Bucknell University Press

Edimus quod nobis libet.

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University Press Week Day 4

#ReadUP on these 10 noteworthy Bucknell UP titles published in the last 10 years

Fire on the Water: Sailors, Slaves, and Insurrection in Early American Literature, 1789-1886

By Lenora Warren

“Readers will find Fire on the Water an important contribution to the study of slavery and abolitionism. Moreover, this book also makes major contributions to Black Atlantic studies and to maritime and oceanic studies at large. Scholars working in these fields will find Warren’s book essential reading. They will also find the book’s clarity and concision impressive. Fire on the Water will teach well in both the undergraduate and graduate classrooms.”

 —ALH Online Review

Testimony: Found Poems from the Special Court for Sierra Leone

By Shanee Stepakoff

“The poems in this collection stand as monument to remembrance and commemoration, a stay against oblivion for the people of Sierra Leone whose lives were marked by the civil conflict of 1991-2002. They are a significant contribution to the literature of that country and of conflict.”

 —Aminatta Forna, author of Happiness

Toni Morrison: Forty Years in The Clearing

Edited by Carmen R. Gillespie

“Gathering a tapestry of disparate materials, including reviews, letters, interviews, drama, critical essays, memoirs, and photos, Gillespie constructs a rich critical narrative of Morrison’s works.”

—The Journal of African American History

Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century

By Manu Samriti Chander

“Brown Romantics challenges readers to rethink the play of race, religion, class, and nation across the nineteenth-century globe. Chander adroitly critiques the disabling rhetoric of nationalism as it confronts the democratic ideals undergirding each of the three poets he studies.”

 —Victorian Studies

Indiscreet Fantasies: Iberian Queer Cinema

Edited by Andrés Lema-Hincapié and Conxita Domènech

“The editors of Indiscreet Fantasies have compiled a significant collection of essays that will be of interest to film scholars because they analyze cinema that sheds a new light on the representations of Iberian cultures and identities.”

—Isabel Estrada, author of El documental cinematográfico y televisivo contemporáneo

Confronting Our Canons: Spanish and Latin American Studies in the 21st Century

By Joan L. Brown

“The balance of theory and data analysis provides a comprehensive view of the topic and, although examples are gleaned from Spanish and Latin American literature, Brown’s observations and recommendations are accessible, and pertinent, to other fields.”

—Hispania

The Dark Eclipse: Reflections on Suicide and Absence

By A.W. Barnes

“The story Barnes weaves in this memoir—a story of suicidal desires and success, of what drives siblings apart and could, at turns, bring them back together—is a lyric noir of family instability, personal revelation, and queer inheritance both genealogical and literary….Our job, as Barnes beautifully demonstrates here, is to take the ashes of our lives—not only our lived lives, but our lives as readers, too—and sculpt them into a new art.”


—Lambda Literary

The Idea of Disability in the Eighteenth Century

Edited by Chris Mounsey

“With respect to organization, Mounsey (Univ. of Winchester, UK) introduces a unique concept—to disability studies in general and certainly to 18th-century studies. The ten essays appear in three categories: “Methodological,” essays examining how disability is understood and represented by significant thinkers (1663 and 1788); “Conceptual,” essays looking at and problematizing representation of disability in literary works; and “Experiential,” essays examining how disability is represented by those who experienced it and left written records of their suffering. A few essays feature canonical figures (e.g., Margaret Cavendish, John Locke, Laurence Sterne), but most introduce overlooked, unknown texts, a result of impressive archival research. In this respect and others, the collection bridges disability studies and cultural studies. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students and researchers/faculty.”

—CHOICE

Faust: A Tragedy, Part I

Translated by Eugene Stelzig

“This exciting new translation of Goethe’s Faust brings the text to life for a contemporary audience. Stelzig’s ‘flexible’ approach to poetic translation is eminently successful: the complexity of the text is allowed to emerge without completely sacrificing its poetry. I highly recommend it—especially for the classroom and first-time English readers of Faust.”

—Astrida Tantillo, University of Illinois at Chicago

Woven Shades of Green: An Anthology of Irish Nature Literature

Edited by Tim Wenzell

“Readers familiar with Irish literature and ecocriticism will find this volume filled with familiar faces and materials, as well as a few more obscure and exciting ones. This anthology offers scholars a series of substantial pieces from which to expand and further consider Irish nature writing and Irish approaches to the natural world.”

—Irish Studies Review

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Celebrating International Translation Day

Did you know?

The UN’s recently established International Translation Day celebrates the work of language professionals who translate academic and technical works, highlighting their contributions to a global effort to foster inclusivity and togetherness. Language professionals’ hard work and attention to detail is crucial to dissolving language barriers that might otherwise hinder the struggle for world peace and international security.

On May 24th, 2017, the United Nations General Assembly declared September 30th as International Translation Day under resolution 71/288. It chose September 30th as International Translation Day because September 30th traditionally observes the feast of Italian priest St. Jerome. St. Jerome is renowned for using Greek manuscripts of the New Testament to translate much of the Bible into Latin.

Since 2005, the UN has annually invited all of its staff, acclaimed permanent missions staff, and students from partner universities to enter its UN St. Jerome Translation Contest, which “rewards the best translations in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish,” and German. You may find the 2020 winners here. Here at the Bucknell University Press, however, we decided to do something a little different this year. Below, we highlight some of the most recent translated books we published and their translators as tribute to the language professionals’ diligence and intellect.

Mikhail Bakhtin: The Duvakin Interviews, 1973

Edited by Slav N. Gretchev and Margarita Marinova
Translated by Margarita Marinova

In August 2019, Bucknell University Press published the first English translation of twelve hours of transcripts of the interviews Mikhail Bakhtin conducted in Russian of Victor Duvakin 1973. Marinova’s work now allows English readers insight into Russian culture and Bakhtin’s perspective on Western art and thought.

Dr. Marinova is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia. She is a translator and the author of Transnational Russian-American Travel Writing.

Beginning and End of the Snow: Début et Fin de la Neige

By Yves Bonnefoy
Translated by Emily Grosholz

Yves Bonnefoy’s book of poems, Beginning and End of the Snow followed by Where the Arrow Falls, combines two meditations in philosophy and religion in which the poet’s thoughts and a landscape reflect each other. Criticism and Reference notes that one reads Grosholz’s work “without the least twinge of regret for what might be lost in translation.”

She is a Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the research group REHELS / SPHERE at the University of Paris Denis Diderot. Additionally, she has written and published six books of poetry (including Leaves / Feuilles with Farhad Ostovani) and works as an advisory editor for the Hudson Review.

Don’t Whisper Too Much and Portrait of a Young Artiste from Bona Mbella

By Frieda Ekotto
Translated by Corine Tachtiris

Don’t Whisper Too Much  and  Bona Mbella  present love stories between African women in a positive light. In presenting the emotional and romantic lives of gay African women, Ekotto addresses how female sexuality is often marked by violence, and yet is also a place for emotional connection, pleasure and agency. The late Carmen Gillespie described Tachtiris’ translation of Ekotto’s work as “a landmark addition to the canon of Afro-Francophone literature in translation.”

Corine Tachtiris translates literature primarily by contemporary women authors from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Czech Republic. She holds an MFA in literary translation from the University of Iowa and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Michigan. Dr. Tachtiris teaches world literature and translation theory and practice.

Two Women

By Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda
Translated by Barbara F. Ichiishi

The first openly feminist novel published in Spanish, Two Women  tells the riveting tale of a tumultuous love triangle among a brilliant, young, widowed countess, her inexperienced lover, and his pure and virtuous wife. This first English translation captures the lyrical romanticism of the novel’s prose and includes a scholarly introduction to the author and her work.

Ichiishi is the author of The Apple of Earthly Love: Female Development in Esther Tusquets’ Fiction, and the translator of many of Tusquets’ major works. She has written articles on Spanish and Latin American women’s literature, and co-translated Edouard Glissant’s historical drama Monsieur Toussaint.