European Studies

Dr Brigid Maher (Italian Studies, La Trobe University) focuses on an experience of collaborative translation that dealt with a short text by Carlo Lucarelli, one of Italy’s most important crime fiction writers. Lucarelli’s novels explore a range of problems affecting contemporary Italian society, including corruption, state violence and organized crime. Consequently they are deeply rooted in the author’s culture of origin, while also fitting into a recognizable globalized genre. This makes Lucarelli’s writing a challenge to translate while also, potentially, making it quite marketable in translation, since it can hold considerable appeal for overseas audiences. I reflect on the translation challenges from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The practical angle is based on my experience leading a group of translators, together with Lucarelli himself, at the 2013 Translation Winter School, dedicated to crime fiction. Over a number of days, workshop participants prepared a consensus translation of an excerpt of Lucarelli’s work, exploring practical solutions to questions of intertextuality, genre, audience expectations and culture-specific references. By analyzing the process of experimentation and debate that group translation sets off, I investigate the crucial but sometimes neglected interaction that can take place between theory and practice as a piece of Italian crime fiction is reworked for an Anglophone (even Australian) audience. Copyright 2014 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Eva Fisch (Collection Development Manager, La Trobe University Library) and Dr Michális S. Michael (Deputy Director of La Trobe University’s Centre for Dialogue) give a tour around The Greek Archives at La Trobe University. The Greek Archives consists of 5,500 boxes of Greek artifacts and documents going back for the past hundred years or so. There’s newspapers, projectors, costumes, art objects, photographs, a newspaper press, and who knows what else. The collection is currently being sorted and listed. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Dr Isabel Moutinho (Spanish Program, La Trobe University) talks about Luis Cardoso’s book 'O Ano em que Pigafetta Completou a Circumnavegação'. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Spanish author Andrés Neuman interviewed by Dr Lilit Thwaites. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Spanish author Andrés Neuman interviewed by Dr Lilit Thwaites. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Professor John Gatt-Rutter (Italian Studies, La Trobe University) discusses the rationale for Peter Apap Bologna writing faction novel 'Lost Generations', about the Jewish genocide and the potential readership constructed by the narrative. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Dr Lilit Thwaites (Spanish Program, La Trobe University) presents a brief examination of what might be considered an ongoing trend in Catalan women’s writing: [regular and ‘hybrid’] autobiography. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Associate Professor Adrian Jones (History, La Trobe University) explores the world of Tsar Peter the Great during a moment of triumph after his great victory over the Swedes at Poltava in the Ukraine on 27 June 1709. The new iconography of Peter’s empire is discussed: especially the events and display buildings erected for a special day of celebration in Moscow. Peter’s rambunctious conduct and his portraits are contrasted with the agendas of his Baroque spin-masters on and about that day. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Dr James Cannon (French, La Trobe University) on the other "zone" of occupied France: representing the margins of Paris, 1940-1944 This talk looks at how the Parisian “zone” – an unusual territory wedged between the central city and its suburbs from the 1840s to the 1940s – was used as a metaphor for competing views of national identity during the German Occupation of 1940-1944. The demolition of the zone’s notorious shantytowns and the construction of sporting facilities and public gardens in their place were perennial projects which had languished under successive Republican governments and which now became national priorities for the collaborationist Vichy regime. Some observers applauded Vichy’s muscular approach to “the problem of the zone”. Others used the area to implicitly oppose Vichy and Nazi ideology, to allegorise the material and psychological consequences of occupation, or to express renewed hope as the war in Europe drew to an end. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Enrique Del Rey Cabero (Spanish, La Trobe University) on the use of comics in language classrooms. Comics, contrary to historical prejudices that classify the medium as light reading or exclusively for young audiences, are becoming an increasingly important presence in the cultural sphere. Moreover, the unique language and features of the medium mean it has wide application in the language classroom. This talk begins with a definition of what is meant by comics and a description of the main characteristics of the medium, in order to analyze the advantages of its use in the Spanish language classroom. The aim is to provide an overview of the use of comics in language teaching, to show some examples of its real application in didactic material, to draw some key conclusions and, finally, to propose some guidelines for a more effective use of the medium in the future. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Dr Ian Coller (History, La Trobe University) on Provincializing France: Rethinking European History through the Local and Global. It is several decades now since Dipesh Chakrabarty issued a call to “provincialize Europe” by recognising Europe as just one region of the world alongside others, and not as the standard of modern historical development by which all other histories would be measured. New work in imperial, transnational and global history has contributed to this goal. But this work has often been cantoned off in postcolonial history, while the “mainstream” of nationally-based historical work has continued undisturbed. Nowhere is this more true than in the case of France, the “nation-state” par excellence, whose “colonial” history has rarely been treated as more than a transitory supplement to a metropolitan "True France" organised by Paris and the logic of inexorable centralization. This paper will suggest that by dismantling the “constitutive story” of modern French centralisation, and disaggregating our idea of France in space and time, we may be able to see how the internal contradictions and struggles of state-formation contributed to the creation of an imperial, globally scattered state, whose remnants exist even today in the Caribbean, South America, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, and not simply in the imagined political and historical unity of the European “hexagon”. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Dr Rhiannon Evans (Ancient Mediterranean Studies, La Trobe University) on Julius Caesar in Rome. Julius Caesar spent eight years both fighting in and writing about Gaul, leaving The Gallic War, a work which is part memoir, part war history, and notoriously difficult to categorise. The text is significant as the earliest extant Latin text to track interaction between Romans and non-Romans, specifically a group of northern Europeans frequently designated as barbari ('barbarians', 'savages') by Greeks and Romans. This paper will investigate the way that the term barbarus is utilised in Caesar's work: this is not simply a matter of Romans calling Gauls barbari, but also Gauls, Germani and Britons using the word about one another. In effect Caesar translates, ventriloquises and interprets the barbarians, using barbarus of specific groups at highly charged moments in his literary, military and colonial project. This paper will also consider translations of The Gallic War into modern European languages and the way that Caesar's barbari are dealt with by the perceived 'descendants' of these ethnic groups. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

What does the term Macedonia imply when uttered with a Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian or ‘Macedonian’ inflection? Is it the same or a different place? This year marks the 100th anniversary since the end of the Second Balkan War and the partition of Macedonia. Yet, it is an issue that is far from resolved and still extremely controversial – particularly in the diaspora. This talk explores the connection between memory and nationhood in 19th and 20th century Macedonia. How ‘Great Ideas’, religion, wars, population exchanges and migration have all contributed to what has become a highly emotive, diasporic, identity feud. A transnational contestation of narratives and the deterritorialisation of a very territorial issue. Dimitri Gonis is second year PhD student. His thesis is titled: The Politics of Memory and Nationhood – Macedonianism in Australia. Copyright 2013 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Dr Carlos Uxo and Gillian Darcy (Spanish Program, La Trobe University) on the Catalonian culture and the ongoing debate of independence. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Julien Leyre (Founder, Marco Polo Project) outlines his attempt at addressing the demand for deeper understanding of China among people of European heritage by using the possibilities opened up by the internet. The Marco Polo Project is a website that proposes to crowd-source the translation of Chinese writing into French, English and Spanish, bringing across contemporary voices from China to non-Mandarin readers. While doing so, the platform also gathers a community of readers and translators acting together as online mediators, training each other’s linguistic and cultural skills, and diffusing cultural intelligence through their own circles and networks. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Dr Brigid Maher (Italian Studies, La Trobe University) looks at contemporary political and social satire in Italy. Examples include Dario Fo’s celebrated grammelot and the singer-activist-blogger Sora Cesira’s parodic music videos. Both artists use translation, pseudotranslation, and even pseudolanguage to create meaningful nonsense that communicates a powerful satirical message about public language and power. Copyright 2012 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Spanish author Luisa Etxenike talks to Dr Lilit Thwaites (Spanish Program, La Trobe University) about her writing. Copyright 2011 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Guillermo Altares (editor of “Babelia”, the high-profile weekly cultural supplement of Spain’s major daily EL PAÍS)is interviewed by Dr Lilit Thwaites (Spanish Program, La Trobe University). This interview takes part in both English and Spanish. Copyright 2011 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.

Spanish journalist and editor Guillermo Altares calls upon of his experience as the editor of “Babelia”, the high-profile weekly cultural supplement of Spain’s major daily EL PAÍS, to offer insight into the role that such supplements play in promoting, defining, exposing and criticising the arts – and its exponents – in Spanish society today. Copyright 2011 La Trobe University, all rights reserved. Contact for permissions.