How Do Books Cross Borders? (When Authors and Publishers Do Not)

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Brief Description

This round table brings together practitioners (editors/publishers) and scholars to discuss what it means to bring texts and books across borders—geographical, political, cultural, and more. During the Cold War, a publishing industry (Tamizdat) arose outside the Soviet Union for the dissemination of contraband literature. After the collapse of the Berlin wall, publishing houses in the West, like Suhrkamp, embarked on systematic efforts to bring literature from Eastern Europe to the attention of Western readers, while publishers in Russia, like NLO, focused on issuing hitherto inaccessible Western works. In the US, maverick publishers (Ugly Duckling Presse, World Poetry Books) have been bringing poetry from around the world, including Eastern Europe, to English-language readers through translations and bilingual editions. Our roundtable is devoted to these practices, in the past, present, and future. What factors—linguistic, institutional, financial, and other—are important in these crossings? What is gained and what is lost in transition? How do transplanted texts help to remember (or forget)? How to make such transfer successful? What are the effects of digital media? What has changed within our living memory? What is the situation today?

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Irina Paperno, UC Berkeley

Roundtable Speakers

• Yasha Klots, CUNY Hunter College

• Katharina Raabe, Suhrkamp Verlag (Germany)

• Krystyna Wieszczek, Columbia U / U of Verona (Italy)

• Matvei Yankelevich, World Poetry Books