(Re)Discovery: Modernist Travelogues by Sofia Yablonska, A Daring Ukrainian Woman Globetrotting in the 1930s

by Program in Translation and Intercultural Communications

Lecture Arts Humanities

Thu, Oct 26, 2023

12 PM – 1:20 PM EDT (GMT-4)

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161 E. Pyne Hall

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

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Flyer for ( Re ) Discovery: Modernist Travelogues by Sofia Yablonska, A Daring Ukrainian Woman Globetrotting in the 1930s

Had social media existed in the 1930s, "Distant Horizons" — an engrossing travel diary which PIIRS Translator-in-Residence Hanna Leliv is translating into English — would have gone viral, and its author, the self-identified Ukrainian writer and photographer Sofia Yablonska, would have become an instant sensation as a travel blogger with thousands of followers. In this collection of imaginative vignettes, Yablonska describes her round-the-world journey from France to Port Said, Colombo, Saigon, Bangkok, and all the way to Bora Bora. The travelogue not only documents her wanderlust, but invites the reader on an introspective journey from perception to reflection, from mapping foreign terrain to self-mapping.

The figure of Sofia Yablonska is complex and unconventional — just like her writings, which have only recently been rediscovered and properly appreciated. Why should it now be the turn of readers beyond Ukrainian borders to discover Yablonska? What does it take to adequately introduce an earlier cultural production from a less well-represented culture to a contemporary audience? And does it even make sense to do so, given the number of urgent texts dealing with the Russian war against Ukraine that need to be translated and published? This lecture invites participants to reflect on these questions and gain a deeper insight into the vibrant and diverse Ukrainian literature.

Food Provided (Lunch Available While Supplies Last. )

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Where

161 E. Pyne Hall

Princeton, NJ 08544, United States

Speakers

Hanna Leliv

Hanna Leliv is a native of Lviv, Ukraine, where she works as a freelance translator and runs literary translation workshops at Ukrainian Catholic University. She was a Fulbright fellow at the University of Iowa’s Literary Translation Workshop and mentee at the Emerging Translators Mentorship Program run by the UK National Center for Writing. Her translations of contemporary Ukrainian literature into English have appeared in Asymptote, BOMB, Washington Square Review, Circumference, and elsewhere. In 2022, Astra House published Stalking the Atomic City: Life Among the Decadent and the Depraved of Chornobyl by Markiyan Kamysh in her translation. She has most recently served as a faculty fellow at the Dartmouth College the Leslie Center for the Humanities.

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Program in Translation and Intercultural Communications | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society, Program in Translation and Intercultural Communications (OWNER), Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies

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