CURRENT EMPLOYMENT

Lecturer in Literary Translation and French in the Division of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Iowa

EDUCATION

2018 PhD, Comparative Literature, Cornell University (defended Dec 4, 2017, conferral May 2018)

2014 MA, Comparative Literature, Cornell University

 Fields: World Literature, Translation Studies, South African Literature

2010 MA, Cultural Translation, The American University of Paris

 Thesis: “Translation and Transformation in Postapartheid Johannesburg”

2008 BA, Comparative Literature, The American University of Paris

2004 BCom, Economics and Finance, The University of Cape Town

 

DISSERTATION

“Present Junctures: World Literature, Translation, and the Limits of Contemporaneity”

Chair: Natalie Melas

Committee: Cathy Caruth, Grant Farred, Naoki Sakai

 

TEACHING AND RESEARCH AREAS

Translation Theory; Translation Practice; World Literature; African Literature; Modernism(s); Post-Colonialism; Trauma; The Contemporary Global Novel; Literary Theory; South African Literature; Literature and History of the Caribbean; Ecocriticism; Science Fiction; Global Media; Journalism.

 

AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS

2012-2017 Cornell Sage Fellowship

2014 Longlisted for the Best Translated Fiction Award

2010-2012 Emory Woodruff Fellowship

2011 Longlisted for the Best Translated Fiction Award

2010-2012 Emory Graduate School Fellowship

2009 Sin-Ming Shaw Best Essay Award

2007 Sigma Tau Delta, International English Honors Society

 

INVITED TALKS

2017    “Who Is Not Contemporary in Art and Literature?”, 7 November, Elmira College, “Emerging Scholar Series”

“Stoepsitters: The Translatability of Antjie Krog’s Poetry”, 25 September, The University of Pennsylvania

2016    “#RacismsLastWord: Setting the Example”, 23 April, Cornell University, “Derrida as Figure of African Thought”, Institute for Comparative Modernities Workshop

2015    “A Word or Two About Setting: On 101 Detectives by Ivan Vladislavić”, 21 May, University of the Witwatersrand, “Africa Week” Series

“Translating Newspaper: Novels, Newspapers and the Global Contemporary”, 28 May, Stellenbosch University, English Department Research Seminar

2014    “Levé’s Works and Newspaper”, Center for the Art of Translation, San Francisco, 5 November, Special Event

2012    “On Suicide by Edouard Levé”, Georgia Perimeter College, 13 February, Special Event

 

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS AND ORGANIZATION

2018    Love in Translation Conference, Rutgers University, “The Conjugal Translator”

2017    American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Utrecht Universiteit, “Keeping Time with the Swanless South: On Marlene Van Niekerk and William Kentridge”

African Literature Association Annual Conference, Yale University, “Translated from the Dead: Contemporaneity in ‘The Reading’ by Ivan Vladislavić”

2016    American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, Harvard University, “Toward a Provincialization of Time: Diaries, Letters and Speeches in J.M. Coetzee’s Global Period”

Caribbean Studies Association Annual Conference, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, “Surfacing and Submersion in Edwidge Danticat’s The Dew Breaker and Claire of the Sea Light” in “Submersion” panel co-organized with Alex Lenoble

2015    World Literature Institute, University of Lisbon, “World-Portrait: On Edouard Levé’s Photography”

2014    American Comparative Literature Association Annual Conference, New York University, “Not Intended for You: Vernacular Poetry from Post-Apartheid South Africa and the Limits of World Literature”

A Symposium on Gender and Sexuality in South African Literature and Culture, University of Pennsylvania, panel chair

2012    Spaces of French Migration, Culture, and Politics in 20^th Century Americas Conference, Georgia State University, “Edouard Levé and Edward Lee”

2011    Comparative Caribbeans Conference, Emory University, respondent to panel on “Stage and Translation”

2010    In the Presence of J.M. Coetzee, The American University of Paris, “Why I Have Nothing to Say about J.M. Coetzee”

2009    Art and Contemporaneity: An International Conference, The American University of Paris, respondent to keynote speakers