by Tasmiah Akter
Wesleyan faculty’s collective expertise spans the globe, and the Office for Intercultural Learning at the Fries Center for Global Studies is pleased to celebrate their international and often multilingual work here in the Wes and the World newsletter. This is the first of a two part series to be highlighted in the coming weeks under these broad categories: The Arts and Social Sciences & STEM. Please enjoy these summaries and be sure to check out any works that pique your interest!
Jeanne Bonner
GLS
Region of Study – Italy
Work Title(s): “This Darkness Will Never End”
For my English translation of a 1962 Italian short story collection written by a Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor named Edith Bruck, I researched the work of women Shoah survivors and I used the information I gathered in a preface to my translation, “This Darkness Will Never End,” which will be published by Paul Dry Books in April. I also incorporated my research and my knowledge of Bruck’s oeuvre to write a lengthy article about women Shoah survivors for the “American Scholar.” Unlike Bruck, many women survivors didn’t share their stories until decades after the end of World War II. As a result, the template for the public’s understanding of survival skews male – the experiences of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel, for example. It also means there are so many works by women that have been forgotten because they didn’t fit with the existing template or were never translated in the first place. In Bruck’s case, she is a household name in Italy, was a close friend of Primo Levi, honored by the Pope but is unknown in the US.
Links to work:
This Darkness Will Never End – Paul Dry Books
The Forgotten Writers of the Shoah – The American Scholar
Susanne Fusso
Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Region of Study – Russia
Work Title(s): “Translation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Adolescent (1875)”
I have completed a translation of Dostoyevsky’s 1875 novel The Adolescent, with an introduction and extensive annotations. It is now under review at a university press. The novel deals with the coming of age of a young man, the son of a nobleman and his peasant lover, in the context of Russia as it confronts the coming of capitalism.
Ron Jenkins
Theater
Region of Study – Italy
Work Title(s): “Theater and Human Rights in Italian Prisons”
I have been staging theater performances in Italian prisons inspired by Dante’s “Divine Comedy” since 2017 when the Robert F Kennedy Center for Human Rights sponsored “Diligite Iustitiam” at the Sollicciano prison in Florence. The RFK Center will host my next production in the summer of 2025 in Rome’s Rebibbia prison. A chapter about the Florence production appears in English in the book “Dante Alive” edited by Simone Marchese and in Italian in the journal “Teatro Delle Diversita.”
Links to works:
“Shackles and chains speak miracles”: Singing to God Behind Bars | Yale Institute of Sacred Music
EXHIBITION REVIEW: Stillness, Silence, and Shadows: Indonesian Wayang Exhibit at Yale – PIR”
Maria Ospina
Romance Languages and Literatures , Latin American Studies Program
Region of Study – Colombia, the Americas
Work Title(s): “Solo un poco aqui”
My novel, published in 2023, has come out this year in three different languages: Italian, German and Portuguese (Brazil), which is forthcoming. The novel won the 2024 National Prize for Novel of Colombia.
Links to work:
María Ospina Pizano: Für kurze Zeit nur hier
Qui solo per poco – Edicola Ediciones
Kari Weil
College of Letters
Region of Study – France
Work Title(s): “Straddling the Bell Epoque”
This is an invited piece for a volume of essays on the Belle Epoque in France and my essay focuses on the presence, use and image of horses at the time. The classic image of the period is of elegantly dressed amazones perched atop purebred horses prancing through the recently purchased Parisian parks, even as horses were being replaced by cars and bicycles leading some to declare “the end of the horse” while others waxed nostalgic for the properly attired and side-saddled woman rider, accompanied by her manly groom. Beneath this image, however, lurked concerns over degeneration—both in regard to gender and to race or breed, whether of horse or human. Many claimed horses to either be the cause or cure of this malaise. Interestingly, it was during this time that the new science of zoo-psychology was invented, focusing on the sensibility of the horse and the practices of breeding and training that could negatively affect the memory and behavior of steed and rider alike. This essay will address how equestrian performances, whether in the parks or the circus arenas and the discourse around horses and zoo-psychology intersected with and influenced discussions regarding gender and the degeneration of the French “race.” The essay grows out of my last book on horses in 19th century France.
Link to work:Precarious Partners: Horses and Their Humans in Nineteenth-Century France, Weil