Modern Greek Studies Association

Dr. Karen R. Van Dyck

Professor, Kimon A. Doukas Chair

Columbia University
Department of Classics, Program in Hellenic Studies

Degrees

Ph.D. 1990 Oxford (Medieval and Modern Languages)
M.A. 1985 University of Thessaloniki (Modern Greek Literature)
B.A. 1983 Wesleyan University (Classics, College of Ltrs.)

Recent Honors

Honorary Doctorate, University of Athens, Athens, Greece (March 23, 2022) - Review

London Hellenic Prize (2016); New Statesman Pick of the Year (December 2016) and Guardian Poetry Book-of-the-Month (April 2016) for Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry (Penguin, 2016).

Principal Publications

Lifted, collection of poetry that explores the ethics of making poems out of other people’s prose and translations as it tells the story of becoming a writer and translator (Agra, June 2022, bilingual edition, translated into Greek by Eleni Bourou, 90 pages).

Hers, translation from the Greek of Maria Laina’s collection of poetry Diko tis, translator (World Poetry Books, May 2022).

The Light that Burns Us, translation from the Greek of poetry by Jazra Khaleed, editor, (World Poetry Books, 2021).

Three Summers, translation from the Greek of Margarita Liberaki’s novel Ta psathina kapela, translator (Penguin European Classics, with a new introduction by Polly Samson, 2021; NYRB Classics, revised and with a new introduction, July, 2019; Athens: Kedros, 1995, 320 pages).

“Translingual Practices at the Edges of Europe,” Special Issue, “Peripheral Europes,” Critical Quarterly, forthcoming 2023.

“The Place of the Page: Translating Maria Laina’s Hers,” for special issue "Poems and Places,” Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry and Poetics, forthcoming 2023.

“Souleymane Bachir Diagne and Karen Van Dyck in conversation: ‘In Translation: Mutuality and the Ethics of Unexpected Collaboration,’” for special issue "Translation/ Trouvaille,” The Translator, eds. Kathryn Batchelor and Chantal Wright, forthcoming 2023

“Exile, Nationalism, Intralingual Translation” PMLA, special issue on translation, under consideration, forthcoming 2023.

“Migration, Translingualism, Translation,” Translation Studies Reader, 4th edition, Routledge, 2021, 466-485. - And here in talk form

“ Metafrazontas ti metaglossikotita sti logotehnia tis metanastefsis Thanasis Valtinos kai Sotiris Dimitriou. ” (Tradurre il mistolinguismo nella letteratura della migrazione Thanassis Valtinòs e Sotiris Dimitriu), La letteratura neogreca del XX secolo Un caso Europeo, Sapienza University, Rome, 2020, 453-465.

“Translating Three Summers,” Introduction to Three Summers by Margarita Liberaki, NYRB, July 2019; reprinted in the Paris Review blog

“What’s Found in Translation,” PN Review 234, March 2017.

“Translating a Canonical Author: C. P. Cavafy,” Chapter 12, Teaching Translation: Programs, Courses, Pedagogies, ed. Lawrence Venuti (Routledge, 2016).

Katohi kai peina: istories tis kathe meras (Everyday Stories of Occupation and Hunger), co -edited with Fay Zika, (Hestia, 2016).

Austerity Measures: The New Greek Poetry (Penguin, 2016). Introduction reprinted in the Guardian

“Forms of Cosmopolitanism,” Los Angeles Review of Books, February 16, 2014 (4,170 words).

“The Homophonic Imagination: Translating Modern Greek Poetry,” Translation Cruxes, New Ohio Review, Fall 2013, 176-181.

Literature between Languages and the Question of Translation, Eleventh Kimon A. Friar Lecture Pamphlets (America College of Greece, Athens, 2010, 61 pages)

The Greek Poets: Homer to the Present (Norton, 2009, 692 pages), co-edited by Peter Constantine, Rachel Hadas, Edmund Keeley, and Karen Van Dyck

The Scattered Papers of Penelope: New and Selected Poems by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke. (Saint Paul, MN, Greywolf Press, 2009, 128 pages)

A Century of Greek Poetry: 1900-2000, co-edited with Peter Bien, Peter Constantine and Edmund Keeley (River Vale, NJ: Cosmos, 2004, 993 pages, bilingual edition).

I Kassandra kai i logokrites sti neoelliniki poiisi (1967-1990), trans. Palmyra Ismiridou (Athens: Agra Publications, 2002, 458 pages) [Translation of Kassandra and the Censors into Greek, updated and with a new introduction].

Kassandra and the Censors: Greek Poetry since 1967, Reading Women Writing Series (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1998, 305 pages).

The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding: Three Collections of Poetry by Contemporary Greek Women Poets (Middletown: Wesleyan UP, 1998, 294 pages, bilingual edition).

Three Summers, a novel by Margarita Liberaki [psathina kapela] (Athens: Kedros, 1995, 320 pages).

Insight Guide: Greece (Singapore: Prentice Hall Press, 1988, 365 pages).

 “The Language Question and the Diaspora,” in The Making of Modern Greece: Nationalism, Romanticism, and the Uses of the Past (1797-1896), eds. Rodney Beaton and David Ricks (Ashgate, 2008), 189-98.

“Tracing the Alphabet in Psycharis’s Journey, ,” O Psiharis kai i epohi tu: zitimata glossas, logotehnias kai politismu, ed. Georgia Farinu (Institute for Modern Greek Studies, Manolis Triandafillides Foundation, 2005), 135-151.

"Greek Poetry Elsewhere," Gramma: Special Issue on Contemporary Greek Poetry, eds. Michalis Chryssanthopoulos, Ekaterini Douka-Kabitoglou, Lizy Tsirimokou, Vol. 8, 2000, 81-98.

“Avant-garde Translation: A Conversation with Diamanda Galas,” CONNECT: Special Issue on Translation, eds. Rosalind C. Morris and Radhika Subramaniam, Vol. 1, 2000, 51-60.

“Bruised Necks and Crumpled Petticoats: What’s Left of Myth in Contemporary Greek Women’s Poetry,” in Ancient Greek Myth in Modern Greek Poetry, ed. Peter Mackridge (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 1996), 121-30.

“Reading Between Worlds: Contemporary Greek Women’s Writing and Censorship,” Censorship Issue, PMLA 109:1 (January 1994), 45-60.