Regina Galasso

Regina Galasso is Associate Professor in the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Program and Director of the Translation Center of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her award-winning scholarly work highlights the role of translation in literary histories and contemporary culture. She creates and supports ways to promote translation education to encourage greater understanding of this needed service and intellectual activity. Her research and teaching interests include 20th- and 21st-century Iberian Literatures, literature of the city, and translation. She is the author of Translating New York: The City’s Languages in Iberian Literatures (Liverpool UP, 2018), recipient of the 2017 Northeast Modern Language Association Book Award. She is the editor of the forthcoming This Is a Classic: Translators on Making Writers Global (Bloomsbury, 2023). She is the co-editor of two edited volumes: Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing (Bucknell UP, 2019), recipient of the 2020 South Atlantic Modern Language Association Book Award, with Evelyn Scaramella, and a special Nueva York issue of Translation Review 81 (2012) with Carmen Boullosa. She is the translator of Alicia Borinsky’s Lost Cities Go to Paradise (Swan Isle P, 2015) and Miguel Barnet’s A True Story: A Cuban in New York (Jorge Pinto Books, 2010). Since 2018, Dr. Galasso has worked with public schools throughout Massachusetts to provide educational and professional development opportunities to interpreters and translators who work in K-12 schools. During 2018-2019, she was appointed by the Commissioner of the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to serve on the School Interpreters Task Force and continues to partner with DESE to improve language access initiatives in Massachusetts schools. With her students, she curated the 2022 exhibition “Read the World: Picture Books and Translation” for the Reading Library at the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art. She was a Spanish teacher at the César Chávez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy and an interpreter during the Kennedy Center’s AmericArtes Festival in Washington, DC. Before joining the faculty at UMass Amherst, she was a professor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of the City University of New York.

Research Areas

• 20th- and 21th-century Iberian Literatures
• Literary and Cultural Relations between U.S. and Iberian and Latin American Writers and Artists
• Literature of the City
• Literary Translation

Publications

Book

• Translating New York: The City’s Languages in Iberian Literatures. Liverpool UP, 2018.
• The manuscript of Translating New York received the 2017 Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Book Award.

Edited Volumes

• She is editor with Professor Evelyn Scaramella of the forthcoming collection titled Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing (Bucknell University Press, 2018).
• "Nueva York." Spec. issue of Translation Review 81 (2012), co-edited with Carmen Boullosa.

   

Book-Length Translations

• Lost Cities Go to Paradise by Alicia Borinsky. Chicago: Swan Isle P, 2015.
• A True Story: A Cuban in New York by Miguel Barnet. Prologue by José Manuel Prieto. New York: Jorge Pinto Books, 2010.

   

  Articles and Book Chapters

  • “Translation as a Way to Write the City.” Ilan Stavans Unbound: The Critic Between Two Canons. Ed. Bridget Kevane. Academic Studies P, 2017. (in progress)
  • “Writing Photography and Poetry: New York City in the Work of José Moreno Villa.” The Challenge of Modernity: Avant-garde Cultural Practices in Spain (1914-1936). Ed. Eduardo Gregori and Juan Herrero-Senés. Leiden; Boston: Brill - Rodopi, 2016. 141-57.
  • “La Prensa and Its Mission: A Layout of the Literature of Hispanic New York.” Hispania 95.2 (2012): 189-200.
  • “The Islands of Cuba: New York and Miguel Barnet’s La vida real.” La Habana Elegante 49 (2011): n. pag. Web.
  • “The Lifeline of Chromos: Translation and Felipe Alfau.” TranscUlturAl: A Journal of Translation and Cultural Studies 3 (2011): 43-55.
  • “Una tradición literaria americaniard: Felipe Alfau y Eduardo Lago.” Galerna: Revista Internacional de Literatura 8 (abril 2009): 91-96.
  • “Más que un poeta en Nueva York: La ciudad y José Moreno Villa.” Hybrido: Arte y Literatura 10 (Winter 2008): 10-13.

     

  Awards and Accolades

  • Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Book Award for the manuscript of Translating New York: The City’s Languages in Iberian Literatures. 2017.
  • Multi-Campus Collaborative Blended Learning Grant (with Ilan Stavans [Amherst C]), Project Title: Translating the Classics. Five Colleges Consortium. 2015-2016.
  • Northeast Modern Language Association Summer Fellowship, 2015.

     

  Courses Recently Taught

  • SPAN 312: Oral and Written Expression
  • SPAN 397ET: Translation Today: Spanish/English
  • SPAN 374/EUST 344: Translating the Classics (blended-learning course)
  • SPAN 597PT: Practicing Literary Translation: Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan
  • SPAN 697TR: Travel and Translation