The incoming 2009 graduate class in Translation Studies is our largest group ever, attesting to the growth and success of the program.  New students entering the program this year include:

New PhD students:

Eyal Tamir earned a BA from Tel Aviv University, Israel in English/Psychology and his MA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in English and American studies, as well as a second MA from Brandeis University in English and American Literature. His specialization is literary theory, film, translation studies, and popular literature; he is currently a visiting lecturer in Modern Hebrew at Indiana University.

New MA students:

Jacob Dyer-Spiegel (USA) is a graduate student in the English Department here at UMass. He did his MA at SUNY-Buffalo/University de la Habana, Cuba, majoring in Caribbean Studies, and his BA in comparative Literature here at UMass Amherst. He is working on Yoruba religious systems that crossed the Atlantic during the African slave trades and continue to thrive today in the form of Candomblé and Macumba (Brazil), Regla de Ocha (Cuba), Santería (Colombia, Mexico, Puerto Rico, U.S., Venezuela), Shango (Trinidad, Jamaica), and Voudún (Haiti).

Christine Gutman (USA) did her BA in French at Simmons College (2007). She has worked at the Québec Government Office in Boston and in the Boston French Library and Alliance Française. She did a semester abroad in Aix-en-Provence, when she studied literary translation. She also knows German.

Erin O’Rourke (USA) did her BA at Bard College (BA, 2003), majoring in Italian.  She also knows Spanish. Her senior thesis project was on film adaptations of a group of novels focusing on post-WWII Italy. She has translated poetry, too, including a series of poems by Pablo Neruda.  Over the last few years she has worked on her own creative writing, writing in English, Spanish, and Italian.  Her goal is to become a certified translator.

Yuko Takehashi (Japan) is currently a graduate student in Political Science at UMass Amherst. She did her Masters at the University of Tsukuba in International Politics, and her BA at Meiji Gakuin University, majoring in International Studies.

New Non-degree students:

Aaron Holmes (USA) did his BA at Doane College in Nebraska, majoring in Spanish, and has taken graduate courses in Spanish and Translation at the University of Nebraska.  He did a semester abroad in Chine. He is interested in translation and film animation.

Glauco Micsik Roberti (Brazil) is a PhD candidate on exchange from the Universidade de Sao Paulo (USP), where he is working on his dissertation on Irish Literature and Language related to war and identity, using cultural and translation studies approaches to analyze texts from the old Irish period to the present.

Wen Hui (China) is currently a teacher at the School of Foreign languages, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China, here as an exchange student, part of an agreement between the University of Massachusetts and Shaanxi University. She is here doing research on translation, feminism, eco-feminism, and ethics.

Xu Xiaomin (China) is also a teacher School of Foreign languages, Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an, China, here as an exchange student under the same agreement. She is doing research on poetry translation, especially on the transference of the musical effects from classical Chinese into English.

Welcome to all!