On February 3rd 2023, at 3pm CET, ESPRit is organising an online seminar with the research group Spaces of Translation from Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz and Nottingham Trent University.

The members of the research team (Alison E. Martin, Marina Popea, Dana Steglich, and Andrew Thacker) will share some of the results from the project.

Here is the abstract of their presentation:

Our project studies a small constellation of important literary and cultural magazines from three countries (Britain, France, Germany) in order to consider how they explore and construct notions of European identity in the period following from the end of the Second World War to the mid-1960s. Drawing on diverse theorisations of Europe and European public space, we ask: how does periodical culture in Britain, France, and Germany attempt to articulate a reconfigured notion of European identity after the catastrophe of World War Two? At the heart of the project will be a focus upon the practice of translation: what is the significance of the translation of works of poetry, fiction, criticism, and non-fiction in our corpus of periodicals in this period? How do translated texts operate as vehicles for the forging of new European identities? Does the crossing of linguistic boundaries produce alliances across national borders? Conversely, in the practice of non-translation do we see a new assertion of national languages and identities? Do bilingual magazines in this period work to bring diverse national literatures together, or mark their continued divergence?

A recording of this seminar is now available on our YouTube channel: