We are delighted to welcome Aaron Coleman to the Department of Comparative Literature as our second Postdoctoral Fellow in Critical Translation Studies, starting fall 2021. After earning a BA at Kalamazoo College and MFA in Poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, Aaron completed his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature with a Certificate in Translation Studies in 2021 at Washington University.
His doctoral dissertation, Poetics of Afrodiasporic Translation: Negotiating Race, Nation, and Belonging Between Cuba and the United States, examines translational relationships between Black poets in the United States and AfroCuban poets, and it includes his own translation of Nicolás Guillén’s 1967 collection, El gran zoo [The Great Zoo].
Aaron is the author of a prize-winning collection of poems, Threat Come Close (Four Way Books, 2018), and the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fulbright Program, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the American Literary Translators Association. His poems and essays have appeared in publications including the Boston Review, Callaloo, the New York Times, the Poetry Society of America, and the Academy of American Poets' Poem a Day series.
He is also the founder of The Patchwork Project: A Home for Black Translators & Writers, a virtual meeting ground, and an online database where Black translators and writers from different locations and languages of the African diaspora can partner and work with each other.
The Postdoctoral Fellowship in Critical Translation Studies is funded by LSA with support from the U-M National Center for Institutional Diversity and the Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series on Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest. It provides the fellow with the opportunity to pursue independent scholarship related to translation, gain teaching experience, and engage with interdisciplinary translation initiatives across the university.
