Dr Delphine Grass

Senior Lecturer in French and Comparative Literature

Research Overview

My research focuses on modern and contemporary French literature, creative-critical writing and transcultural artistic practices. I am a member of the Critical Poetics research group (Nottingham Trent University), the AHRC-funded Experiential Translation Network and the Eco-translation Network (Edinburgh University). In my work I am particularly interested in creative-critical and intermedial practices around translation, the relationship between translation and the arts, and in translation as a space for thinking transformatively about international relations in multispecies environmental contexts. My work in this area explores the socially transformative potential of intermedial and creative-critical translation practices as world-making and inter-epistemic practices, establishes new generative links between practice and research, and models new epistemologies and forms of experimental scholarship. My interest in epistemological diversity and ecosemiotics is tied to my work on minority languages such as Alsatian as well as my interest in multispecies animacies across languages and cultures.

My most recent past research project in this area, 'Translation as Creative Critical Practice' (AHRC/MEITS), researched the ways in which translation can stimulate creative approaches to scholarship and to the reading and interpretation of texts across media. I have recently written a book entitled Translation as Creative-Critical Practice (Cambridge University Press, 2023) which explores the separation between practice and theory in translation studies through my analysis of creative-critical translation experiments. Focusing on contemporary literary and artistic engagements with translation such as the autotheoretical translation memoir, performative translations and 'transtopian' literary and visual art works, my book argues for a renewed engagement with translation studies from the point of view of translation as artistic and practice-based research capable of reframing social and geographical relations. Exploring examples of translation as both a norm-breaking activity in the works of Kate Briggs, Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi, Noémie Grunenwald, Anne Carson, Charles Bernstein, Chantal Wright or Slavs and Tatars to name a few, this book prompts readers to reconsider translation as a world-making activity in its own right.

Some reviews:

'The present volume is likely to be influential: Grass’s terms and definitions are useful, incisive, and intuitive (a combination rarely achieved in cutting-edge scholarship!), and her readings of fascinating work by translators from Anne Carson to Sophie Lewis to Chantal Wright are models of analytical practice in their own right.’ Christopher Friker in French Studies.

‘This is a vital critique of translation theory, and the opening of a new chapter in translation studies: a debate around “weak” or “tender” theory of translation. What an exciting moment for the discipline.’ Kasia Szymanska in Babel.

‘Grass challenges the traditional postulates of the field of translation studies, aiming to inspire renewed activity in translation as a field of political and theoretical engagement through practice. One of the most inspiring ideas that she offers is that it is possible to view translation failure as a site of cultural production and resistance.’ Marijana Javornik Čubrić in The Linguist.

I am also collaborating with Dr. Lily Robert-Foley (University of Montpellier III) on two further projects in this area of research. One is a monograph collective monograph entitled Unending Translation: Creative-Critical Experiments in Translation and Life Writing (UCL Press, forthcoming). The other is a special of issue of Life Writing (Routledge) entitled ‘The Translation Memoir’, published in 2024.

Another aspect of my research into contemporary creative practices focuses on the relationship between literature, art and political philosophy. I have written and published works on Michel Houellebecq, French politics, writing technologies and posthumanism. In the field of French and francophone art practices, I have also published work on the cultural and artistic history of the Alsace and Lorraine borderland and the relationship between Modernism and national indifference more generally. I am also a published poet, creative-critical writer and poetry translator.

Selected Publications

Translation as Creative-Critical Practice
Grass, D. 21/12/2023 Cambridge : Cambridge University Press. 88 p. ISBN: 9781009074834, 9781009462556. Electronic ISBN: 9781009075039.
Book

Translating the Anthropocene: Ulrike Almut Sandig's "In die Natur" and Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding sweetgrass as planetary eco-translation practices
Grass, D. 27/02/2025 In: The Translation of Experience. London : Routledge p. 35-54. 20 p.
Chapter (peer-reviewed)

The Translation Memoir
Grass, D., Robert-Foley, L. 31/01/2024 In: Life Writing. 21, 1
Special issue

The Translation Memoir: An Introduction
Grass, D., Robert-Foley, L. 31/01/2024 In: Life Writing. 21, 1, 9 p.
Editorial

Ghosts in the Text: Writing Technologies, Authorial Strategy and the Politics of Reactionary Autoimmunity in Houellebecq's Works
Grass, D.B. 1/04/2019 In: The Australian Journal of French Studies. 56, 1, p. 53–69.
Journal article

The Democratic Languages of Exile: Reading Eugene Jolas and Yvan Goll's American Poetry with Jacques Derrida and Hannah Arendt
Grass, D.B. 1/07/2017 In: Nottingham French Studies. 56, 2, p. 227-244. 18 p.
Journal article

Domesticating Hierarchies, Eugenic Hygiene and Exclusion Zones: The Dogs and Clones of Houellebecq's La Possibilité d'une île
Grass, D. 07/2012 In: L'Esprit Créateur. 52, 2, p. 127-140. 14 p.
Journal article

Translating the Archives: An Autotheoretical Experiment
Grass, D.B. 28/10/2021 In: Thinking Through Relation: Encounters in Creative Critical Writing. London : Peter Lang Publishing
Chapter (peer-reviewed)

Living Between Languages: Creative-Critical Translation for Asylum and Refugee Language Learners
01/06/2024 → …
Research

Moving Lines: Translation as Performance in Hans/Jean Arp
01/06/2020 → 30/06/2020
Research

ISF: Translation as Creative Critical Practice
30/01/2019 → 30/06/2020
Research

Translation as Creative Critical Practice
30/01/2019 → 30/06/2020
Research

The Author and the world: New interdisciplinary approaches to authorship
06/01/2014 → 05/01/2016
Research

Multilingual Creativities
24/02/2013 → …
Other

Planetary Translations
01/01/1900 → …
Research

Set up in error
01/01/1900 → …
Research

Unsecurities Lab 2
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Experimental Translation: Globetranslation
Participation in conference - Academic

Weaving, Language, Writing: Thinking and Practicing Research-Creation
Participation in conference - Academic

III Lisbon Spring School in Translation Studies
Participation in conference - Academic