Events
Japanese Studies
10/28/2020
Online
Afterlife: Translation, Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, and Global Japanese Fiction
Time & Location
October 28, 6pm EDTOnline
About
The Japan Foundation, New York is launching an online lecture series, Illuminating Japanese Studies: Lecture Series with Former JF Fellows.
Since the fellowship program started in 1972, there have been more than 1,000 American JF Fellowship recipients, who study a diverse range of research topics, from pre-modern history to pop culture and everything in between. In this new series, Illuminating Japanese Studies: Lecture Series with Former JF Fellows, fellowship alumni will give presentations about their expertise/focus within Japanese studies. We hope that this series will illuminate what exactly Japanese studies can teach us, not only about Japan but about the world.
Join our first session titled “Afterlife: Translation, Yoko Ogawa’s The Memory Police, and Global Japanese Fiction” with JF Former Fellow Dr. Stephen Snyder, who studies the publishing industry and its influence on works selected for translation. He is known for translating The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, which was nominated for this year’s International Booker Prize. The discussion will be followed by a live Q&A, moderated by Allison Markin Powell, who is known for translating books by Hiromi Kawakami, Fuminori Nakamura, etc.
This is a free event. Registrants will receive the link to the stream via email. The date and time of the event are Eastern Time. Please check your local time zone. If you have any questions, please feel free to submit them on the Eventbrite page when you register. You may also participate in the discussion by sharing your questions in the YouTubeLive chat during the livestream.
Speaker
Stephen Snyder, Kawashima Professor of Japanese Studies at Middlebury College, serves as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of Language Schools. He is the author of Fictions of Desire: Narrative Form in the Novels of Nagai Kafū (University of Hawai’i Press 2000) and has translated works by Yōko Ogawa and Kenzaburō Ōe, among others. His translation of Ogawa’s Hotel Iris was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011, and his translation of Ogawa’s Revenge was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction prize in 2014. His translation of Ogawa’s Memory Police was a finalist for National Book Award for Translated Literature and for the International Booker Prize. He is currently working on a study of the publishing industry and its effect on literary canons in translation.
Moderator
Allison Markin Powell has been awarded grants from English PEN and the NEA, and the 2020 PEN America Translation Prize for The Ten Loves of Nishino by Hiromi Kawakami. Her other translations include works by Osamu Dazai, Kanako Nishi, and Fuminori Nakamura. She was the co-organizer and co-host of the Translating the Future conference, served as cochair of the PEN America Translation Committee and currently represents the committee on PEN’s Board of Trustees, and she maintains the database Japanese Literature in English.
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