audio by year 2009

 Simona Škrabec reads in Catalan from her book L’atzar de la lluita.

Simona Škrabec
(Ljubljana, Eslovènia, 1968)

Llicenciada en literatura comparada i filologia alemanya per la Universitat de Ljubljana (1994) es va doctorar a la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona amb la tesi Els marcs identitaris en el cas de Centreeuropa (2002). Viu a Barcelona des de 1992.

Es dedica a la recerca relacionada amb la literatura europea del segle XX i estudia la relació de les obres literàries amb la formació de la identitat i la memòria del passat. Publica regularment estudis en les revistes especialitzades en l’àmbit internacional. Des de 2006 ressenya, en el suplement literari d’El País, novetats publicades en català. És també autora dels llibres L’estirp de la solitud (2002, Premi Josep Carner de Teoria Literària de l’IEC), que analitza com s’ha transmès el sentit tràgic de les tragèdies gregues fins a la narrativa breu del segle XX. El seu llibre L’atzar de la lluita (2005) és dedicat al concepte d’Europa Central. Amb Arnau Pons ha coordinat un extens projecte d’investigació sobre les relacions entre les cultures alemanya i catalana, que s’ha publicat amb el títol Carrers de frontera (2007-2008) en català i en alemany.

Ha traduït a l’eslovè les obres de diversos escriptors catalans, entre elles els llibres de Pere Calders, Jesús Moncada, J.V. Foix, Jaume Cabré, Gabriel Ferrater i Maria Mercè Marçal, i d’autors eslovens i serbis al català (Drago Jančar, Danilo Kiš, Boris Pahor, Aleš Debeljak, entre d’altres). També publica els estudis teòrics sobre el fet de traduir en publicacions especialitzades i ha participat en el volum col·lectiu, dirigit per Esther Allen, To be translated or not to be (2007) sobre la situació de la traducció literària en el món globalitzat. És la directora del web del PEN Català dedicat a la traducció literària (http://www.pencatala.cat/ctdl/ ).

Keith Ekiss and Olivia Sears interview Breon Mitchell about his translation of Günter Grass’s The Tin Drum, the first retranslation of the novel into English since its publication 50 years ago. Mitchell discusses the process of working directly with Grass on the new translation, including the challenges of working with a text that had become so well known in its existing English version. Mitchell also talks about an earlier retranslation project, his publication of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, and about the recent selection of Herta Müller as the recipient of the Nobel Prize.

 Breon Mitchell is a professor of Germanic studies and comparative literature and director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University, and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. He was awarded the Kurt and Helen Wolff Prize for his translation of Uwe Timm’s Morenga in 2004 and his new translation of The Tin Drum has recently been published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This Art of Translation podcast was recorded in the offices of The Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco on November 9, 2009.

Serres retraces the history of what he calls le Dure and le Doux (the "hard" and the "soft", or the material and immaterial), from antiquity to Silicon Valley, with particular attention to political economy. The lecture is given in French.

"Crimes et chatiments 1" ("Crime and Punishment 1"). In this Stanford lecture, which follows on "L'âge d'or, l'âge de fer," Michel Serres explores the "le malheur de l'âge de fer"--that is, the role of cruelty in a "hard" society, with such technologies of punishment as the guillotine. The compromised visibility of human flesh and of cadavers, Serres argues, remains powerful even today. Perhaps television, he provocatively suggests, is the oldest sort of religion of all, based on rites of sacrifice. Along the way, Serres touches on issues including painting, the French Revolution, consciousness of death, and the philosophy of animals.

"How to View a Mountain in Medieval China"

A renowned scholar of medieval China reframes European lyric traditions and visual conventions through the rhapsodic poetry of Xie Lingyun – arguably the most avid mountain lover of the Chinese medieval period – engaging questions of sensual experience, philosophical knowledge, and spiritual truth.

David R. Knechtges, ’64, ’68, is Professor of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington and author of more than one hundred articles and nine books on Chinese literature, history, culture, and civilization. He is perhaps best known for his work as editor and translator of three volumes of Wen-xuan or Selections of Refined Literature, the most influential anthology of classical Chinese poetry, and his books include Court Culture and Literature in Early China (2002), The Han shu Biography of Yang Xiong (1982), The Han Rhapsody: A Study of the Fu of Yang Hsiung (53 BC - AD18) (1976), and Two Studies of the Han Fu (1968). He has co-edited Rhetoric and the Discourses of Power in Court Culture, East and West (with Eugene Vance, 2005) and Studies in Early Medieval Chinese Literature and Cultural History (with Paul Kroll, 2003) and also has co-translated Studies of the Han Fu (with Gong Kechang, 1997). Knechtges has been honored with a Guggenheim fellowship and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

This talk was delivered on April 28, 2009 at the University of Washington. This file is made available courtesy of the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington.

"Making Waves: Documentary Film in Context"

Steven Ungar, Professor of French and Comparative Literature, University of Iowa

A scholar of twentieth-century French literature, intellectual history, and film, Ungar is the author of six books on French culture, including Roland Barthes: The Professor of Desire (1983), Scandal and Aftereffect: Blanchot and France Since 1930 (1995), Popular Front Paris and the Poetics of Culture (2005; co-authored with Dudley Andrew), and Cléo de 5 à 7 (2008). Recent publications include articles on the literary figures Patrick Modiano, W. G. Sebald, and Milan Kundera.

Ungar’s current research project, entitled Making Waves: French Documentary Film 1945-1967 is a book-length study of fifteen postwar films that contributed to the emergence of the French New Wave. Chapters devoted to documentaries about Paris, anti-colonialism, and cinéma vérité analyze films by Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Agnès Varda, Jean Rouch, and Georges Franju as points of entry to reconsider the social, cultural, and political histories of fourth and early Fifth Republic France.

This talk was delivered on January 9, 2009 at the University of Washington. This file is made available courtesy of the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington.