A Delicate Symphony: Courtship, Guardianship, and (self-)Censorship in Translating from Arabic with Sawad Hussain
Sawad Hussain will highlight how she has courted authors and editors, and then played guardian and censor – sometimes against her better judgments – in order to bring literary works from Arabic into English. She will discuss the roles and responsibilities a translator assumes when bringing a text from less commonly translated languages into diverse commercial Anglophone arenas. She will underscore the political and social reasons that influence how much of the original text and themes make it into the published book in translation.
Sawad Hussain is a translator from Arabic whose work has been recognized by, among others, The Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the National Book Award for Translated Literature. She is a judge for the Palestine Book Awards, and has run translation workshops for Shadow Heroes, Africa Writes, the Yiddish Book Center, the British Library, and the National Centre for Writing. Her latest co-translation is The Book Censor's Library. A former Co-Chair of the Translator's…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Student Union Building (HUB). Campus room: 332. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center for the Humanities, humanities@uw.edu, 206.543.3920. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, May 6, 2025, 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM.
Not So Simple! Translating Young Adult Literature as Resistance and Entertainment with Sawad Hussain
There is a common misconception in literary publishing that books for children and young adults are “simple” and are, therefore, easy to translate. But translating literature for younger people is not simple at all. How does the process of “curating” young people’s literature involve translators’ negotiation with the expectations of English-language editors and publishers? How might translation of young people’s literature into English function as a form of decolonization and resistance? What are the sensitivity issues that are particular to publishing young adult literature? Should young adult literature in translation be handled like highbrow adult literature in translation, like “ordinary” YA literature, or something in between? And, finally, does the original language of the book or its country of origin affect these calculations? Join the panel of three distinguished translators—Sawad Hussain (Arabic), Shelley Fairweather-Vega (Russian and Uzbek), and Takami Nieda (Japanese)—for an engaging discussion of…
Event interval: Single day event. Accessibility Contact: Sasha Senderovich, senderov@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Wednesday, May 7, 2025, 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM.
Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum, 93 Pike Street #307, Seattle, WA 98101.
Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Reading featuring Brandon Som
Brandon Som, the 2025 Roethke Reader, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 2024 for Tripas: Poems. He is the author of Babel’s Moon (Tupelo, 2011), winner of a Snowbound Chapbook Award, and The Tribute Horse (Nightboat, 2014), winner of a Nightboat Poetry Prize and Kate Tufts Discovery Award.
He is an associate professor of literature and creative writing at the University of California, San Diego.
Event interval: Single day event. Campus room: UW Seattle Campus, Roethke Auditorium (Kane 130). Accessibility Contact: ktofte@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars. Target Audience: Campus Community.
Thursday, May 8, 2025, 7:30 PM – 9:00 PM.
For more info visit english.washington.edu. Katz Distinguished Lecture by Jahan Ramazani: "Mourning across Centuries and Languages: A Poem’s Six-Hundred-Year Journey"
Grief over the loss of a child is well known to be especially difficult and intractable. Across cultures, people have long turned to poetry in times of mourning. Years after the loss of his five-year old son, Ralph Waldo Emerson repeatedly translated an elegy written by a classical Persian, Muslim poet, Sa‘di, to mourn the loss of his child, as mediated by a nineteenth-century German translation of a sixteenth-century Ottoman Turkish commentary. What can we learn from the extraordinary journey this elegy makes across epochs, cultures, and languages about mourning, translation, and poetry’s capacity to help us grapple with grief through the words of another? Jahan Ramazani is University Professor and Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. His books include Poetry in a Global Age (2020), A Transnational Poetics (2009), winner of the Harry Levin Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association, and Poetry of Mourning: The Modern Elegy from Hardy to Heaney (1994). He is…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Kane Hall (KNE). Campus room: 210. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Tuesday, May 13, 2025, 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM.
Jahan Ramazani: Elegies for the Planet
Twenty-first-century climate change poems mourn the dying and possible death of the planet. In this colloquium, Jahan Ramazani will discuss his recent article, “Elegies for the Planet,” on how ecocriticism on the poetics of climate change can help develop and revise the paradigms of poetic mourning in elegy scholarship. Ramazani will explore how elegy scholarship can help address ecocriticism’s qualms about mourning and elegy by asking: Are there ways of thinking about these poems as elegies for the planet that clarify their ethical purchase, elucidate their literary power, and embrace their necessity? And what are the implications of this body of poetry for conceptualizing our affective response to the climate crisis? Jahan Ramazani is University Professor and Edgar F. Shannon Professor of English at the University of Virginia. His books include Poetry in a Global Age (2020), A Transnational Poetics (2009), winner of the Harry Levin Prize of the American Comparative Literature Association, and Poetry of…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Communications Building (CMU). Campus room: CMU 202. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Lectures/Seminars.
Thursday, May 15, 2025, 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM.
For more info visit bit.ly. Teaching With Large Language Models: Hackathon
Large Language Models (LLMs) have recently been top of mind for many in higher education, and UW has hosted a variety of great talks and events centered on LLMs and teaching. The Teaching With LLMs Hackathon picks up where those events leave off: it provides a good stretch of time where instructors can individually or collectively revise their teaching materials with respect to LLMs. At this event you are the driver: bring a laptop and whatever teaching materials you would like to revise with respect to LLMs, including course policies, assignment prompts, or course-specific chatbots. Each session will begin with an overview of guiding principles and resources. Come when you can, leave when you like! Bring department colleagues, or fly solo! You can also optionally participate in one or more of the instructional workshops, which will each be pitched to different needs and levels of experience.
1:00-2:00 pm - Session 1:
Fundamentals of GenAI in Classrooms: Philosophical Considerations & Logistics
2:00-…
Event interval: Single day event. Campus location: Suzzallo Library (SUZ). Campus room: Open Scholarship Commons. Accessibility Contact: Simpson Center, 206.543.3920, schadmin@uw.edu. Event Types: Not Specified.
Wednesday, May 21, 2025, 1:00 PM – 5:00 PM.