april-5-2021
APRIL 5, 2021 – The New York Public Library s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers has selected its 23rd class of Fellows: 15 talented academics, literary artists, and independent scholars. The Fellows were selected from a pool of 506 applicants from 48 countries. The class of 2021 includes:
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Poet Michael Prior;
Independent scholars Rich Benjamin, Lewis Hyde, and Avi Steinberg. The past year has come with astounding challenges. In this renewed state of recovery and careful reconnection, I am grateful to be welcoming our new class of Fellows and the continuation of over 20 years of scholarship, collaboration, and the creation of original work, said
Kaiama L. Glover: New Fellow at the NYPL’s Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers
The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers has selected its 23rd class (2021-2022)
of Fellows: 15 talented academics, literary artists, and independent scholars. The Fellows were selected from a pool of 506 applicants from 48 countries. The class of 2021 includes academics Julia Foulkes, Kaiama L. Glover, David Greenberg, Karl Jacoby, Matthew Karp, and Nara Milanich; poet Michael Prior; fiction writers David Wright Faladé, Jonas Hassen Khemiri, Maaza Mengiste, Josephine Rowe, and Madeleine Thien; and independent scholars Rich Benjamin, Lewis Hyde, and Avi Steinberg. Here is a description of Kaiama L. Glover’s work, followed by information on the fellowship:
Wake up to the sound of an alarm clock you didn’t really need to set. Remember the day that lies ahead of you, and drift off again for a few minutes. Repeat. Slide your feet into a pair of slippers, or don’t, and shuffle to the kitchen to make coffee. Still in your pajamas, drink this coffee at your desk while looking over your work from the day before. Remove a comma from the last sentence you translated before going to bed. Put it back. Remember that you haven’t brushed your teeth yet. Read the next paragraph in the book you’re translating, twice. Just as the right phrase begins to take shape in your mind, go brush your teeth. Forget the phrase you’d come up with and abandon hope of recovering it. Let the caffeine kick in. Ride this momentum until you reach a difficult sentence, then rise mindlessly in search of a snack. Google the etymology of “secretion” and observe a shift in your targeted ads. Remove a comma from the first sentence you translated after lunch. Put
7 Resources on Translating Blackness, Race, and Racism
Five years ago, John Keene published “Translating Poetry, Translating Blackness,” a clarion call for more Afro-diasporic literature in English translation, noting the exclusion of Black writers from the already marginalized market of translated literature. Even greater than the dearth of Black literature in translation is the dearth of Black translators into English, not to mention the lack of writing about translating Blackness evidenced by the fact that discussions of race and translation tend to reference Keene’s essay and not much else.
This list provides resources to further the discussion on translating Blackness, race, and racism and foregrounds the work of Black translators and other translators of color. Topics range from the translation of Black literature to support for BIPOC translators to the translation of the Black Lives Matter movement. The various pieces touch on a key point of Keene’s argument: that mo