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Dr Mary Besemeres

 

Mary Besemeres is the author of Translating One's Self: Language and Selfhood in Cross-Cultural Autobiography (Peter Lang, 2002) and articles on transcultural and translingual autobiography. She is co-editor of Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures (UQP, 2007), and co-editor of the Routledge journal Life Writing .

Research Areas

Cross-cultural autobiography, contemporary life writing, bilingualism and migrant experience, travel writing, culture and emotion.

 

Current Projects

‘Anglos Abroad: Memoirs of Immersion in a Foreign Language and Culture'. ARC Discovery Grant 2006-2008.

Research Associate on ARC grant ‘English: Meaning, History and Culture', 2005-2009 (CI Anna Wierzbicka).

 

Publications

Books

Translating One's Self: Language and Selfhood in Cross-Cultural Autobiography , Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang, 2002.

Edited with Anna Wierzbicka, Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures , St Lucia , Qld: UQP, 2007.

Book chapters

“Immigrant Embarrassment and Self-Translation in Andrew Riemer's The Habsburg Café ”, in Selves Crossing Cultures: Autobiography and Globalization , Rosamund Dalziell (ed.), Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2002, 102–111.

“Cultural Translation and the Translingual Self in the Memoirs of Edward Said and André Aciman', in Exile, Language and Identity , Magda Stroinska and Vittorina Cecchetto (eds), Bern : Peter Lang, 2003, 19-33.

“Translating the Self in Hsu-Ming Teo's Love and Vertigo and Shirley Lim 's Among the White Moon Faces ”, in Anglophone Cultures in Southeast Asia: Appropriations, Continuities, Contexts , Rüdiger Ahrens et al (eds.), Heidelberg: Universitaetsverlag Winter, 2003, 115-122.

“Lost in Translations? Eva Hoffman and Tim Parks', in Border Crossings: Mapping Identities in Modern Europe , Peter Wagstaff (ed.), Oxford/Bern: Peter Lang, 2004, 125-143.

“When one's point of view changes with one's language”, in Kategoria Punktu Widzenia w Jezyku i Kulturze (Point of View in Language and Culture), Jerzy Bartminski (ed.), Lublin , Poland : UMCS, 2004, 293-308.

“Language and Emotional Experience” in Aneta Pavlenko, ed., Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation , Multilingual Matters, 2006, 34-58.

“Between zal and emotional blackmail: Ways of being in Polish and English”, in Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures , Mary Besemeres and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.), St Lucia, Qld: UQP, 2007, 128-138.

“Introduction”, with Anna Wierzbicka, in Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures , Mary Besemeres and Anna Wierzbicka (eds.), St Lucia, Qld: UQP, 2007, xiii-xxiv.

“Australian Immersion Narratives” in Desley Deacon, Angela Woollacott and Penny Russell, eds., Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World , ANU E-Press, 2008.

 

Articles in refereed journals

“Rewriting One's Self into English: Milosz Translated by Milosz”, The Polish Review 40 (4) (1995): 415-432.

“Language and Self in Cross-Cultural Autobiography: Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation ”, Canadian Slavonic Papers 40 (3-4) (September-December 1998): 327-344.

“Self-translation in Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin ”, The Russian Review 59 (3) (July 2000): 390-407.

“The meaning of the particle lah in Singapore English”, Pragmatics & Cognition 11:1 (2003), 3-38. (Co-authored with Anna Wierzbicka)

“Different Languages, Different Emotions? Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature”, The Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 25 (2&3) (2004), 140-158.

“The Family in Exile, Between Languages: Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation , Lisa Appignanesi's Losing the Dead , Anca Vlasopolos's No Return Address ”, a/b: Auto/Biography Studies 19 (1&2) (2004): 239-248.

“Anglos Abroad: Memoirs of Immersion in a Foreign Language”, Biography 28 (1) (2005): 27-42.

 

Journal Issues

Co-edited Mots pluriels , No. 23 (2003), ‘Translated Lives: Autobiography Between Languages and Cultures', (http://www.arts.uwa.edu.au/MotsPluriels) with Maureen Perkins

Co-edited Life Writing 1:1 (February 2004) with Maureen Perkins

Co-edited Life Writing 2:1 (March 2005) with Maureen Perkins

Co-edited Life Writing 3:1 (March 2006) with Maureen Perkins

Co-edited Life Writing 3.2 (October 2006) with Maureen Perkins

Co-edited Life Writing 4.2 (October 2007) with Maureen Perkins

General co-editor for all other issues of Life Writing , 1:2 (2004), 2:2 (2005), 4:1 (2007), 5.1 (April 2008), 5.2 (October, 2008) and 6.1 (forthcoming, 2009)

Founding co-editor of Life Writing

Life Writing website: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/14484528.asp

 

Other articles

Editorial, Mots pluriels , No. 23 (2003), ‘Translated Lives: Autobiography Between Languages and Cultures', coauthored with Maureen Perkins

Editorial, Life Writing 1:1 (2004), coauthored with Maureen Perkins

Editorial, Life Writing 4:1 (2007), coauthored with Maureen Perkins

Editorial, Life Writing 4:2 (2007), coauthored with Maureen Perkins

‘Eva Hoffman', Entry, Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography , Jo Malin and Victoria Boynton (eds.) ( Greenwood ), 2005. Coauthored with Susan Tridgell.

‘Shirley Geok-lin Lim', Entry, The Life Writing Site (established with funding from Curtin University ), http://www.lifenarrative.net/content/blogcategory/77/62/

‘Love and War in the Iliad ', Primitiae: A Journal of Classical Studies , 1991.