Corine Tachtiris
Assistant Professor
OFFICE HOURS:
Wednesdays 1:30-3:30 & by appointment
A scholar of translation studies and world literature, Corine Tachtiris has additional research and teaching interests in postcolonial theory, globalization, gender and sexuality studies, critical race studies, and paratextual studies. She has published articles about Haitian immigrant literature, Francophone Caribbean women writers, Czech literature, and activist translation. She is currently developing a book manuscript, Translating Race, which uses the lens of critical race studies to inform an ethical practice of translating racialized language and the lens of translation studies to destabilize the construction of race through language.
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, is forthcoming in early 2019.
Tachtiris has taught a variety of courses on the theory and practice of translation, world literature, literary theory, and literature and social justice. 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
AREAS OF RESEARCH
Theory and practice of translation; world literature; critical race studies; postcolonial theory; transnationalism and globalization; diaspora, exile, and immigration; gender and sexuality studies; literature as commodity; paratextual studies; global Anglophone literature; Haitian and other Francophone literatures; Caribbean literature; African and African American literature; Czech literature.
Education
- 2005-2012
PhD, Comparative Literature, University of Michigan.
Dissertation: Branding World Literature: The Global Circulation of Authors in
Translation. Supervisor: Dr. Christi A. Merril - 2001-2003
MFA, Translation (Comparative Literature), University of Iowa.
Thesis: A Translation of La petite corruption by Yanick Lahens. Supervisor: Dr. Steven Ungar. - 1996-2000
BA, English major, French and biology minors, College honors, Earlham College
Publications (select)
- “Giving Voice: Translating Speech and Silence in Frieda Ekotto’s Don’t Whisper Too Much.” Translation Review 98 (Sept. 2017): 49-64.
- “Le marronage féminin du système érotique du (néo)colonialisme dans trois romans des femmes antillaises.” Legs et Littérature 3 (March 2014): 11-24.
- “Relation and Identity: Milan Kundera and Dany Laferrière Redefine the World.” The Comparatist 36 (May 2012): 178-195.
- “Of Male Exiles and Female Nations: ‘Sexual Errancy’ in Haitian Immigrant Literature.” Callaloo 35.2 (Spring 2012): 442-458.
Awards and Fellowships (select)
- Fellow, Institute for Holocaust, Genocide, and Memory Studies seminar on “Race and Representations,” 2020-2021
- Fellow, Faculty Success Program, University of Massachusetts, Fall 2020
- Antioch College Faculty Fund grant to support research assistants for book manuscript, June 2017
- PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for the translation of Temná láska (Dark Love) by Alexandra Berková, 2016
- Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute for College and University Faculty: What is Gained in Translation?, June 2015
- Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Translation, Hampshire College, 2013-2014
PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP
- American Comparative Literature Association
- American Literary Translators Association
- Conseil International d’Études Francophones
- Haitian Studies Association
- Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
- Modern Languages Association