In this virtual reading and discussion, Max Kade Visiting Writer Jan Wagner will present his work in English translation. Wagner is a German poet, essayist, and translator. His collections of poems include Guerickes Sperling, Achtzehn Pasteten, Australien, and Regentonnenvariationen, for which he was awarded the Prize of the Leipzig Bookfair. The Art of Topiary is the most recent translation of Wagner’s work into English.
The editor of two influential anthologies of German language poetry, including, with the poet Björn Kuhligk, Poetry of the Now: 74 Voices, Wagner is also the German translator of several British and American poets, including James Tate, Matthew Sweeney, and Charles Simic. He is the recipient of the Mondsee Poetry Award, the Anna Seghers Award, the Ernst Meister Award for Poetry, the Mörike Preis, and the first Arno Reinfrank Award. In 2017, he was awarded the Georg Büchner Prize. He lives in Berlin.
Aaron Coleman Reading: International Writer's Series 2023
John M. Olin Library, Ginkgo Reading Room
Aaron Coleman Reading: International Writer's Series 2023
John M. Olin Library, Ginkgo Reading Room |
Aaron Coleman (MFA ’15, PhD ’21), whose papers and other materials are now part of the Modern Literature Collection, will read his poetry and translations. Professor Ignacio Infante will introduce Coleman and moderate a brief Q&A after, followed by a light reception. Coleman is featured in the current exhibition Wherein I Am: Highlights from the Aaron Coleman Papers. Co-sponsored by the Center for Literary Arts, the Department of Comparative Literature, and the Writing program.
The International Writers Series is a collaboration between the International Writers track of the Program in Comparative Literature and the Washington University Libraries to celebrate new publications of creative works by writers and translators in the Washington University in St. Louis community and beyond.
Aaron Coleman (MFA ’15, PhD ’21), whose papers and other materials are now part of the Modern Literature Collection, will be in conversation with English professor and poet Mary Jo Bang, whose papers are also part of the Modern Literature Collection. The event will include a light buffet dinner. Coleman is featured in the exhibition Wherein I Am: Highlights from the Aaron Coleman Papers. Co-sponsored by the Center for Literary Arts, the Department of Comparative Literature, and the Writing program.
Open to Washington University affiliated faculty, staff, and students. Registration required.
International Writers Series: Tere Dávila & Rebecca Hanssens-Reed
Olin Library, Room 142
International Writers Series: Tere Dávila & Rebecca Hanssens-Reed
Olin Library, Room 142 |
Join University Libraries for an evening of fiction in translation with Puerto Rican author Tere Dávila and translator Rebecca Hanssens-Reed. Hanssens-Reed’s translation of Dávila’s Mercedes’s Special Talent won a 2022 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction.
Tere Dávila
Tere Dávila is the recipient of two Puerto Rican National Prizes: for her novel, Nenísimas, and the short story collection Aquí están las instrucciones, both published in 2018. She has also published three other short-fiction collections, children’s books and books on Puerto Rican culture. Her short stories have been translated and featured in international anthologies and literary magazines. In 2017 she received Puerto Rico’s New Voices Award, and in 2015 her short story “El fondillo maravilloso” was adapted into an award-winning short film.
Rebecca Hanssens-Reed
Rebecca Hanssens-Reed is a literary translator and PhD student in the track for international writers.
This talk explores how, against backgrounds of ancient literature, scholarship, and artistic reception, Ovid stages the strange scenario of the Muses disagreeing with one another and how a Renaissance Latin imitator resolves the difficulty.
10:15am - 10:30am
Break
10:30am - 11:30am
Teaching Latin in the USA: Challenges and Opportunities
Teresa Ramsby, Professor of Classics, University of Massachusetts at Amherst
Professor Ramsby will describe the trends in Latin pedagogy in the United States and discuss the challenges facing Latin teachers and Latin programs. Her talk will offer some strategies we, as educators and teachers of educators, can implement to overcome these challenges and transform some of them into opportunities. There are many resources and programs that support Latin teachers and that augment best practices in Latin teaching. Prepared with information and working together, we can help Latin programs survive and thrive in the United States.
11:30am - 12:30pm
Lunch
12:30pm - 1:30pm
The Cure at Athens: The Disease Theme in Sophocles’ Ajax and Oedipus at Colonus
Sheila Murnaghan, Alfred Reginald Allen Memorial Professor of Greek, University of Pennsylvania
Building on Penelope Biggs’s important discussion of “the disease theme” in Sophocles, this talk focuses on the concepts of sickness and cure in relation to two protagonists, Ajax and Oedipus, who are destined to become cult heroes in Athens. In Sophocles’ depiction of these heroes’ deaths, a human understanding of life as an alternating sequence of diseases and cures, and of medical skill as a proud human achievement, is integrated with a divine vision that transcends ordinary human distinctions and concepts of time.
1:30pm - 1:45pm
Thoughts from the Biggs Family
1:45pm - 2:15pm
Discussion
2:15pm
Dessert
Please RSVP via the link below by November 17, 2023, in order to secure your attendance. A virtual option will be available for these lectures.
