Basic information
Professor Susan Bassnett FRSL
Summary Curriculum Vitae
Present positions Professor of Comparative Literature
Special Advisor in Translation Studies
School of Modern Languages
The University of Warwick
Coventry CV4 7AL
This is a 0.25 post
Professor of Comparative Literature
School of Modern Languages
University of Glasgow
Scotland
This is a 0.2 post.
Education Educated in Denmark, Portugal, Italy and United Kingdom
BA Hons (1st Class) English and Italian,
University of Manchester, 1968
PhD in French, University of Lancaster, 1976
Languages Fluency in English, Italian, French, Spanish
Good knowledge of German, Portuguese
Reading knowledge of Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Old Norse,
Danish, Czech
Academic Career 1968-1972-University of Rome
1972-1974 -University of Lancaster
1974-75 -Michigan State University
1976-2010- University of Warwick
2010- -0.25 post, University of Warwick
When appointed to Warwick my task was to set up post-graduate work in comparative literature. From that initial one-woman base, with a minimal budget and 1/5 of a secretary , I built the Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies. From 1997 to 2003 I served as Pro-Vice Chancellor. From 2003 to 2005 I directed my AHRC project on the Cultural Politics of Language and Translation in Global Media for which I was awarded a grant of £313,479. From 2005 to 2009 I served again as Pro-Vice-Chancellor.
In 2010 I moved into English and Comparative Literature at Warwick on a 0.25 post, transferring in 2014 to the newly formed School of Modern Languages.
Honorary 2000 -Elected Fellow of the Institute of Linguists
Appointments 2007 -Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
2005- 2013-Council Member of Academia Europaea
2006- Hon. Professor Guandong University of Foreign Studies
2009- Hon. Professor University of Leicester
2014- Hon. Professor University of Birmingham
2014- Hon. Adjunct Professor University of Limerick
2015- President, British Comparative Literature Association
Research I have published over 20 books, some monographs, some edited collections, some translations, some co-authored (see publication list). Translation Studies (4th ed. 2013)that first appeared in 1980 has never been out of print and has been translated into over a dozen languages. The success of this book is due to my role as one of a small group of international scholars who established the discipline of Translation Studies. My particular contribution has been to pioneer a cultural approach to translation that has been widely adopted around the world. The monograph resulting from my AHRC grant, Translation and Global News (Routledge 2010) will shortly appear in Chinese and Arabic. Comparative Literature:A Critical Introduction has also been translated into several languages and continues to be widely cited. In 2014 I published Translation in the Routledge New Critical Idiom series. My current project is a collection of essays on translation and World Literature also for Routledge.
International I have acted as External Examiner, External Advisor and/or
Relations Assessor and served on or chaired validation panels in over two dozen institutions around the world. Since 2005 I have served on grant assessment panels for the Linnaeus Foundation (Sweden), the European Science Foundation, the Finnish Academy of Sciences, the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Slovenian Academy, the Irish Research Council, the Marsden Foundation (New Zealand), the CNR(Italy), the FCT (Portugal) the Hong Kong UGC, among others.
In 2008 I chaired the Review of the 19 FCT funded Research Centres in the Humanities in Portugal, and was a member pif the Humanities panel for the 2014 exercise. In 2009 I chaired the Audit Panel for Lingnan University, Hong Kong and chaired the review group for English Studies at the University of Macau. In 2011 I served as Humanities assessor for Uppsala University, Sweden. Since 2010 I have served on professorial appointing panels in Denmark,Cyprus and Ireland.
In 2014 I was invited to join the board of the Harvard World Literature Institute.
The nature of my research and publications has resulted in a high international profile. I sit on a number of Advisory Editorial boards of leading journals .Over the years, I have been invited to lecture in universities in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea,Macau, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Singapore, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United States, Uzbekistan, Venezuela. In the last 2 years (2013-14) I have lectured in Denmark, Italy, Ireland,Portugal, Switzerland, Norway, Finland, the USA and Japan. My schedule for 2015-16 will include visits to Cyprus, Italy (I am the Nida School Professor for 2015),Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Canada and the USA.
Non-academic
writing Throughout my academic career I have continued with creative writing, journalism and performance work, often in the form of workshops that I have run in many parts of the world. Miscellaneous writing including review articles, feature journalism, short fiction and poetry continues to appear in periodicals and newspapers in Britain, Italy and the United States. Since 2005 over 200 articles and reviews have appeared in the British national press.Since 2003 I have written a bi-monthly column for the ITI Journal. I also have a strong track record of giving talks in schools and to non-academic audiences, most recently (2012) in the Dales Museum, North Yorkshire and the Bromley House Library, Nottingham (2013).
Pro-Vice-Chancellor 1997-2003 and 2005-2009
My brief for the first six year period was quality of education and accommodation. This was a tough but fascinating assigment as the QAA was expanding rapidly and visiting universities.In my second period of office I was Pro-Vice-Chancellor for campus life and community. This meant that I also chaired the Warwick Arts Centre Board, served on the Warwick Business School Board and had responsibility for cultural development and communications across the campus.
Other recent
appointments
2001-2006 -Member of Arts Advisory Board, British Council Currently member of Ad Hoc Advisory group for the British
Council
2003-2008 -Board member of Quality Assurance Agency
2002-2009 -Board member of Culture West Midlands
2003-2008 -Member of Council of the School of African and Oriental Studies, University of London
2003-2010- Board member of Arts Council England (West Midlands)
2013- Member of Court of University of Lancaster
2013- Board member of Leverhulme Trust Advisory Panel
Recent appointments
as judge of literary prizes
From 2004 to 2014 I was one of the judges of the Stephen
Spender Poetry in Translation prize which I helped to establish.
2008- International Sonnet writing prize
2011- Ghosh Banipal Arabic Writing in English Prize
2012- IMPAC Dublin International Literary Prize
Postgraduate
supervision and
examining I have supervised over 90 doctoral students and examined a similar number . Since 2012 I have examined PhDs in England, Scotland, Ireland,Denmark, India, Australia, South Africa, Spain and Norway. In 2015 I examined PhDs at the universities of Nottingham, Copenhagen, Aarhus and Reykjavik.
Teaching experience My teaching has been eclectic. In Rome I taught English literature up to 1550 and British Cultural Studies; In Lancaster I taught Anglo-Saxon and Early Middle English, Renaissance Drama and Creative Writing. At Michigan State I taught Creative Writing.
Once at Warwick, I set up an MA in Comparative Literature, then an MA in Translation Studies. During the years that I was building an MA student community, I taught undergraduates in the following departments: English and Comparative Literary Studies, French, Italian, Comparative American Studies, Film Studies, Theatre Studies, Philosophy. I phased out my undergraduate teaching once the Centre I had founded grew to a size where it demanded my full-time presence.
Other interests I have 4 children and now have 3 grandchildren. In my Who’s Who entry, my interests are listed as reading, textiles and walking dogs.