SPEAKER'S FORUM
Sherry Simon is a Professor in the Department of French Studies at Concordia University. She has also held the position of Canada Research Chair in Translation and Cultural History (York University, 2005) and served as Director of Concordia’s interdisciplinary PhD in Humanities Program. An internationally renowned scholar, Professor Simon has published extensively on subjects related to Translation Studies, literary translation, and gender in translation, among others. She has authored, edited, and co-edited several important volumes like Gender in Translation, Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission. London, Routledge,1996. and Culture in Transit, Translating the Literature of Quebec. Ed. Sherry Simon, Véhicule Press, Montréal, 1995. Her current research, exemplified in publications such as Translating Montreal: Episodes in the Life of a Divided City (2006) and Cities in Translation (2012), explores intersections of language, translation and memory in urban contexts.
Siri Nergaard has been teaching Translation Theory in the Masters in Publishing program was directed by Umberto Eco at the University of Bologna, and Norwegian at the University of Florence. In addition, she teaches Semiotics and Text Theory at the University of Tønsberg, Norway. Her fields are semiotics, translation theory, and cultural studies. Nergaard is the author of La costruzione di una cultura: Laletteratura norvegese in traduzione italiana (The Construction of a Culture: Norwegian Literature in Italian Translation), published in 2004 by Guaraldi, Rimini, Italy. She has translated two volumes of essays by Umberto Eco into Norwegian, and has edited several books in Italian on translation theory, including La teoria della traduzione nella storia (Translation Theory in History, 1993) and Teorie contemporanee della traduzione (Contemporary Translation Theories, 1995), both published by Bompiani. More recently, she co-edited with Cristina Demaria Studi culturali: Temi eprospettive a confronto (Culture Studies: Themes and Perspectives, McGraw-Hill, 2008). Forthcoming is a book, tentatively entitled The Third Way of Translation, scheduled to be published first in Italian, then in English. Nergaard is Editor of the journal, translation.
Dr. Kanchuka Dharmasiri is a theatre director, translator and scholar from Sri Lanka. She is currently teaching in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. She recently completed her PhD in Comparative Literature at the Universtiy of Massachusetts Amherst.
Kanchuka’s interdisciplinary research interests include postcolonial studies, theatre, translation studies, early Buddhist women’s writing, performance theory, and cultural studies. Kanchuka is the editor of Streets Ahead with Hatthtotuwegama, a selection of writings by and about Gamini Haththothuwegama, a pioneer of political street theatre in Sri Lanka and Leader of the Wayside and Open Theatre for 35 years.
Dr. K. Jason Coker is an adjunct professor at Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, Georgia, where he teaches courses in the New Testament. He is also the national director for Together for Hope, an organization that fights rural poverty in the United States of America. Dr. Coker’s first book, James in Postcolonial Perspective: The Letter as Nativist Discourse, was published in 2015 by Fortress Press. His current research interest in globalization, translation studies, and New Testament studies will culminate in a monograph tentatively entitled The Corporation of God: A Biblical Critique of Global Capitalism
Professor Milind Malshe is a former professor of English in the department of HSS at IIT Bombay. Professor Malshe is an academician, writer and literary critic, linguist, musician and a translator. His areas of interest include aesthetics, art criticism, research methodology for performing arts, translation studies, Indian languages and literature, Bakhtin studies, stylistics, and semiotics.
He has written five books and fifty papers in English and Marathi on linguistics, aesthetics, language teaching and music criticism. He has also translated some of the works of R.G. Collingwood and Noam Chomsky into Marathi. Prof. Malshe also has a parallel career as a dedicated vocalist. After receiving his initial training under G. T. Tilak & Ashok Ranade, he trained under Ratnakar Pai of the Jaipur gharana.
He is a recipient of Best Critic of the Year Award of the Mumbai Marathi Sahitya Sangh. He has presented vocal recitals in Hindustani classical music in many cities in India and abroad. His book on "Research Methodology for Performing Arts" has recently been published by Poona University
Dr. Radhika Seshan is Professor and Head of the Department of History, Savitribai Phule Pune University, where she has been working since 1996. Her area of specialization is medieval Indian history, within which she has concentrated on economic history, especially maritime and urban history. Dr. Radhika Seshan has had many papers published in national and international journals. She recently organized a panel at the World Economic History Congress, in Japan, on the theme of “The City and the World: Spatial and Temporal Connections”. She has edited five books, and has, in addition, published two books as sole author – “Trade and Politics on the Coromandel Coast, Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries” (Delhi, Primus Books, 2012) and “Ideas and Institutions in Medieval India, Eighth to Eighteenth Centuries” (Orient Blackswan, 2013).
Tharakeshwar, V. B. is teaching at the Department of Translation Studies at The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad, India. He has published in the areas of Translation Studies, Colonialism and Nationalism, Linguistic Nationalism/Identity, Literary Historiography etc. He is a bilingual writer who has published both in Kannada and English. He has coordinated a translation series called ‘Classical Kannada Texts in English’. He has handled many research projects in the area of Translation Studies. He is on the editorial board of several journals. He has also coordinated a national level project on “Rethinking the ‘Crisis’ in English Studies". He has more than 20 years of teaching service in Translation Studies.
Sharad Deshpande is former Professor and Head of Philosophy Department of Savitribai Phule Pune University. His contribution to the teaching, research, leadership, publication and outreach activities of the Department of Philosophy of Pune University spans over more than three decades. He was National Professor of Indian Council of Philosophical Research (I.C.P.R) in 2015. He has held a prestigious Tagore Fellowship instituted in 2012 at Indian Institute of Advanced Study Shimla during 2012-2014. He has been a British Council Visiting Fellow at the University of Liverpool, Aberdeen and Oxford (U.K) in 1998 and I.C.P.R. Visiting Scholar at Maison De Sciences de l’a Homme, Paris in 2008. In addition to many of his contributions to various research journals, Prof. Deshpande’s publications include Philosophy in Colonial India, (ed), (Springer, 2015) Philosophy of G.R.Malkani (ed), (I.C.P.R. 1997) 200 Years of Kant (ed), (I.P.Q. 2004) Theories and Forms in Indian Aesthetic Tradition (co-ed) (PHISPC, 2009) Causation, Explanation and Understanding (I.P.Q 2001). Prof. Deshpande’s interests in philosophy range over analytic philosophy, aesthetics, Advaita Vedanta, and cultural encounters among East and West.