Prof. Dr. Nassim W. Balestrini: Contemporary Poetry as Relational Life Writing and Historiographic Intervention
Full Professor of American Studies and Intermediality,
University of Graz
Nassim Winnie Balestrini is full professor of American Studies and Intermediality at the University of Graz, Austria, where she also serves as director of the Centre for Intermediality Studies in Graz (CIMIG). In 2022/23, she served as Lorand Chair for Intermediality at the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossing at VUB. She has published monographs on Vladimir Nabokov and on opera adaptations of nineteenth-century American fiction, essays on hip-hop life writing and rap poetry (e.g., in Popular Music and Society and in the Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Music Studies), on intermediality theory and practice (e.g., a special issue on “Depicting Destitution Across Media” for the Journal for Literary and Intermedial Crossings), on American poetry, fiction, and drama, especially on climate change theater. She has edited collections on Adaptation and American Studies (Heidelberg: Winter, 2011) and on Intermediality, Life Writing, and American Studies (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2018, with Ina Bergmann). Her current research focuses on contemporary poetry and on climate change theater.
Assistant Professor, Department of Translation, Interpreting, and Communication,
Ghent University
Anneleen Spiessens is an Assistant Professor at Ghent University. She is affiliated with the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication, where she teaches both translation practice (French-Dutch) and theory. Her research focuses on ethical, political and mnemonic aspects of translation, and resulted in publications on museums, news translation and ideology, perpetrator testimony (Quand le bourreau prend la parole: témoignage et fiction, Droz, 2016), and testimonial literature more generally (including a chapter in Translating Memories of Violent Pasts, Routledge, 2023). Anneleen Spiessens is also co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Memory (2022, with Sharon Deane-Cox) which sets out to chart the intersections between translation and memory as they operate together in the reconstruction, transmission and repurposing of the past.
Prof. Dr. Anneleen Spiessens: Stories of Violence across Time, Space and Genre: How Translation and Translators Shape (Trans)Cultural Memory