In October and November 2021, the Ann Arbor District Library will host a photography exhibit, curated by UM Professor Kristin Dickinson.

Entitled Homeland and Heimat in Detroit and Dortmund, the exhibit brings together photographs of Southwest Detroit (created by photojournalist Theon Delgado) and Northern Dortmund, Germany (created by photojournalist Peyman Azari).

Shedding light on each neighborhood’s histories of migration, the exhibit offers an intimate look at immigrant-owned businesses; multilingual signage; and striking images of graffiti, street art, and other forms of visual creative expression. Together, these photographs prompt us to consider the many meanings of home and homeland from a multilingual perspective.

The exhibit runs from October 4-November 29, 2021 in the third floor gallery of the Ann Arbor District Library, Downtown Branch (345 South Fifth Ave in Ann Arbor).

VISIT THIS LINK for more information and a glimpse of the exhibit. Please join us also for a virtual panel discussion with the artists:

VISUALIZING TRANSLATION:

Virtual panel discussion on Homeland and Heimat in Detroit and Dortmund

Time: 2 pm on Saturday, October 9, 2021

Registration: details to follow

Visiting Speakers:

Theon Delgado Sr. (photojournalist from Southwest Detroit

Peyman Azhari (photojournalist from Cologne, Germany)

Exhibit and Panel Discussion Coordinators:

Kristin Dickinson (UM Assistant Professor of German Studies)

Alan Chin (photographer and managing director of Facing Change: Documenting America)

Check out the Site of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest website to see the full slate of events happening in Fall 2021.

Join us from 3-4:30 pm via zoom on October 1, 2021 for a virtual conversation with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio about translation and migration in her debut book of creative non-fiction, The Undocumented Americans.

To kick off the tenth annual Translate-a-thon at the University of Michigan, Professor William Stroebel will sit down and talk with Villavicencio about the roles, methods, and uses of translation lurking behind and inside the pages of her book: translation between languages, translation between dialects and registers, translation between spoken and written media, translation between genres of translation like interpretation in legal or journalistic settings and literary translation, along with her current attempts to translate the book into Spanish.

Her book breaks many things. It breaks boundaries between genres, mixing the rhythms of rock and the cadences of hip hop and the political anger of punk and the slow contemplation of lyric poetry into the burning advocacy of its prose reportage (along with a little dose of magical realism to boot). The book also breaks the mold of representation traditionally deployed by advocates and allies, who elevate the gifted DREAMers of DACA into poster children above a faceless, nameless mass of day-laborers, cleaners, construction workers, factory hands, deliverymen, dish washers and dog walkers.

These are the ones who take center stage in her book, and tell their stories as beautifully imperfect, hardworking, weird, and “just people,” sorting through the trauma of an oppressive system built and sustained by their exploitation and terrorization and invisibility. Villavicencio breaks through this invisibility and the taboos of representation and in doing so she calls upon its readers to break the system: “it’s time to fuck some shit up.” But amidst the great praise that this finalist for the National Book Award has won, very little has been said about another thing that her avant-gardism breaks: conventions of translation.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature and the Language Resource Center at the University of Michigan, with support from the 2021-22 Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series on Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest.

LISTEN HERE to a sample reading from the book.

REGISTER HERE for a Zoom link to the event on October 1

REGISTER HERE for the 2021 Translate-a-thon

Click here to purchase Karla’s book from Literati Bookstore

Check out the Site of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest website to see the full slate of events happening in Fall 2021.

Community members of all ages and languages are invited to participate in the annual Translate-a-Thon at the University of Michigan on October 1-2, 2021.

A Translate-a-Thon is a short, intense, community-driven translation marathon, where volunteers interested in translation come together to translate materials for the benefit of our local, national, and international community.

Coordinated by the Language Resource Center and co-sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, our Translate-a-thon also promotes a sense of community among translators. We welcome current students and alums, faculty and staff, teachers and students from local high schools, prospective transfer students, professional translators, and other interested parties.

This year we are celebrating ten years of the Translate-a-Thon, with a special theme on translation and migration. We kick off the weekend at 3pm on October 1 with a Virtual Conversation with Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, author of The Undocumented Americans. We will highlight translation projects for Freedom House Detroit, to support their mission of outreach to asylum seekers.

A range of other community translation projects will also be available to work on over the weekend, remotely, or in person. Check out our Translation Gallery with more information for volunteers to translate work on projects in many languages!

We also welcome colleagues from other colleges and universities who would like to observe our activities in order to learn about organizing similar events at their own institutions. To follow up, we will host a workshop on “How to Run a Translate-a-Thon” (for further details contact complit.info@umich.edu).

Check out the Site of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest website to see the full slate of events happening in Fall 2021.

The second seminar in the Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest Mellon Sawyer Seminar series is Translation and Memory: Hispanofilipino Literature and the Archive in the US Midwest. This seminar will be held virtually on March 12, 2021. Learn more about the events and workshops for this seminar on the Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest website.

If you are interested in keeping up with Sawyer Seminar news and event announcements over the next two years to sign up for the mailing list here.

Jewish Multilingualism in the Midwest: Yiddish Translations of Urban Experience is the first Mellon Sawyer Seminar in the Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest series. The seminar will be held virtually on February 4-5, 2021. Learn more about the events and workshops for this seminar on the Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest website.

If you are interested in keeping up with Sawyer Seminar news and event announcements over the next two years to sign up for the mailing list here.

The Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan will launch the 2021-22 Mellon Sawyer Seminar: Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest on Monday, February 1 at 2 PM EST.

Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the seminar series draws on interdisciplinary resources within and beyond the University of Michigan to explore various midwestern histories, practices, and cultures of translation.

Join us via Zoom to meet the Sawyer Seminar team, learn about our shared project, and hear about this semester’s seminars: Jewish Multilingualism in the Midwest: Yiddish Translations of Urban Experience and Translation and Memory: Hispanofilipino Literature and the Archive in the US Midwest.

Learn more about the project and upcoming events by visiting the Mellon Sawyer Seminar: Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest website.

If you are interested in keeping up with Sawyer Seminar news and event announcements over the next two years to sign up for the mailing list here.