Corine Tachtiris

Corine Tachtiris’s research focuses on the intersection between translation studies and critical race studies. Her monograph Translation and Race was published by Routledge in 2024 and is available open access. Outlining relevant concepts from critical race studies, Translation and Race demonstrates how norms of translation theory and practice in the West actually derive from ideas rooted in white supremacy and other forms of racism. Tachtiris has additional research and teaching interests in postcolonial and decolonial studies, gender and sexuality studies, and world literature. She has published articles about Haitian immigrant literature, Francophone Caribbean women writers, Czech literature, and activist translation.

Tachtiris is also a literary translator focusing on the work of contemporary women writers from Haiti, Africa, and the Czech Republic. Her translation of Frieda Ekotto’s Don’t Whisper Too Much, the first Francophone African novel to feature women loving women in a positive light, was published by Bucknell University Press in 2019. She is currently Vice President of the American Literary Translators Association and Prose Translation Editor at The Massachusetts Review.

Tachtiris has taught a variety of courses on the theory and practice of translation, world literature, literary theory, and literature and social justice. In addition to her position in Comparative Literature, she also serves as a core faculty member in the graduate Decolonial Global Studies Certificate. Before coming to UMass, she taught at several colleges and universities across the United States and spent half a dozen years teaching and researching in France and the Czech Republic.

On leave Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.

WORKING LANGUAGES

• French
• Czech
• Basic reading knowledge of Haitian Creole and Italian