Sandra Bermann

Global Literary Leaders: Keynote Speakers

Abstract

This talk considers new developments in translation theory, particularly those dealing with multilingualism, translanguaging, and machine translation (with a focus on AI). It does so while bearing in mind the importance of decolonial frameworks. Looking to a number of literary examples, I ask how these theoretical perspectives might come together to offer a Comparative Literature with a greater emphasis on the living complexity and potential reciprocity of languages, translation, and literary study.

Bio

Sandra Bermann is Cotsen Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University. She is author of The Sonnet Over Time: Studies in the Sonnets of Petrarch, Shakespeare, and Baudelaire; translator of Manzoni’s On the Historical Novel; co-editor of Nation, Language, and the Ethics of Translation; and co-editor of A Companion to Translation Studies. Her current projects focus largely on lyric poetry and also translation studies, migration and literature, and new directions in comparative literature. A recipient of Whiting and Fulbright Fellowships, she has lectured widely, and been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Columbia University Institute for Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris. At Princeton, she chaired the Department of Comparative Literature for twelve years, served as Head of Whitman College and of Stevenson Hall, co-founded the Program in Translation and Intercultural Communication, and led the President’s Working Group on the innovative Bridge Year Program. She has served as President of the American Comparative Literature Association (2007-2009) and as President of the International Comparative Literature Association (2019-2022).