist regimes and compare their policies on translation. I will suggest that hostility towards translation can be seen as an indicator of genuine fascism. This case study is presented as an example of how we can use translation as a lens through which to examine historical contexts and gain new insights about them.
Prof. Christopher Rundle is Professor of Translation Studies at the Department of Interpreting and Translation of the University of Bologna, Italy, and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester, UK.
Jordi-Cornella Detrell: ‘Rethinking Translation, Censorship and the Literary Marketplace under Franco’s Dictatorship’
While much has been written on the role of translation in renewing aesthetic values and reshaping literary norms, less attention has been paid to its material impact on the publishing industry. This paper examines how translation helped rebuild the Spanish post-war publishing sector, considering the initial resistance to foreign works inspired by totalitarian ideas, the financial necessity for presses to publish translations in order to survive, the competition from Latin American firms and the reception of foreign literature by the reading public.
Dr Jordi-Cornella Detrell is Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Glasgow.
Tamara Barakat: ‘Translating lived experience in the Palestinian (an)archive’
How can translation contribute to the construction of anticolonial creative archives that document the lived experiences of massacre and genocide survivors? Drawing on examples from the Palestinian context, I will explore how artists employ translation as an ‘anarchival’ and ‘creative-critical’ practice in order to transform embodied, multisensory and experiential knowledge into multimodal artworks. I will consider how such translations remediate otherwise silenced memories and narratives, while inviting ethical, reflexive, and collaborative encounters with the audiences they address.
Dr Tamara Barakat is Lecturer in Translation Studies at the University of Strathclyde.
Break (15 minutes)
Session 2: 3.15-4.15pm
Shanti Graheli: ‘Early modern marginalia as evidence of self trans-latio’
How do translation and reading practices intersect in the lived experience of early modern readers? This paper takes a material approach to the study of books, investigating texts as transnational objects and focusing on traces left in the margins by past readers. Thinking of translation in the context of these textual interactions applies both to the text and to the trans-latio of the reader him or herself. Thus book-objects accrue new meanings, being at once embodied spaces of intercultural negotiation for their past readers, and today preserving these marks as evidence of historic practices while continuing to act as bridges between readers past and present.
Dr Shanti Graheli is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow.
Michael Tsang: ‘The Tangible Translation of World Literature: Affordable Book Series in Japan in Early 20th Century’
This paper drives a wedge between (or rather, integrates) the seminar themes on literature, translation and history by discussing how the idea of world literature was ‘translated’ from Western Europe to Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries via a very tangible form: affordable book series of the world’s masterpieces and classics. As Japan was opening up to a Western-dominated world order/culture after two decades of self-imposed isolation, not only was ‘world literature’ translated conceptually, but even the form in which books were sold to the Japanese reading public was imported and thus ‘translated’ from the West—as part of a reading culture but most of all as a business idea.
Dr Michael Tsang is Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies at Birkbeck, University of London.
Closing remarks: 4.15-30pm, Dr Joanna Rzepa
If you have any questions, please email the organisers:
Dr Joanna Rzepa (joanna.rzepa@essex.ac.uk) and Dr Shanti Graheli (shanti.graheli@glasgow.ac.uk)
