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 20th 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