Books by Christopher E Larkosh
Luso-American Literatures and Cultures Today, 2019
Intro to PLCS 32: Luso-American Literatures and Cultures Today
Transnational Africas, 2018
In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands... more In your text, treat Africa as if it were one country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short people who eat primates. Don't get bogged down with precise descriptions. Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book.
Behind the Stars, More Stars: The Tagus/Disquiet Collection of New Luso-American Writing, 2019
Introduction to the 2019 volume
Transnational Africas , 2018
No outono de 2016, aqui na UMass Dartmouth, tivemos a oportunidade singular de receber o autor an... more No outono de 2016, aqui na UMass Dartmouth, tivemos a oportunidade singular de receber o autor angolano Ondjaki como Hélio and Amélia Pedroso/Luso-American Foundation Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies. Com estas pergun-tas para Ondjaki, eu queria não só deixar um documento da sua estadia entre nós, mas também avaliar, ou talvez até interrogar, o papel atual da língua por-tuguesa que naturalmente marcou a nossa discussão de temas literários e cul-turais, com as perguntas adicionais-sobre cultura visual, material e sónica-talvez um exemplo da tarefa quase impossível, e talvez por isso tão necessária, de seguir indo ao encontro do outro, com o outro. Hoje continuamos estes diálogos culturais entre comunidades globais em vários continentes (em África desde logo, mas na América do Norte também), utilizando a língua portuguesa e outros sistemas simbólicos não só para comunicação entre si, mas também para "irem (ou irmos) além": de colonialismos europeus ou os limites culturais das comunidades diaspóricas locais, e de reconfigurações desta Lusofonia tão dispersa que frequentemente continua a privilegiar os mesmos centros literários tradicionais. Portanto, como é que estes diálogos, desde uma série de pontos alternativos de referência cultural, podem descentrar ou aumentar as formas de compreensão convencionais deste espaço linguístico transnacional, ou até pro-por um leque mais amplo de paradigmas culturais? 1. Para começar: Qual é a importância da cultura visual para si como autor? Como é que se integra na sua obra, seja nos romances, as obras infantis ou nas peças de teatro? Há uma vasta dimensão a considerar se falarmos na cultura visual. Desde a natural, como as paisagens geográficas e humanas; até às culturas visuais pic-tóricas, na pele ou na areia, passando também pela cinematográfica. Tudo isso contribui aos poucos para as impressões visuais que se interiorizam e que, mais tarde, chegam aos livros. Eu gosto muito de paisagens humanas, onde quero englobar não só as estéticas mas alguns conteúdos, as estórias, as memórias e as saudades do futuro. Portanto, penso que sim, há muito dessas impressões que chega aos meus livros. A medida exata, eu não saberia calcular nem expor.
Transnational Africas , 2018
Em outubro de 2017 o Centro de Estudos Portugueses e Cultura convidou duas pesquisadoras para a U... more Em outubro de 2017 o Centro de Estudos Portugueses e Cultura convidou duas pesquisadoras para a Universidade de Massachusetts em Dartmouth para orga-nizar uma série de diálogos, tanto para professores quanto para alunos, sobre o papel de intervenções acadêmicas ao contribuir a descolonizar as nossas discipli-nas e assim, as nossas universidades. As professoras Damares Barbosa e Patrícia Schor participaram de aulas, lições e conversas com alunos e professores, dando palestras sobre diversos temas (literatura luso-africana, afro-brasileira, goesa e timorense, teoria queer e pós-colonial, feminismo). O evento culminante da semana foi um fórum com o tema "Enfrentando o Racismo Anti-Negro na Pesquisa Acadêmica e no Ativismo," com a participação por teleconferência de ativistas europeus, inclusive o ativista português afro-descendente Mamadou Ba. Uma segunda visita em abril de 2018 acrescentou mais uma voz a esta discus-são: a da Post-Doctoral Fellow da Columbia University Selina Makana, convidada pelo Departamento de Português. Participou de uma conversa com alunos na Frederick Douglass Unity House sobre o papel do aluno na vida intelectual da universidade pública, e deu uma palestra sobre mulheres na literatura lusófona africana contemporânea. Todos os eventos tinham como objetivo o de criar mais espaço para pessoas de cor negra em termos reais nos programas acadêmicos universitários, e realçar o perfil de temas relacionados com as populações de cor negra no material pesquisado e ensinado no nosso currículo. Os textos adjuntos servem como testemunho e documento concreto desta série de eventos, que poderiam proporcionar um modelo diferente para o estudo da língua portuguesa e os estudos literários e culturais associados com ela no Século XXI, um momento epocal no qual esta lingúa é já falada na sua maioria por pessoas de cor negra.
Transnational Portuguese Studies, 2020
Transgender Quarterly , 2016
KulturConfusão: On German-Brazilian Interculturalities , 2015
This introduction accompanies a partial translation of southern Brazilian author Wilson Bueno's 1... more This introduction accompanies a partial translation of southern Brazilian author Wilson Bueno's 1992 short novel Mar Paraguayo (Paraguayan Sea), originally written in a hybrid language of Portuguese and Spanish commonly known as Portunhol and mixed with ample vocabulary from Guarani, a cross-border indigenous language of the region. The text serves as an example not only of literary cross-identification between the male author and the presumably female, but also quite possibly transgender, protagonist, but also cross-identification in the particular transnational political and social context of the Southern Cone of South America in the decade following a series of violent CIA-supported military dictatorships. By translating the text at least partially into a similarly hybrid " language of empire, " one comprising both elements of English and remnants of the original text, how might this textual transformation perform an implicit critique on the usage of language as cultural hegemony—not only in the dissemination of gender norms as an integral part of the ideology of authoritarian nation-states, but also in the transnational imposition of such regimes in the geopolitical context of late Cold War US imperialism? Along with providing this complex transnational, cultural, and linguistic context, this introductory text also attempts to shed some light on the facts surrounding the author's murder in 2010 and question the process of justice, as well as ask whether translation, in the ways it introduces new linguistic and cultural contexts for dis-cussions/denunciations of violence against gender minorities, might take on yet another perfor-mative critical function. T ranslating a multilingual text invariably presents a set of particular challenges to any translator: How much of the linguistic variety of the original can be maintained while still allowing a degree of legibility to a new audience of readers of a text that presumably will be, at least to some extent, in the new target lan-guage? And what if the translation of such a text—one characterized from the outset not only by linguistic " mixity " but also of outright unfamiliarity — is accompanied by other " trans " terms such as transitioning, transformation, and transience?
Papers by Christopher E Larkosh
Translating for Sexual Equality, 2017
The academic discipline known as translation studies is already queer, and has been since its ver... more The academic discipline known as translation studies is already queer, and has been since its very inception; conceived by openly gay scholar and activist James S. Holmes to work between the borders of academic categorization, translation studies still draws on these early maps and models to imagine itself and its continually shifting coordinates, often at the margins of theoretical activity. Homes was as concerned with life as a gay activist and its burgeoning leather scene as he was with translating Dutch-language poetry with his Dutch partner, to say nothing of producing the seminal research to the development of translation studies and a separate academic discipline. Is there a particular ethics of speaking of the self and its desires in this particular context? To answer this question, this paper revisits the professional activity and figure of the translator, a complex cultural and linguistic entity often characterized by desires, passions and political engagements that go far beyond the act of translation.
Multilingual Currents in Literature, Translation and Culture, 2018
Discussion of representations of Germany in Brazilian novels published over the course of the 21s... more Discussion of representations of Germany in Brazilian novels published over the course of the 21st century, fro authors such ads Luis Fernando Verissimo, Luiz Ruffato and most notably João Gilberto Noll. The article was published as my personal contribution to a larger research project as co-editor, along with Anke Finger and Gabi Kathöfer, of the collected volume Kulturconfusão: German-Brazilian Interculturalities (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2015).
This essay in Portuguese attempts to reset the ways the concept of Lusofonia has been understood ... more This essay in Portuguese attempts to reset the ways the concept of Lusofonia has been understood and discussed by moving its points of reference away from its sites of colonial power and towards and at times even beyond its officialized national borders and cultural margins.
From the collection of articles edited by Everton Machado and Duarte Drumond Braga titled: Goa po... more From the collection of articles edited by Everton Machado and Duarte Drumond Braga titled: Goa portuguesa e pas-colonial: Literatura, Cultura e Sociedade (Lisbon: Humus Editores, 2014).
My article on the role of translation and multilingualism in the works of two South American auth... more My article on the role of translation and multilingualism in the works of two South American authors, from my edited collection Re-Engendering Translation: Transcultural Practice, Gender/Sexuality and the Politics of Alterity (St. Jerome, 2011).
Parts of Asia/PLCS 17-18, 2010
Personal think piece of Portuguese-language heritage learning in southeastern New England (presen... more Personal think piece of Portuguese-language heritage learning in southeastern New England (presented at U of Toronto, 2008).
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Books by Christopher E Larkosh
Papers by Christopher E Larkosh