C. William Moebius
Professor and Program Director, B.A.,
Lawrence (Wis.), 1963; Ph.D., New York at Buffalo, 1970
Bill Moebius has taught in Comparative Literature—at
the University of Massachusetts Amherst—for forty years,
serving as Department Chair or Program Director for the past
fifteen years. His publications include
translations of all extant poetry of Philodemos for the Oxford/Penguin
edition of the Greek Anthology and of Sophocles’ “Oedipus
at Colonus” for a Bobbs-Merrill Anthology of Greek Tragedy. For
the past twenty-one years he has published articles (in English
and in French) on word and image or word and musical relations
in Word & Image,
Notebooks in Cultural Analysis, Children’s Literature and elsewhere,
lectured several times at the Institute International Charles
Perrault in Paris, as well as at universities in Sweden,
Finland, Germany, and
Belgium. His most recent publications include his first electronic
one: “La
paix bucolique et les calamités des nations: enquête sur
l'usage de la pastorale classique à l'heure du sacrifice (1914-1918)” in: La
Violence: Cahiers Électroniques de l'imaginaire, 2006, n°4
and “Aller ailleurs: vers un sujet civilisé dans
quelques albums de jeunesse d’entre les deux guerres.” in
Structures et Pouvoirs des Imaginaires (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2007).
Professor Moebius served as President of the Association
of Departments and Programs in Comparative Literature for
eight years, and
as an elected member of the Advisory Board of the American
Comparative Literature Association
from 2001-2005. He is on sabbatical leave for Spring, 2008.
Nerissa S. Balce
Assistant Professor, B.A., DeLaSalle University, Philippines,
1986; Ph.D., California at Berkeley, 2002
Nerissa S. Balce teaches courses on Asian
American literature and film, ethnic American literature,
race and late 20th century U.S. popular culture. Her research
interests include postcolonial theories and the cultures
of 1898; race, American visual culture and feminist epistemologies;
state violence and Filipino literature during the Marcos
regime (1965-1986); and Filipino diasporic culture. Her
recent essays include: “The Filipina’s Breast:
Savagery, Docility and the Erotics of the American Empire,” Social
Text 72 (Duke UP, 2006); “Filipino Bodies, Lynching
and Empire,” in the anthology "Positively No
Filipinos Allowed": Building Communities and Discourse
(Temple UP 2006); and “American Insecurity: Radical
Filipino Community Politics after 9/11,” a co-authored
essay with sociologist Robyn Rodriguez in Peace Review
(U of San Francisco, 2004).
She is preparing a manuscript on American imperialism as
a visual language and the gendered/racialized figure of
the Filipino savage in early 20th century U.S. culture.
N. C. Christopher Couch
Lecturer, B.A., Columbia,
1976; M.A., 1980; Ph.D., 1987
N. C. Christopher Couch holds a
Ph.D. in art history from Columbia University. He
is the author of numerous books and articles on
Latin American art and on graphic novels and comic
art, including The Will Eisner Companion: The
Pioneering Spirit of the Father of the Graphic Novel (with
Stephen Weiner), Will Eisner: A Retrospective (with
Peter Myer), Faces of Eternity: Masks of the
Pre-Columbian Americas, and The Festival
Cycle of the Aztec Codex Borbonicus. He curated
exhibitions at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library American
Museum of Natural History, the Americas Society,
the Oklahoma Air and Space Museum and the Smith
College Museum of Art. He was senior editor at Kitchen
Sink Press (Northampton), editor in chief at CPM
Manga (New York, and has taught at Amherst, Columbia,
Hampshire, Haverford, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges,
and the School of Visual Arts. Publications he edited
won or were nominated for 17 Eisner and Harvey Awards,
and he has held fellowships at the Institute for
Advanced Study, Dumbarton Oaks of Harvard University,
and the Newberry Library. Current publications include
the edited volume Conversations with Harvey
Kurtzman,
and a book on Batman artist and editorial cartoonist
Jerry Robinson.
Laszlo Dienes
Professor, Diploma, Eötvös Lóránd
University of Arts and Sciences, Budapest, Hungary, 1968;
A.M., Harvard, 1972; Ph.D., 1977
László Dienes's research
interests include Russian literature of the last two centuries,
literary theory and aesthetics in general, poetry and poetics,cultural
studies, and Russian and East European cinema. His book
entitled Russian Literature in Exile: The Life and Work
of Gaito Gazdanov (first published in Germany in 1982)
was translated and published in Russia itself. He is also
the editor of the first ever three-volume "Collected
Works" of this writer, published in Moscow in 1996.
His teaching interests include comparative culture and
literature courses, Nabokov, Solzhenitsyn and the themes
of exile and emigration, Russian film, especially the works
of Andrey Tarkovsky and Alexander Sokurov, spiritual cinema,
and a course on "Digital Culture", a look at
the new cyberarts and the artistic, social, political and
psychological implications of the digital revolution. His
recent publications include a contribution to a collection
of scholarly articles entitled Gaito Gazdanov I ‘nezamechennoe
pokolenie’: Pisatel’ na peresechenii traditsii
i kul’tur published by the Russian Academy of
Sciences in Moscow in 2005 for which he also served on
its editorial
board.
Edwin Gentzler
Professor and Director of the
Translation Center, B.A., Kenyon College, 1973; Ph.D.,
Vanderbilt, 1990
divides his time between conducting teaching
and research in Comparative Literature and directing the
Translation Center. His research interests include translation
theory, literary translation, and postcolonial theory.
He is the author of Translation and Identity in the
Americas (London: Routledge, 2007) and Contemporary
Translation Theories (London: Routledge, 1993), reissued in a revised
second edition (Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2001; Shanghai
Foreign Language Education Press, 2004). He co-edited (with
Maria Tymoczko) the anthology Translation and Power (Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 2002), which includes
essays by many of the distinguished guests participating
in the Translation Center's International Visitors series.
He
serves as co-editor with Susan Bassnett of the "Topics
in Translation" Series for Multilingual Matters, is
on the Board of Advisers to the Encyclopedia of Literary
Translation by Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers in England,
and is a member of the Advisory Board of several journals,
including Cadernos de Tradução, Across, Metamorphoses,
Journal of Chinese Translation Studies, and the Massachusetts
Review. Nominated for a distinguished teaching award for
his course "Translation and Postcolonial Studies," he
lectures widely on issues of translation theory and culture,
including most recently addresses in China, Mexico, England,
Italy, Austria, Ireland, Spain, Argentina, Peru, and Brazil.
He was the recipient with faculty in the Five College Canadian
Studies Program and Concordia University, Montreal, of
a $5,000 International Research Linkage Grant for Research
on Citizenship and Identity. The Translation Center recently
was awarded the Support Providers Export Achievement Award
by the Pioneer Valley Trade Council. He was also the Project
Investigator for a three-year $255,000 grant from the Trial
Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to develop certification
exams and provide training for court interpreters.
James Hicks
Lecturer, B.A., Michigan State, 1982; M.A., University of
Pennsylvania, 1987; Ph.D., 1992
Jim Hicks' research and teaching interests
include cultural studies, representations of war, comparative
studies in American
literature, as well as modernist narrative and literary theory.
In addition to his position in Comparative Literature at
the University, he directs the American Studies Diploma Program
at Smith College—a small, one-year graduate program for
international students. He has studied in France, lectured
in Italy, and taught in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a Fulbright
Professor of English. He is also currently directing an Educational
Partnership Program with the University of Sarajevo.
David R. Lenson
Professor, B.A., Princeton, 1967; M.A., 1970; Ph.D., 1971
David Lenson's research and teaching areas
are: cultural studies, literature and society, poetry and
poetics, philosophy and literature, American studies, and
theory of tragedy. His most recent book is On Drugs,
University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1995 (paperback
1999);The Birth of Tragedy: A Commentary, Twayne
Publishers, Boston, 1987; Ride the Shadow, L'Epervier
Press, Ft. Collins, Colorado, 1979; The Gambler,
Lynx House Press, Amherst, Massachusetts, 1977; Achilles'
Choice: Examples of Modern Tragedy,
Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1975 (reprinted 1977).
He is editor of the Massachusetts Review.
Don E. Levine
Associate Professor, B.A., Columbia, 1964; M.A., Princeton,
1967; Ph.D., 1972
Don E. Levine’s research interests
besides avant-garde film and theory, include melodrama;
film noir; psychoanalytic
theory; gay and gender studies; 19th and 20th century French,
German, and American literature, film, and translation.
He is co-translator
and editor of The Selected Works of Antonin Artaud and
has edited numerous books by eminent writers and scholars
such
as Samuel Delany, Susan Sontag, Sam Weber, Peter Fenves,
and Marc Shell.
Elizabeth P. Petroff
Professor, B.S. Ed., Northwestern, 1960; M.A., California
at Berkeley, 1964; Ph.D., 1972
Elizabeth Petroff's research interests include medieval literature,
autobiography; and comparative mythology. She is currently
examining myths of feminine and their relation to representations
of the female subject in modern and post-modern texts. Her
publications include three books on medieval women and their
writings: Consolation of the Blessed: Women Saints in
Medieval Tuscany (1979); Medieval Women's Visionary
Literature (1986);
and Body and Soul: Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (1994). She has also published translations from Italian
and Latin literature. Her teaching interests range from classical
and medieval texts to contemporary American and European
fiction and autobiography.
Catherine Portuges
Professor and Graduate Program Director;
Ph.D. University of California Los Angeles, 1981
Catherine Portuges is a specialist in French and East-Central
European cinema. She is the author of Screen Memories: the Hungarian
Cinema of Márta Mészáros (l993), co-editor of Cinema
in Transition: Post-socialist East Central Europe (forthcoming, Temple, 2008)
and Gendered Subjects: the Dynamics of Feminist Pedagogy (1985). She is
Director of the Interdepartmental Program in Film Studies and Curator
of the Massachusetts Multicultural Film Festival at UMASS, and a frequent
lecturer at international conferences, an invited programmer and consultant
for film festivals and colloquia, and a delegate at international film
festivals. Her recent essays have been published in Projected Shadows:
Psychoanalytic Reflections on the Representation of Loss
in European Cinema (London: Routledge 2007); Structures
et Pouvoirs des Imaginaires (L'Harmattan,
Paris 2007); Camera Politique: Cinema et Stalinisme (Théorème
2005) East European Cinemas (Routledge 2005); 24 Frames:
Central Europe (Wallflower: London 2005); East l European
Cinemas (Routledge, 2005); Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature (Purdue, 2005); Comparative
Cultural Studies and Central European Culture Today (Purdue, 2001); Feminism
and Pornography (Oxford, 2000); Borders, Exiles, and Diasporas (Stanford,
1998); Writing New Identities: Gender, Nation & Immigration (Minnesota,
1996); Cinema, Colonialism, Postcolonialism (Texas, 1996); Nationalisms
and Sexualities (Harvard, 1992); and Life/Lines: Theorizing Women's
Autobiography (Cornell, l988). Her research interests include Central European and post-communist
national cinemas; French and Francophone cinema; memory and Jewish identity;
European minorities, migration, and gender; and cinematic representations
of the city.
Robert A. Rothstein
Professor, S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1960;
A.M., Harvard, 1961; Ph.D., 1967
Robert A. Rothstein was trained in linguistics
by Noam Chomsky, Morris Halle and Roman Jakobson, but also
has a long-standing interest in folklore. In addition to
publications in the field of Slavic linguistics, his bibliography
includes such titles as "The Poetics of Proverbs," "Yiddish
Songs of Drunkenness," "The Popular Song in Wartime
Russia," "The Girl He Left Behind: Women in East
European Songs of Emigration," "Klezmer-loshn:
The Language of Jewish Folk Musicians," and "How
It Was Sung in Odessa: At the Intersection of Russian and
Yiddish Folk Culture." Since 2004 he has contributed
a regular column on Polish language, literature and folklore
called “Two Words to the Wise” to the Boston
biweekly newspaper Bialy Orzel / White Eagle.
At UMass, where he directs the Program in Slavic and East
European Studies,
he has taught Polish, Russian, Yiddish, Belarusian and
Slovak, as well as courses in folklore, linguistics, and
Yiddish literature and culture. He holds a joint appointment
in the Department of Judaic & Near Eastern Studies,
an adjunct appointment in the Department of Linguistics
and in 2006 was appointed the Walter Raleigh Amesbury,
Jr., and Cecile Dudley Amesbury Professor of Polish Language,
Literature and Culture.
Maria Tymoczko
Professor, B.A., Harvard, 1965; M.A., 1968; Ph.D., 1973
Maria Tymoczko has an international reputation
in three fields: Translation Studies; Celtic medieval literature;
and Irish Studies, with a specialty in literature in both
Irish and English, including James Joyce. She is one of
the leading theorists in Translation Studies, setting new
directions for the field.
Her critical studies The Irish "Ulysses" (University
of California Press, 1994) and Translation in a Postcolonial
Context (St. Jerome Publishing,
1999) have both won prizes and commendations, the former co-winner of the 1995
Book Award for Literary and Cultural Criticism from the American Conference for
Irish Studies and the latter receiving the Michael J. Durkan Prize for the best
book published in Irish language and cultural studies from the American Conference
for Irish Studies and selected by Choice magazine as one of the most important
books published in 2000. Professor Tymoczko has edited several volumes including
Born into a World at War (with Nancy Blackmun, 2000), Translation
and Power (with
Edwin Gentzler, 2002), Language and Tradition in Ireland (with Colin Ireland,
2003), Language and Identity in Twentieth-Century Irish Culture (with Colin Ireland,
2003; special issue of Éire-Ireland), and Translation as Resistance (2006,
special section in the Massachusetts Review). Her most recent book is Enlarging
Translation, Empowering Translators (St. Jerome Publishing, 2007), a major reconceptualization
of translation theory.
Articles by Professor Tymoczko have appeared
in Target, The Translator, Babel,
Meta, TTR, Éire-Ireland, Studia
Celtica, Irish University Review, James
Joyce Quarterly, Yeats Annual, Comparative Literature, and Harvard
Magazine, among others. She has contributed chapters to recent anthologies
including
Translating Others (2007), Similarity and Difference in Translation (2004),
Apropos of Ideology: Translation Studies on Ideology (2003), The
Languages of Ireland (2003), Irish and Postcolonial Writing (2002), Crosscultural
Transgressions: Research Models in Translation Studies (2002), Re-Organizing
Knowledge, Transforming Institutions (2001), Changing the Terms: Translating
in the Postcolonial Era (2000), and Post-colonial Translation (1999), as well as classics such as Translation,
History and Culture (1990) and The Manipulation of Literature (1985). Her translations
of early Irish literature are published in Two Death Tales from the Ulster
Cycle (Dolmen Press, 1981).
Professor Tymoczko has held grants from
the National Endowment for the Humanities
and the American Council of Learned Societies and she has been a Fulbright
Scholar in France. In 2005-2006 she held a prestigious Samuel F. Conti Faculty
Research
Fellowship, awarded by the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Maria Tymoczko
has served as president of the Celtic Studies Association of North America
and as a member of the Executive Committee of the American Conference for
Irish Studies.
She has lectured in many countries of the world including China, Japan, and
India, as well as countries throughout Europe and the Americas.
Trained as a
medievalist, Professor Tymoczko holds three degrees from Harvard University.
She teaches a wide variety of subjects including translation theory
and practice, modern and contemporary novel, postcolonial literature, fantasy
literature, medieval literature, and early Irish language and literature.
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