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Zofia Nałkowska’s Life in English

10 November 2016, 10:00 am–5:30 pm

Portrait of Zofia Nałkowska…

Event Information

Location

UCL SSEES, London

Researchers and translators alike are invited to this one day conference on the life of Zofia Nałkowska (1884-1954), which is sponsored by the Polish Cultural Institute, London, the Book Institute, Kraków, and the Polonia Aid Foundation Trust (PAFT), London. 

The conference aims to promote the work of Nałkowska as a major interwar Polish literary figure, and in a wider sense to promote the role of translation work in bringing good foreign literature to the wider British and other English-speaking reading public.

The conference is free to attend.

Background

Until recently, this major interwar Polish literary figure was little known to English-speaking readers, due to a lack of translations. In 2000 her collection of short stories about the Holocaust (Medallions, 1946), translated by Diana Kuprel, made her more prominent and recognized as a significant writer on this topic. Her other novels, written between 1906 and 1948, have remained in the shadow. 

More recent translations published 2014-2016, however, have revealed her to also be an astute critic of the Polish inter-war independent state, as well as an accomplished stylist and leading Modernist on the European scale. The translations now allow her to be included in comparative contexts. She is also regarded as a feminist. Her position here is especially interesting, as she did not participate in the women’s rights movement in Poland, yet made radical claims for women’s sexual liberation and self-fulfilment. 

In the Programme

Chaired and discussed by Stanley Bill (University of Cambridge) and Katarzyna Zechenter (UCL SSEES).

Speaker Topic
Benjamin Paloff (University of Michigan) Nałkowska as a European Modernist
Jenny Robertson, Scottish poet and writer  Mapping a personal, independent discovery of Nałkowska while living in Poland. 
Translators:
Diana Kuprel, Megan Thomas, Ewa Malachowska-Pasek and Ursula Phillips
The role of translations in making Polish literary figures, and Nałkowska in particular, more visible outside Poland, both to the general readership and to academics working in comparative contexts. 

A final panel will widen the debate from specifically Nałkowska to discuss ways in which more Polish women writers might be published in translation and promoted to non-Polish audiences. Several translators will briefly present suggested projects for specific authors and works, with a view to seeking publishers.

View the programme here.

The conference is not targeted exclusively at Polish specialists, but as much at scholars and students of Comparative literature studies and translation studies, feminist and women’s studies, modernism and the history of the psychological novel. It aims to appeal to a wide range of researchers and translators, and not only to academics but also to working translators and organizations promoting good foreign literature to the wider British and other English-speaking reading public.

Registration is free but essential, please sign up here: