Research cluster | Comparative Literature and Translation

This research cluster brings together academics from Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies.

The study of literatures in a transnational and transcultural series of contexts is at the core of our research activity. Our researchers work in the key original areas of British, Irish, United States, Caribbean, Latin American and also in Hispanic, Francophone, Italian, German, Polish, Yugoslav, Russian and Chinese literatures.

Our approach to literature is genuinely interdisciplinary and actively promotes the comparison of literature to other arts and media. Members of this research cluster have driven innovation in world cinema, global theatre, interarts studies, comparative media, travel writing and postcolonial theory, and pursue translation both as theory and practice.

We have strong ties with the British Comparative Literature Association and have hosted many international conferences at Essex, including the BCLA’s Triennial International Conference on Migration in 2013, and Revolution & Evolution in 2014.

Research Supervision

We offer research supervision in a broad geographical range of literatures and cinemas, and related arts and media.

Examples of recently completed and ongoing projects by our doctoral students include:

International Surrealism
Steel Safari – Cairo to Cape Town by Rail (Where Possible)
Contested Cities in Arab Writing
Dominican-American Fiction between 1990 and 2010
Hispaniola Rediscovered: A Study of Recent Fiction by Caribbean-American Writers
Gaming and Literature: Virtual Game Immersion in Contemporary Print Text

Please contact our academics directly to discuss research supervision opportunities, or explore our research degrees and what to expect from a degree in the Department of Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies. You can also find out how to apply for postgraduate research at Essex, or use research finder if you are interested in searching for further research opportunities at Essex.

Highlights of our research

Research projects

Recent research projects include:

2016-2019 - Derek Walcott’s Painters (Maria Cristina Fumagalli, funded by the Leverhulme Trust)
2017-2018 - Home and Modernism (Sanja Bahun, funded by the Leverhulme Trust)
2019-2020 - Creativity and Constraint: Contemporary Cinema in Iran and the Arab World (Shohini Chaudhuri, funded by the Leverhulme Trust)
2021-2022 - Kodachrome Travels: Colour Film, Realism, and the American Pacific Imagination (Jeffrey Geiger, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and The British Academy)

Publications

Below is a selection of recent publications from our members. To explore all our member's publications, please visit their staff profiles.

‘Exquisite Wonder’: Colour Film, Realism, and the Yankee Voyage, 1936-38

Jeffrey Geiger’s article “‘Exquisite Wonder’: Colour Film, Realism, and the Yankee Voyage, 1936-38” is out now in Journal of New Zealand and Pacific Studies 8.1 (2020).

Journal of a Soul in Crisis: Writing on Mourning Rites of Sophie Brzeska

Patricia Gillies’s book chapter “Journal of a Soul in Crisis: Writing on Mourning Rites of Sophie Brzeska” is published in Translation and the History of Ideas: Ideas, Language, Politics, edited by A. Kukulka-Wojtasik, E. Stachurski, and M. Dobrowolska de Tejerina (Peter Lang, 2018).

Immersive Embodiment: Theatres of Mislocalized Sensation

Liam Jarvis’s book Immersive Embodiment: Theatres of Mislocalized Sensation has been published by Palgrave Macmillan (2019).
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Translation and the Histories and Geographies of the Book

Karin Littau wrote the “Afterword” for a collection of essays on “Translation meets Book History: Intersections: 1700-1950” for the journal Comparative Critical Studies, 16.2-3 (2019).

Intercultural and Cross-cultural Encounters during the quatercentenary of Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare

Mary Mazzilli published “Intercultural and Cross-cultural Encounters during the quatercentenary of Tang Xianzu and Shakespeare” in Asian Theatre Journal, 36.2 (2019).

Beowulf. A New Translation

Chris McCully published a translation of Beowulf that renders the original in readable contemporary English for Carcanet Press in 2018.

The Pervasive and the Digital: Immersive Worlds in Four Interactive Artworks

Daniel O’Brien has published “The Pervasive and the Digital: Immersive Worlds in Four Interactive Artworks”, in Handbook of Research on Recent Developments in Internet Activism and Political Participation, edited by Y. Ibrahim (IGI Global, 2020).

Between the Bocas: A Literary Geography of Western Trinidad Translation, Conflict and the Politics of Memory: Jan Karski’s Story of a Secret State

Joanna Rzepa won the 2020 Martha Cheung Award for Best English Article in Translation Studies by an Early Career Scholar funded by the Baker Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies for her article “Translation, Conflict and the Politics of Memory: Jan Karski’s Story of a Secret State”, published in Translation Studies 11.3 (2018).

Nonlinear Temporality in Joyce and Walcott: History Repeating Itself with a Difference

Sean Seeger's book Nonlinear Temporality in Joyce and Walcott: History Repeating Itself with a Difference, published by Routledge in 2017, is the first dedicated comparative study of James Joyce and Derek Walcott.

The Penguin Book of Oulipo

Philip Terry’s edited volume The Penguin Book of Oulipo (2019) brings together for the first time 100 pieces of “Oulipo” writing. The book celebrates the literary group who revelled in maths problems, puzzles, trickery, wordplay and conundrums.

Shakespeare and the Politics Between Media

Nora Williams co-edited and co-wrote the introduction (with Sally Barnden) for Shakespeare and the Politics between Media which appeared as a special issue of Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation, XIII.1 (2020)