Eleonora Federici
Associate Professor
English Language and Translation Studies
University of Ferrara, Italy

Abstract

My talk starts from the premise of the necessity of mapping a gender and translation research in Europe in a moment when a rich debate has fruitfully developed on feminist transnational studies (da Lima Costa, Alvarez 2014; Alvarez 2014; Castro & Ergun 2017; Flotow 2017; Flotow & Farahzad 2017; Flotow and Kamal 2020; Castro et al 2020). While acknowledging the importance of a broad debate which should include theorists and translators from all parts of the globe, I believe Europe itself is a cradle of transnational feminists, scholars, writers, and translators. The first part of my talk will focus on the importance of recognising the state of the art in various European contexts and the possible routes we can take in acknowledging the many issues that have come out in the literary, cultural and translation theoretical debate in recent decades and which have intersected with gender. In the second part of my talk I will focus on the Italian context and specifically on the importance of translation and reception of North-American texts. My aim is to outline how a fruitful and continuous dialogue among feminist scholars between the USA and Italy started in the 70s and went on for decades through translation, and if this dialogue was carried out also through the translations of key Italian texts into English.

Bio

Eleonora Federici (M.A. & PhD University of Hull, UK) is Associate Professor of English Language and Translation Studies at the University of Ferrara, Italy. Her main research areas are: Translation Studies, LSP (languages for special purposes – specifically tourism and advertising), English language varieties, Gender Studies and Feminist Utopian and Science Fiction. She is currently the President of the Equal Opportunities and Inclusion Committee at the University of Ferrara where she teaches course on translation, gender issues and inclusion. She coordinated European projects on translation and memory, and she has published books and articles in international journals. Among her publications: Translating Gender (Peter Lang 2011), Bridging the Gap between Theory and Practice in Translation and Gender Studies (2013 with V. Leonardi, Cambridge Scholars), Translation Theory and Practice Cultural Differences in Tourism and Advertising (2018 Loffredo), Gender issues. Translating and mediating languages, cultures and societies (with S. Maci, Peter Lang 2021), New Perspectives on Gender and Translation. New Voices for Transnational Dialogues (with J. Santaemilia, Routledge 2021).