Prizing European Values: The Case of the European Union Prize for Literature

Lecture by Jack McMartin, assistant professor of translation and intercultural transfer, KU Leuven

Image: © European Union Prize for Literature. Used with permission.

Wednesday, May 24, 2023
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Bunche 11372 (11th floor)

Microsoft Google

This talk examines the organizational make-up and consecratory practices of the EU Prize for Literature in order to better understand its role in promoting emerging European writers and projecting European values such as multilingualism, cultural heritage and diversity.

Limited seats available. Register today!

The Center for European and Russian Studies (CERS) in co-sponsorship with the Department of Comparative Literature and the Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies (ELTS) invite you to Prizing European Values: The Case of the European Union Prize for Literature, a lecture by Jack McMartin, assistant professor of translation and intercultural transfer at KU Leuven. The event will take place in-person on Wednesday, May 24, 2023 at 2:00pm in Bunche Hall 11372.

Abstract

This talk examines the organizational make-up and consecratory practices of the EU Prize for Literature (EUPL) in order to better understand its role in promoting emerging European writers and projecting European values such as multilingualism, cultural heritage and diversity. Drawing on concepts developed within the sociology of literature and cultural policy studies, the talk explores the position of the EUPL in relation to other EU-related prizes in the field of culture, as well as other supranational literary prizes like the Booker Prizes and the Nobel Prize in Literature. We focus special attention on the EUPL’s efforts to encourage the translation of winning books in (semi-peripheral) languages within and beyond the EU and examine the political valences of the prize through a textual analysis of the 2018 winners’ anthology European Stories. By analyzing the dynamics of prizing and translation, we show how the EUPL actively shapes the borders of European cultural identity and acts as an instrument of soft power.

Speaker

Jack McMartin is an assistant professor of translation and intercultural transfer at KU Leuven, in Belgium, and visiting professor for the 2023 Spring Quarter at UCLA. His research and teaching can be situated at the transversal crossings of translation, cultural politics, and textual circulation. This orientation has enabled diverse research foci, from the people, institutions, and dynamics that shape translation publishing, to the translational aspects undergirding the global circulation of science news. Jack is the assistant editor of the journal Translation in Society, and co-editor (with Jan Van Coillie) of Children’s Literature in Translation: Texts and Contexts, which won the 2021 IRSCL Best Edited Book Award. Since October 2022, he is director of CETRA – Centre for Translation Studies at KU Leuven. He is also an active Dutch-English translator.

Venue

Bunche Hall, Room 11372 (11th floor)
315 Portola Plaza
Los Angeles, CA 90095

Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies, Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies, Comparative Literature