Conversations about Literature & Translation: Alicia Borinsky, Gloria Gervitz & Mark Schafer (11.18.21)
Join us on Thursday, November 18, at 12:30 PM for a Conversation about Literature & Translation event with Alicia Borinsky, Professor of Spanish, Gloria Gervitz, and Mark Schafer. The topic of conversation is Gerwitz’s epic poem, Migrations, in English translation by Mark Schafer.
Forty-four years in the making, Migrations is considered by critics to be a masterpiece of modern Mexican literature. Gloria Gervitz’s book is an epic journey in free verse through the individual and collective memories of Jewish women emigrants from Eastern Europe, a conversation that ranges across two thousand years of poetry, a bridge that spans the oracles of ancient Greece and the markets of modern Mexico, a prayer that blends the Jewish and Catholic liturgies, a Mexican woman’s reclamation through poetry of her own voice and erotic power. In its reach, audacity, and astonishing vitality, Gervitz’s extraordinary life’s work bears comparison to the achievements of HD, Lorine Niedecker, Ezra Pound, and Walt Whitman.
Gloria Gervitz was born in 1943 in Mexico City. In addition to writing Migrations, she has also translated the work of Clarice Lispector, Samuel Beckett, Anna Akhmatova, and other authors into Spanish. Her own work has appeared in a number of anthologies in Mexico and the United States and has been translated into several languages. In 2011, she was awarded the Mexico PEN Prize for Literary Excellence. She lives in California.
Mark Schafer is an award-winning translator and visual artist and a Senior Lecturer in Spanish at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He has translated the work of authors from around the Spanish-speaking world, including David Huerta, Belén Gopegui, Virgilio Piñera, Alberto Ruy Sánchez, and Gloria Gervitz. Schafer is a founding member of the Boston Area Literary Translators Group.
Alicia Borinsky is a fiction writer, poet and literary critic who has published extensively in English and Spanish in the United States, Latin America and Europe. Her most recent books are Low Blows/Golpes Bajos (short fictions), Frivolous Women and Other Sinners (poetry), both published bilingually, and One Way Tickets: Writers and the Culture of Exile (literary criticism). Professor Borinsky is the recipient of several awards, including the Latino Literature Prize for Fiction and a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Her research interests include the theory and practice of literary translation, trans-national cultural studies, contemporary gender and literary theory, Latino literature and the legacy of the Latin American avant-garde from Huidobro to Borges and the writers of the “Boom” to the present.
Register in advance for this meeting:
When: November 18, 2021 12:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)
https://bostonu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_cQqaXB1HRxS7mBZr3fsxvQ
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
