Toni in Translation: An International and Interdisciplinary Gathering

Date and Time

• Tuesday, Feb 18, 2025  11am - 12:15pm

Location

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Details

In honor of Toni Morrison Day (Ohio), join us for Toni in Translation, an international and interdisciplinary gathering co-presented by Center for the Art of Translation, Cornell University Library (sponsors of the Toni Morrison Collective), and Mechanics' Institute. This event will delve into how Toni Morrison's works transcend borders through literary works and inspire transformative action in diverse fields. Facilitated by Dr. Nigel Hatton (UC Merced), the program will feature three distinguished panelists: Anne Adams, Bronwyn Lamay, and Astrid Roemer.

Together, our panelists’ voices will illuminate the innovative ways they carry Morrison’s legacy into their creative and professional lives, emphasizing the universal and transformative power of her work.

This global celebration of Toni Morrison’s enduring influence will connect audiences worldwide to explore how her vision continues to shape literature, culture, and society. Don’t miss this opportunity to be part of an inspiring and boundary-crossing conversation!

About the Panelists

ANNE ADAMS, Professor Emerita, specializes in the two areas of continental African women’s writing and Afro-German cultural studies, her publications reflecting both areas. Upon retiring from the Africana Studies Research Center at Cornell University, she served as director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Memorial Centre for Pan-African Culture, in Accra, Ghana, 2005-2010.

In recent years Anne Adams has been devoting her attention to the novelist Toni Morrison, whose A. D. White Professorship-at-Large at Cornell she had initiated and hosted (1997-2003). Her scholarly work on Morrison over the decades primarily consisted of consulting for the German translators and publishers on African American discourse and cultural content in Morrison’s novels. In the years since Morrison’s death, in 2019, Adams has devoted much of her time to the work of the faculty group Toni Morrison Collective, whose mission of preserving the legacy of this Cornell alumna (MA 1955) has taken the form of, e.g., programs on campus and in the Ithaca community commemorating the 30th anniversary of her Nobel Prize, in 2023. Adams’ passionate project, however, is the book she’s writing about Toni Morrison’s influence on how European audiences perceive U.S. life and history.

BRONWYN LAMAY has been a teacher, instructional coach, and administrator for over 20 years in the Bay area. She has taught middle and high school in Oakland, Hayward, East Side Union, East Palo Alto, and Santa Clara.

She has her PhD from Stanford in English and Literacy Curriculum, her MA from Mills College in Educational Leadership, and her BA in English from UCLA. A few years ago, she published what began as a literacy curriculum that she co-created with her students; it revolved around their self-narratives on the topic of love. The book, Personal Narrative, Revised: Writing Love and Agency in the High School Classroom, was awarded NCTE’s David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in the Teaching of English for 2017. Bronwyn currently lectures in the Departments of English and Teacher Education at San José State, and has worked with the San José Area Writing Project as a teacher consultant and participant for many years prior to becoming its director.

At the age of 19, ASTRID ROEMER emigrated from Suriname to the Netherlands. She identifies herself as a cosmopolitan writer. Exploring themes of race, gender, family, and identity, her poetic, unconventional prose stands in the tradition of authors such as Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. She was awarded the P.C. Hooft Award in 2016 and the three-yearly Dutch Literature Prize (Prijs der Nederlandse Letteren) in 2021. On a Woman's Madness, her English-language debut in Lucy Scott's translation, was shortlisted for the National Book Award for Translated Literature. Her latest novel DealersDochter (2023) was nominated for the Boon Literature Prize, a prestigious literary award given annually to the best book originally written in Dutch. Currently, she works and lives in Paramaribo, Suriname.

About the Moderator

NIGEL HATTON is an associate professor in the Literatures in English section of the Department of Literatures, Languages, and Cultures, and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of California, Merced. His research and teaching span the areas of literature and philosophy, human rights and literature, critical refugee studies, and narrative medicine. His scholarship has appeared in the James Baldwin Review, Literatur in Wissenschaft und Unterricht, A-Line: A Journal of Progressive Thought, Globalization in Literature, Kierkegaard Research: Sources, Reception and Resources, and other publications. He is a contributing author to Departures: An Introduction to Critical Refugee Studies (2022) and co-editor of the Critical Refugee Studies Book Series from University of California Press. He has held postdoctoral fellowships at the W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute at Harvard University, the Søren Kierkegaard Research Centre at the University of Copenhagen, and the Siebold-Collegium Institute for Advanced Studies (SCIAS) of Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg in Germany and worked as a visiting professional in the President’s Chamber of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Dr Hatton’s research, service, and teaching center on human beings as variously conceived of, in, and between literature and philosophy, and the ways in which these ethical and aesthetic conceptions, their authors, their receptions, and their discursive and imaginative circulations across sameness and difference arch and gesture toward the interrogation and prevention of violence and hatred against and among material human beings in the immediate world.

At the undergraduate level Dr. Hatton regularly teaches courses on “Human Rights & Literature,” “Literature & Philosophy,” “Existentialism & Phenomenology,” “Readings in Close Reading,” and “African-American Literature & Culture.” Recent graduate seminars include “Narrative Medicine,” “Modernity,” Cosmopolitanisms,” “Giving and Receiving Accounts of the Self,” and “Narratives of Death.” Dr. Hatton received the dual Ph.D. in Modern Thought & Literature and The Humanities with a PhD minor in Political Theory from Stanford University, and master’s degrees from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Jesuit University of San Francisco. He has volunteered as an instructor, tutor, and consultant in California prisons since 2003 and occasionally lectures in the Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University.

Cancellation Policy

We reserve the right to cancel at any time and issue a full refund. If you are unable to attend this event, please email programs@milibrary.org by Monday, February 17, 2025, to receive a full refund less any non-refundable ticketing fees which may be applicable. All fees must be paid at the time of registration. After Monday, February 17, 2025, no refunds will be issued.