Congratulations to Comp Lit Undergraduates!
Comparative Literature Majors
Duaa Caldwell graduated with a BS in Comparative Literature and in Biopsychology, Cognition, and Neuroscience.
Nico Magana graduated with a BA in Comparative Literature, with honors, and in English with honors. Nico also served as one of the department's first Undergraduate Peer Mentors.
Jishi Sun graduated with a BA in Comparative Literature and in Mathematics.
Olga Yatsenka served as one of the department's first Undergraduate Peer Mentors.
Translation Studies Minors
Avery Berger completed the Minor in Translation Studies. Avery graduated with a BS in Biology, Health, and Society Major and in Spanish.
Mia Brodeur completed the Minor in Translation Studies. Mia graduated with a BA in German and in Linguistics.
Ava Dobos completed the Minor in Translation Studies. Graduated with a BA in German and completed a second minor in Museum Studies.
Xilin Gao completed the Minor in Translation Studies. Xilin graduated with a BBA in Business Administration.
Evelyn Hempel completed the Minor in Translation Studies. Evelyn graduated with a BS in German and completed a minor in Biochemistry.
Jinny Kim completed the Minor in Translation Studies. Jinny graduates with a BA in Psychology and a minor in User Experience Design.
Kate Louissant completed the Minor in Translation Studies. Kate graduated with a BFA in Musical Theatre.
Justin Scott completed the Minor in Translation Studies. Just graduated with a BA in Asian Studies.
2024 Comparative Literature First Year Writing Prize
Katherine Schultz was awarded the 2024 Comparative Literature First Year Writing Prize for the essay "A Fresh Fusion of Music Genres."
Serafina Sabatini received a First Year Writing Prize honorable mention for the essay "Self Diagnosis: The Intersection of Limerence and Borderline Personality Disorder in the Digital Age."
2024 Senior Prize in Literary Translation
Mia Brodeur was awarded the 2024 Senior Prize in Literary Translation for her translation from German of "Die Freundin."
Nico Magana was awarded the 2024 Senior Prize in Literary Translation for his translation from Spanish of "Noon at the Border (Mediodía de frontera)."
Evelyn Hempel received an honorable mention for select poems from "Gedichte" translated from German.
Michelle Wu received an honorable mention for selections from Kim Namju's Poetry Collection (김남주 시전집) from Korean.
Congratulations to Comp Lit Graduate Students!
Arianna Afsari was awarded a Friends of Princeton University Library Research Grant to conduct a two-week research stay at the Special Collections at Firestone Library. She also published translations of selected poems and a preface taken from Juan Gelman’s book, Dibaxu, for Absinthe.
Lis Fertig completed the Graduate Certificate in Critical Translation Studies with a capstone project titled, "Translating Sound, Gender and Voice in Jelinek’s Radio Play 'Ballad of Three Important Men'."
Srimati Ghosal had a paper published in South Asian Popular Culture, "Drawing the lines: Studying the Common Man caricatures by R.K. Laxman to understand dominant political discourse around legitimate political contestations in postcolonial India." Srimati also organized the 13th University of Michigan Pakistan Conference with the Center for South Asian Studies and will be presenting at the 26th Law Culture Humanities Conference on the 16th-18th of May in Vancouver.
Lena Grimm completed the Graduate Certificate in Critical Translation Studies with a capstone project titled, "To read, to see, to spin, and to turn — Reintroducing Barbara Köhler's Elektras."
Graham Liddell received a ProQuest Distinguished Dissertation Award for his dissertation “Narrative Wayfinding: Author-izing Arab and Afghan Migration across Morphing Borderscapes”.
Delsa Lopez served as a Comp Lit DEI Ally during the 2023-24 academic year.
Júlia Irion Martins received the 2024 Rackham Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. Júlia also served as one of the graduate student representatives during the 2023-24 academic year.
Marina Mayorski completed the Graduate Certificate in Critical Translation Studies with a capstone project titled, "The Ottoman Captain: A Ladino Novel by Elia Karmona."
Sam McCracken served as one of the graduate student representatives during the 2023-24 academic year.
Arakel Minassian had the pleasure of organizing the UM Center for Armenian Studies International Graduate Student Workshop with a fellow graduate student in Linguistics, Emma Portugal. This was a two-day workshop on the Armenian language today, called "Language Revitalization and Resurgence: The Case of Modern Armenian." The workshop had 20 participants from across the country (and three from Armenia and Hungary) all focusing on Armenian from linguistic, historical, and literary perspectives. It was a very successful and exciting workshop!
Dylan Ogden successfully defended his dissertation, "Dissertation Title: Cracks in the Iron Curtain: Reception and Influence of the Nouveau Roman in Late-Soviet Russia."
Jaideep Pandey served as a Comp Lit DEI Ally during the 2023-24 academic year.
Ana Popovic successfully defended her dissertation, "Invalid Feelings: Affect in Crip Literature."
Katherine Tapia completed the Graduate Certificate in Critical Translation Studies with a capstone project titled, "From Latin Quill to Spanish Pen: Unveiling the Aberdeen Bestiary in Translation."
Congratulations to the 2024 CLIFF team–Arianna Afsari, Delsa Lopez, CC Barrick, and Sanju Ramanathan–for organizing a successful and thought-provoking conference!
Congratulations to Comp Lit Faculty!
Catherine Brown's second book was published in March 2023. Remember the Hand: Manuscription in Early Medieval Iberia is available online for free via Open Access!
Aaron Coleman signed the contract to publish his translation of The Great Zoo by Nicolás Guillén with University of Chicago Press in October 2024. Five poems from the collection were published by the Academy of American Poets at poets.org. He also published two new poems in Jet Fuel Review. Aaron presented papers at the AfroCuban Legacies Conference and Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference.
Vassilis Lambropoulos has launched and directs a Greek-language website, Ποιητική κρίση (Poetic judgment/crisis) which solicits original essays on the production and reception of 21st century Greek poetry. In addition to books, it covers literary sites and mechanisms, such as anthologies, bookstores, performances, publishing houses, and awards. The site is sponsored by the C.P. Cavafy Modern Greek Chair and the Greek think tank “Institute for Alternative Policies.”
Yopie Prins served as 2023 chair of the Executive Committee for the MLA Forum on Romanticism and the Nineteenth Century, and she moderated a panel at MLA in January 2024 on "Nineteenth-Century Poetry and (in, as, of) Translation." She also collaborated with Professor Kristin Dickinson to work on projects for translatingmichigan.org, a public humanities initiative that was awarded $30,000 in grants from OVPR and the Michigan Humanities Council, and featured in the Fall 2023 issue of LSA Magazine ("Michigan in Translation"). In addition, she led a team of faculty and staff in developing a proposal for a new Translation Major, with $10,000 support from the CRLT Whitaker Fund for the Improvement of Teaching.
Niloofar Sarlati published two essays this year, one in Comparative Literature, titled “Suspicious Gifts and Speculative Translations: Colonial and Semicolonial Encounters between English and Persian,” and one in the Keyword Issue of Victorian Literature and Culture, titled “Ta’ārof.” She was awarded an Institute for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship for AY 2024-2025, where she will work on completing her book manuscript.
Will Stroebel has signed a contract with Princeton University Press for his book, Literature's Refuge, which is now in production phase and will be coming out with the Translation-Transnation series in early 2025.
Silke Weineck, together with her co-PI Stefan Szymanski, nabbed a $40,000 grant from the UM Arts Initiative to produce a documentary about Detroit's 1963 bid for the 1968 Summer Olympics. Her essay on Joe Louis and the Ford Motor Company, "How Racist Car Dealers KO’d Joe Louis," appeared in The Nation in May 2023. It was featured on a list of "Best History Writing of 2023." She added to her growing portfolio of UM critique at the Chronicle of Higher Education with "The University of Michigan Demands Flattery for President — While Crushing Labor" and "Michigan’s New Protest Policy Is a Scandal." A seminar she co-organized with Princeton's Barbara Nagel on "Playing in the German Dark" has been solicited for the book series Spektrum. She is excited about retiring, effective January 1st, 2028.]
Congratulations to Comp Lit Staff!
Julie Burnett was nominated for the Kay Beattie Outstanding Individual Employee award for the Humanities Division.
Katie Colman was promoted to Executive Secretary in April 2023.
Stephanie Hart was nominated (and is in the middle of participating in) the Michigan Leadership Academy. This is an accelerated 4-day immersive learning experience to invest in the development of University of Michigan leaders so that they can reach higher levels of success and produce better results for the University. Stephanie was nominated for and appointed to serve as one of two Humanities Division CAs on the CA Steering Committee and College Operations Council for AY2024-25 and AY2025-26.
Giota Tachtara published her first book of fiction and will participate in the International Book Fair in Greece later in May. In November 2023 she gave a TEDx talk on communications, contact, and the experience of living between two languages, at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki.
