Comparative literature studies is an academic field dealing with the study of literature and cultural expression across linguistic, national, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Comparative literature "performs a role similar to that of the study of international relations but works with languages and artistic traditions, so as to understand cultures 'from the inside'". While most frequently practised with works of different languages, comparative literature may also be performed on works of the same language if the works originate from different nations or cultures in which that language is spoken.
Homi Kharshedji Bhabha is an Indian scholar and critical theorist. He is the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. He is one of the most important figures in contemporary postcolonial studies, and has developed a number of the field's neologisms and key concepts, such as hybridity, mimicry, difference, and ambivalence. Such terms describe ways in which colonised people have resisted the power of the coloniser, according to Bhabha's theory. In 2012, he received the Padma Bhushan award in the field of literature and education from the Indian government. He is married to attorney and Harvard lecturer Jacqueline Bhabha, and they have three children.
Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization. As an interdiscipline, translation studies borrows much from the various fields of study that support translation. These include comparative literature, computer science, history, linguistics, philology, philosophy, semiotics, and terminology.
Jonathan Culler is an American literary critic. He was Class of 1916 Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Cornell University. His published works are in the fields of structuralism, literary theory and literary criticism.
World literature is used to refer to the total of the world's national literature and the circulation of works into the wider world beyond their country of origin. In the past, it primarily referred to the masterpieces of Western European literature; however, world literature today is increasingly seen in an international context. Now, readers have access to a wide range of global works in various translations.
Linda Hutcheon, FRSC, OC is a Canadian academic working in the fields of literary theory and criticism, opera, and Canadian studies. She is a University Professor Emeritus in the Department of English and of the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where she has taught since 1988. In 2000 she was elected the 117th President of the Modern Language Association, the third Canadian to hold this position, and the first Canadian woman. She is particularly known for her influential theories of postmodernism.
Shoshana Felman is an American literary critic and current Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University. She was on the faculty of Yale University from 1970 to 2004, where in 1986 she was awarded the Thomas E. Donnelly Professorship of French and Comparative Literature. She specializes in 19th and 20th century French literature, psychoanalysis, trauma and testimony, and law and literature. Felman earned her Ph.D. at the University of Grenoble in France in 1970.
Cultural translation is the practice of translation while respecting and showing cultural differences. This kind of translation solves some issues linked to culture, such as dialects, food or architecture.
Barbara Godard was a Canadian critic, translator, editor, and academic. She held the Avie Bennett Historica Chair of Canadian Literature and was Professor of English, French, Social and Political Thought and Women's Studies at York University. She published widely on Canadian and Quebec cultures, on feminist and literary theory, and on translation studies. Barbara Godard died in Toronto on May 16, 2010. Across Canada and throughout the world, poets, scholars, feminists, and friends mourned her death.
Itamar Even-Zohar is an Israeli culture researcher and professor at Tel Aviv University. Even-Zohar is a pioneer of polysystem theory and the theory of cultural repertoires.
Anton Popovič was a fundamental Slovak translation scientist and text theoretician. He is recognized for his important contributions to the modern development of translation studies.
André Alphons Lefevere was a translation theorist. He had studied at the University of Ghent (1964–1968) and then obtained his PhD at the University of Essex in 1972. When he died of acute leukemia, he was Professor of Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
Edwin Gentzler is a Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and former Director of the Translation Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Skopos theory is a theory in the field of translation studies that employs the prime principle of a purposeful action that determines a translation strategy. The intentionality of a translational action stated in a translation brief, the directives, and the rules guide a translator to attain the expected target text translatum.
Self-translation is a translation of a source text into a target text by the writer of the source text.
Cultural studies is a politically engaged postdisciplinary academic field that explores the dynamics of especially contemporary culture and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices relate to wider systems of power associated with, or operating through, social phenomena. These include ideology, class structures, national formations, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and generation. Employing cultural analysis, cultural studies views cultures not as fixed, bounded, stable, and discrete entities, but rather as constantly interacting and changing sets of practices and processes. The field of cultural studies encompasses a range of theoretical and methodological perspectives and practices. Although distinct from the discipline of cultural anthropology and the interdisciplinary field of ethnic studies, cultural studies draws upon and has contributed to each of these fields.
Gideon Toury was an Israeli translation scholar and professor of Poetics, Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at Tel Aviv University, where he held the M. Bernstein Chair of Translation Theory. Gideon Toury was a pioneer of Descriptive Translation Studies.
José Lambert is a Professor of Comparative Literature at KU Leuven, Belgium, and is best known for his work in Translation Studies. He is also noted for leading international initiatives in this field.
Theo Hermans is a Belgian scholar best known for his work in Translation Studies. He is currently Professor of Dutch and Comparative Literature at University College London. He is a corresponding member of the Flemish Academy and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Manchester’s Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies. Since October 2006 he holds the honorary post of Adjunct Professor at the Department of Translation at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Hermans is also editor of the journal Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies.
Ming Dong Gu is Katherine R. Cecil Professor in the School of Arts, Humanities, and Technology at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is a Chinese-born scholar of comparative literature and thought. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago and has taught at various U.S. universities and colleges. He has a wide range of scholarly interests covering English literature, Chinese literature, comparative literature, literary theory, comparative thought East and West, fiction theory, hermeneutics, postcolonial studies, psychoanalytic criticism, and cross-cultural studies.
