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 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. 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 (tbc). 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 Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass as Eco-translation Practices
Grass, D. 2024 In: The Translation of Experience. London : Routledge
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, p. 1-9. 9 p.
Journal article

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)

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

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

Undisciplined: Translation as Creative-Critical Practice’s Rebellious Cartographies
Invited talk

Translation as Intermedial Practice: Shaping Planetarity beyond Words
Invited talk

Translation as Creative-Critical Practice: An Eco-Critical Perspective
Invited talk

Nottingham War Rooms: A Creative Archive
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Translation as Creative-Critical Practice
Invited talk

Translating across Material and Ecosemiotic Boundaries
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Lancaster Environment Lecture: Feeding the World without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Celebrating the Creative Critical
Invited talk

Voice Notes: Creativity, Technology and Exile (AHRC) (External organisation)
Member of Advisory Panel

Lancaster Litfest (External organisation)
Member of Advisory Panel

Critical Poetics: Writing with Care
Invited talk

Life’s Not Personal: A Creative – Critical Conference on Experimental Life Writing
Oral presentation

De Materia Medica: Mode d'Emploi
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

De Materia Medica: Mode d'Emploi
Invited talk

Lancaster Environment Lecture: Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva
Participation in conference - Public

The Translation Memoir/ Translation as Memoir
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

"Translation as Performance: A Journey in Practice-Based Research"
Invited talk

« Roland Barthes et les nouveaux “je(s)” »
Invited talk

‘“This Author is not for Turning”: The Return of the Author beyond the Creative/Critical Divide’
Invited talk

'Found in Translation: Literary Dispatches from the Peripheries of Europe'
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

'Translate, Create, Debate! Literary Dispatches from the Peripheries of Europe'
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

"Displacement is the New Translation" by Kenneth Goldsmith: Towards a New Critical Poetics?
Invited talk

Hans/Jean Arp's Translations without Objects
Oral presentation

Language Shifts
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

What we do in Archives: Stories of Facing the Unreadable
Invited talk

Orpheus in the Archives
Invited talk

life.theory.death
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Lancaster Litfest
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Lancaster Litfest
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Multilinguisme et Traduction comme Avant-Gardes
Invited talk

Modern Autofictions
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

After Life: Aesthetics, Politics, Thought
Participation in workshop, seminar, course

Screening the literary
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

The Near and the Far
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Re-reading Derrida’s Faith and Knowledge
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

International Journal of Francophone Studies (Journal)
Editorial activity

The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture (Journal)
Editorial activity

Modernist Studies Association
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

ACLA
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Translation as Transmedial Practice: Shaping Planetary Thinking Beyond Words
Invited talk

Multilingual French Identities
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Kadin/Women2000 (Journal)
Publication peer-review

exhibition
Festival/Exhibition/Concert

Contemporary Poetry in Public Spaces
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

"Living Translation" event, The University of Bristol
Invited talk

It Gives us the Other
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Invitation for poetry reading at the Sorbonne University
Invited talk

Colloquy (Journal)
Publication peer-review

Association for the study of Modern and Contemporary France postgraduate study day
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Le Monde de Michel Houellebecq
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Hermes International Symposium, World Literature and World Culture
Participation in conference -Mixed Audience

Opticon1826 (Journal)
Editorial activity

Arp Foundation Fellowship
Fellowship awarded competitively

  • Authors and the World
  • Multilingual Creativities
  • Transcultural Writing, Practice and Research Network