Conversation & Series

Translating the Future Finale at Columbia University: Translating for a World on Fire, with Maria Dahvana Headley and Emily Wilson, moderated by Susan Bernofsky

Wed, Sep 23, 2020

8:00 PM–9:00 PM

Online event via Columbia University. Please register below.

Join Columbia University School of the Arts for the finale of Translating the Future, a 20-week series of conversations between translators, with “Translating for a World on Fire” featuring Maria Dahvana Headley and Emily Wilson, and moderated by Susan Bernofsky.

What does it mean to retranslate ancient classics for a present in crisis and to produce feminist translations of works understood as iconically male? Maria Dahvana Headley (whose new Beowulf has just appeared) and Emily Wilson (translator of The Odyssey, now at work on The Iliad) join Literary Translation at Columbia Director Susan Bernofsky for a far-ranging conversation on the radical practice of making translation a space of resistance and joy.

Click here to register for this event.

Maria Dahvana Headley is a #1 New York Times-bestselling author of the novels Magonia, Aerie, Queen of Kings, and – most recently – The Mere Wife, a retelling of Beowulf set in the suburbs and featuring a military veteran as Grendel’s mother. She is also the author of the memoir The Year of Yes.

Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow Emily Wilson, who teaches classics and literature at the University of Pennsylvania, has published translations of Seneca and Euripides as well as Homer, and has written a biography of Seneca and other scholarly works. She tweets about The Odyssey at @EmilyRCWilson.

This event is organized and sponsored by Columbia University School of the Arts.

This event is part of the Translating the Future conference and conversation series which is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY, PEN America, and the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, with additional support from the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center. This event is generously sponsored by the Princeton University Program in Translation & Intercultural Communication.