Keep an eye on this page: schedule may be subject to slight revision.
January 29: Introductions. Everyone is invited to post a bio on the CUNY Commons course blog: https://mals27400s26.commons.gc.cuny.edu/
Background: VoicesofNY.org, the Independent Press Association, and the “hyperlocal media hub.”
- Esther Allen, “Translating the Local: New York’s Micro-Cosmopolitan Media, from José Martí to the Hyperlocal Hub,” in Avenues of Translation, ed. Regina Galasso & Evelyn Scaramella (2019)
February 5: A Bakhtin glossary for urban polyphonies
Pay special attention to these terms as you read; each of you will present one to the class
chronotope: Alex
carnival: Catherine
dialogics/dialogism: Sheila
heteroglossia” James
polyglossia: Addison
polyphony: Jenn
simultaneity: Claire
situatedness: Alice
utterance: Coco
- The Dialogic Imagination: “From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse” & “Forms of Time & Chronotope in the Novel.”
- NYPL Guide to non-English New York City newspapers
- The Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media
- Sherry Simon, “The Translational City.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research (April, 2019)
February 12: No class. Lincoln’s birthday.
February 19: Exophonic literature, Expophonic being: Yoko Tawada’s Exophony. Class visit with Lisa Hofmann-Kuroda, translator of Exophony.
- “Voyages outside the Mother Tongue,” Exophony, pp. 3-120.
Those of you interested in seeing Tawada speak should watch the online Center for the Humanities event “Lightning in a Bottle” in which she appears with several of her translators and editors, to offer an overview of the stages a book goes through between Japanese and English.
February 26: [TBD: ELA in Montreal for ACLA]
March 5: Translating the Locavore: Food, Nation, Language
Class visit from Anya Von Bremzen, author of National Dish: Around the World in Search of Food, History, and the Meaning of Home and Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking.
Readings:
- “Oaxaca,” “Istanbul” and “Epilogue,” from Von Bremzen’s National Dish.
- Tawada, “Boston: Has English Changed Other Languages?” in Exophony.
- The Translator, Vol 21, Issue 3 (2015), Food and Translation: Translation and Food https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rtrn20/21/3
TUESDAY MARCH 10, 6:30 PM: Class will attend lecture by Ross Perlin at the Museum of the City of New York, 1220 Fifth Avenue. https://www.mcny.org/event/language-city (Tickets supplied by MALS.)
March 12: Language City: Ross Perlin & NYC’s Endangered Language Alliance.
Reading: Language City, p. ix – 77, & p. 115-339.
MARCH 19, 12:30 PM: YASMINE SEALE talks about her translation of the Thousand and One Nights at the Baruch Performing Arts Center:
March 19: Mother Tongue Ideologies and Post-Monolingualism: Yasemin Yildiz
Introduction, from Yildiz’s Beyond the Mother Tongue:
Conclusion, from Yildiz’ Beyond the Mother Tongue
Jennifer Shyue, “Mother’s Tongue,” The Common (2021)
Madhu Kaza, ed. Kitchen Table Translation, Asterix Journal (Summer 2017)
March 26: Staged Polyglossias (Class visit from Frank Hentschker of the GC’s own Martin E. Segal Theater). Other good references for this area of study are the work of Jeremy Tiang and Shayok Misha Chowdhury, whose Rheology we may attend together, if people are interested (it opens April 14 at Playwrights Horizons).
Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s 2021 film Drive My Car is a good intro to the contemporary approaches to multilingualism in theater that Yoko Tawada describes in the “Barcelona: Stage Animals” chapter of Exophony, which describes Lasenkan Theatre, based in Catalonia, Berlin, and Hyogo, Japan.
April 2: No class. Spring break.
April 3-4: Living Tamil Litfest: Bringing Modern Tamil Literature to the World, New York Academy of Medicine, 1216 Fifth Ave. Website says it is sold out! (??)
April 9: No class. Spring break.
April 16: Option 1: If you acquire a CUNY Student Membership you can pick up a ticket to Chayek Misha Chowdhury’s wonderfully multilingual (Bangla-English) Rheology, which has a performance April 16th at 7 pm. CUNY student ticket price is $19, plus some fees. Alas, MALS cannot cover tickets for this.
Option 2: You can attend the Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence Program Reading and Conversation with playwright and TV writer Lauren Yee (Cambodian Rock Band, King of the Yees, and Mother Russia, currently in production in NYC at the Signature Theater). 5 pm reception, followed by 6 pm conversation with Baruch Prof. Sarah Saddler, at Baruch College, 151 E. 25th St., Room 750. (No cost. Especially interesting if you happen to be teaching at Baruch.)
April 21 (Tuesday, but CUNY classes follow a Thursday schedule): Sherry Simon and Michael Cronin: the “dual city,” microcosmopolitanism, urban multilingualism in museums, schools, and other institutions.
Michael Cronin, Translation and Globalization (2003), Chapter 3: “Globalization and the new geography of translation.”
Sherry Simon, Translation Sites (2019), Section III: “9) The Market; 10) The Street; 11) The Museum.
Respond Crisis Translation: https://respondcrisistranslation.org/
April 23: April 23: Linguistic Reclamation and Revitalization: Guest visit from Peter Constantine, founder of World Poetry Books and terminal speaker of Arvanitika, who’ll talk about his book-in-progress on the subject, and about writing poetry in a dying language.
Peter Constantine, “Musings of a Terminal Speaker,” Words Without Borders (2010)
Dimitri Hatzipemou interviewed by Peter Constantine, “A Cow Ate Our Alphabet,” HopscotchTranslation.com (2023).
Perlin, “Indigenous Metropolis” (on Lenape), Language City, 78.
Universidad de las Lenguas indígenas de México (founded 2023)
Film: The Miracle of the Little Prince by Marjoleine Boonstra (2018)
April 30: Xenoglossic Poetry: Babel to Pentecost
Jennifer Scappettone, Poetry After Barbarism: The Invention of Motherless Tongues and Resistance to Fascism (2025)
“Introduction: From Babel to a Possible Pentecost: The Abracadabrant Word and the Invention of ‘Xenoglossia.’
Scappettone’s notes:
Here, too, since it is so intensely relevant to the specific subject matter of our class, is the 1905 Henry James essay that the middle section of Sceappettone’s essay reflects on:
Elisa Taber, “Bad Translation” from Violent Phenomena: 21 Essays on Translation, ed. Kavita Banot and Jeremy Tiang (Tilted Axis, 2022).
And here, since it includes numerous essays that may be relevant to various aspects of several of your final projects, is the whole text of Violent Phenomena:
May 7: Class presentations.
Claire Dauge-Roth: Lá, There, Translating from Memory (Etel Adnan)
Sheila Santos: Translation History of the Diaries of Carolina María de Jesus.
Alice Roberts: ‘Soiré Velez’ and Multilingual Folk Music
Alex Lleras: Translation of poems by Carlos Egaña
Jenn Arras: Bordering: A Sonic Portrait
May 14: Class presentations (last class).
Coco Fitterman: Homolingual obsessional repetition
Addison Bale: Translation of a conversation with Omar in a pulquería in Mexico City (centralización)
Catherine Fisher: Multilingual NYC literary magazine during WWII
James Sullivan: Translation of a Latin American short story
May 19: Last date to hand in final project via e-mail.
