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UChicago to Expand English-Language Translation of South Asian Literature
Less than 1 percent of all translated literature published in the U.S. during the past 10 years comes from a South Asian language while the region is home to more than 20 percent of the world’s population. To reverse this trend, the UChicago Humanities Division is launching the South Asian Literature in Translation (SALT) project with substantial funding over five years by Dipak Golechha to support and promote English-language translation of literature written in the major languages of South Asia.
“With this project, we aim to bring some of the extraordinarily rich literature of the subcontinent to publishing markets where it has thus far been severely underrepresented,” said Jason Grunebaum, co-director of the SALT project, a Hindi translator and instructional professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations (SALC) at UChicago.
Humanities Scholar Receives the Prestigious William Nelson Prize
For revealing how the Romani people of Europe and sub-Saharan Africans were similarly racialized from the 17th century onwards, Noémie Ndiaye received the 2022 William Nelson Prize from the Renaissance Society of America for the best article annually published in the journal Renaissance Quarterly/. Her article “Black Roma: Afro-Romani Connections in Early Modern Drama (and Beyond)” focuses on performance practices in English and French settings showing the same legacy of bondage, enslavement, and human trafficking in theatrical representations for the Romani people and sub-Saharan Africans.
“In plays such as Molière’s Imaginary Invalid, Romani performers were performing Black dances,” said Ndiaye, the Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language. “The connection is consistent, and I got curious about this. What if this is not a coincidence?”
Scholar Mary Beard to Deliver Lecture Series on What We can Learn from the Classics
When Mary Beard’s broadcasting career took off in her mid-50s, she became one of Great Britain’s best-known and most beloved academics thanks to her candor, knowledge about the ancient world and original insights.
Beard has the rare combination of wit, warmth, scholarship and genuine concern for her audiences—from the general public to the generations of students she taught at Cambridge University for more than 40 years.
In April, Beard will discuss “What Can We Learn from the Classics?” as part of the Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Family Lectures, hosted annually by the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago. Her lecture series will begin April 20 and continue April 25 and 26 at the Rubenstein Forum—both in-person and live streamed—from 6 to 7:30 p.m. CDT. Registration for the series is free and open to the public.
Soujourner Truth Festival to Bring Together Generations of Black Women Filmmakers
In 1976, a group of artists organized the first Black women’s film festival. The Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts was a celebration of Black feminist art and a space that fostered collaboration between artistic mediums. It was also a call for industry changes needed for Black women’s filmmaking to thrive.
Apart from two tributes, the Festival never happened on the same scale again—until now. Over four decades later, many of these same luminaries will reunite alongside the next generation of filmmakers.
The Sojourner Truth Festival of the Arts 2023 commemorates this historic event with a nine-week film series culminating in a symposium held March 2-4 at UChicago’s Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. All events are free and open to the public.
“This symposium is a way to think about continuities, ruptures and evolutions,” said film scholar Assoc. Prof. Allyson Nadia Field.
