Graduate Student, Centre for Intercultural Studies
Thesis Title: Translation and Reception of Postcolonial Literature in Poland, 1970-2010
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Prof. Theo Hermans
Dr Katarzyna Zechenter |
About
My main research interests include postcolonial studies, translation studies and comparative literature. I studied English and translation at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow (magister), English and German at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet in Munich and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kent (MA). The results of my research at Kent were published as I RATHER DEAD: A Spivakian Reading of Indo-Caribbean Women’s Narratives (Roman Books, 2011; http://www.romanbooks.co.in/9789380905037.php). Currently, I am pursuing an AHRC-funded PhD project on the translation and reception of postcolonial literature in Poland, 1970-2010.
PhD RESEARCH PROJECT
Studying discourses employed in the Polish reviews of translated postcolonial fiction, I examine Polish readers’ attitudes towards postcolonial ‘Others’, before and after the political transformation of 1989. Some scholars note that Poland has been both a colonizer and a colonized and that Polish history lends itself to a postcolonial reading. Bearing that in mind, I argue that various perspectives from which Polish readers perceive non-European, postcolonial people – ranging from superiority to a certain solidarity – correlate with various aspects of the Polish self-perception, which include the sense of belonging to the Western civilization (and an identification with former colonizers), and the experience of having been subjugated by Germany and Russia (comparable to experiences of the colonized peoples).
OTHER ACADEMIC RESPONSIBILITIES
I am a teaching assistant at UCL, where I have taught seminars on translation and postcolonialism, and an MA tutor at Leicester. I also act as a postgraduate representative of the British Comparative Literature Association (http://www.bcla.org/), a web officer of the Postcolonial Studies Association (http://www.postcolonialstudiesassociation.co.uk/), and I volunteer as a tutor in the Polish academic association Collegium Invisibile (http://www.ci.edu.pl/).
ACADEMIC WORK - DETAILED ACCOUNT
Below I include my main publications, as well as information about some other papers. I will be happy to share the results of my unpublished work: please contact me at d.goluch.09@ucl.ac.uk.
I RATHER DEAD: A Spivakian Reading of Indo-Caribbean Women’s Narratives (Roman Books, 2011)
The book discusses fiction and other stories of Indo-Caribbean women, concentrating on their attempts to rewrite the oppressive traditional narratives, or, to use Spivak’s term, ‘regulative psychobiographies’. More about the book at http://www.romanbooks.co.in/9789380905037.php.
‘Chinua Achebe Translating, Translating Chinua Achebe: On the Polish Translation of “Things Fall Apart”’, in: D. Whittaker (ed.) Chinua Achebe’s ‘Things Fall Apart’ 1958 – 2008 (Rodopi, 2011)
From the introduction by David Whittaker: ‘… the purpose of [the] essay is twofold: to shed light on the presence and influence of Things Fall Apart in Poland; and to address the question of the relevance of domesticating and foreignizing strategies to the task of postcolonial translation’. More about the publication at http://www.rodopi.nl/ntalpha.asp?BookId=CC+137&type=new&letter=.
‘Anti-imperial Struggle and Pro-colonial Sabotage: Translation and Reception of Anglophone Postcolonial Fiction in Poland, 1970-89’; Postcolonial Translation Conference, Newcastle, 2011
The paper looks at the Polish reception of postcolonial literature under Communism. It interrogates discourses about the ‘Third World’ used in the Cold War context, mainly showing their affinity with the colonial discourses popular in pre-Communist Poland.
‘Normal or Normalizing? – Self-reflexivity in Postcolonial Translation’; Research Models in Translation II Conference, Manchester, 2011
In this paper I used narrative theory and suggested that translators’ self-reflexivity may consist in constructing internally consistent narratives about themselves and their work.
‘Eastern European and Postcolonial Spaces: A Comparison Dislocated From Translation’; Comparison Beyond the West, PG workshop, UCL, 2010
This text explores different conceptualizations of comparison and translation, suggesting that translation (of A into B) and comparison TO (A to B) presuppose movement between disparate orders or categories, while comparison WITH assumes that the entities A and B belong to the same order. The latter conceptualization helps to avoid hierarchization and, as such, has been chosen for my project of comparing Eastern European and postcolonial spaces.
‘Rediscovering Roots in Derek Walcott’s “Omeros” and Marina
Warner’s “Indigo”’, in: W. Kalaga et al. (eds), Studies in Culture and
Literature, Vol. 2, Katowice: University of Silesia / PARA, 2007.
This essay traces similarities between the novel Indigo and the Caribbean epic Omeros, from which Warner borrows a motto for her book. It focuses on the characters' search for their roots, noting that in both cases the roots may well be described in terms of Deleuzian rhizomes.
I also delivered papers on the Polish translation and reception of such authors as Ngugi Wa Thiong’o’, Amos Tutuola, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali and other ‘Black British’ writers, Rudyard Kipling and Salman Rushdie, and V.S. Naipaul. Last but not least, I was interested in the question of translating Creole into Polish: Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners and my attempts at translating it formed the core of my 50,000 word MA dissertation at the Jagiellonian University (2008).
Contact Information
| Address: | d.goluch.09@ucl.ac.uk |
