Waqas Mirza

Lecturer: St Catherine’s College & PhD Candidate: Lincoln College

Research

My doctoral thesis explores self-translation in Samuel Beckett’s artistic process. It reads his works comparatively to examine the effects of multilingual creativity on the construction and representation of personal and cultural identity.

On a broader note, my research interests include French and English literature, the representation of the mind in the arts, poetry, hip hop studies, imperial history, material culture, and museum studies.

Teaching

French Language and Literature:

Prelims Papers I, II, III, & V ( ie. Grammar & Summary; Translation; Short Texts; French Narrative Fiction )
FHS Papers I, II, III, VII, VIII, X, XI, & XII ( ie. Essay in French; Translation from & into Modern French; Translation from Pre-Modern French; Early Modern Literature 1530-1800; Modern Literature 1715 to the present; Modern Prescribed Authors I; Modern Prescribed Authors II )
Access Courses: Shakespeare and Césaire in Performance

English Language and Literature:

FHS Paper VII: supervision of finalist undergraduate dissertations (subjects: African American studies)
Access Courses: Shakespeare and Césaire in Performance

Museum Studies/Material Culture:

interdisciplinary symposia on Museum Collections for the Krasis Programme at the Ashmolean Museum.

Current Roles

Co-Director at Uncomfortable Oxford, a Social Enterprise which runs walking tours, public lectures, workshops and outreach programs to raise awareness and encourage discussions about the ‘uncomfortable’ legacies of inequality and imperialism in the city as well as the politics of memory built in its environment.
Co-Organiser of the Lincoln Leads Seminar Series 2019 & 2020, which showcases the exciting and diverse research connected to Lincoln College, and opens up this research to non-specialist audiences.
President of the Oxford Hip Hop Society for 2019-2020.
Academic Representative for Lincoln College for 2018-19 & 2019-20.

Papers, Talks, & Conferences

‘Liberté, Egalité, Beyoncé: Museum Mining by Revolutionary Royalty’, at the European Hip Hop Studies Conference 2022, (Paris)
‘Analysing Race and Gender in Children’s Literature ‘, at the Lord Florey Talk — Trinity Term 2021 (University of Oxford)
‘The Role of Universities and Colleges in Combating Racism’ at the Lincoln Anti-Racism Roundtable (University of Oxford)
‘Should Governments Pay Restitution for their Predecessors’ Acts?’, at the Lincoln Leads 2021 Seminar Series (University of Oxford)
‘Bouvard and Pécuchet’s Personal Collection of Curiosities: A Museum Structured by Sight’, at the Perlego: Critical Perspectives on Image and Text Conference, (Taylor Institution, University of Oxford)
‘The Self Translation of Personal Pronouns in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy’, at the 4th Annual Conference of the Samuel Beckett Society: Transdisciplinary Beckett, (Universidad Autonoma Metropolitan, Mexico City).
‘ “Only Poets Know the Truth About Us”: From James Baldwin to Kendrick Lamar — Peace, Love and Self-Knowledge as Resistance’, at the 2018 Hip Hop Studies Conference: Show and Prove, (University of California Riverside, Los Angeles).
‘ “A Poet To Some, A Regular Modern Day Shakespeare”: Eminem’s Commercial and Artistic Success’, at the 2018 Hip Hop Studies Conference: Show and Prove, (University of California Riverside, Los Angeles).
‘Memory Manipulation and Personal Identity: Beckett, Nolan and Gondry’ at the 2018 American Comparative Literature Association Annual Meeting (University of California Los Angeles, USA).
‘Why Does Literature Outlive its Moment?’, at the Lincoln Leads 2019 Seminar Series (University of Oxford).
‘ “Et si le beat est lourd, je l’adoucie à la poésie”: Le succès commercial et artistique de MC Solaar’, at the 20th Annual Conference of the ADEFFI (University College Dublin, Dublin).
‘The Self Translation of the Representation of the Mind in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy’, at the International Samuel Beckett Conference: Literature and translation, (University of Extremadura, Spain).
‘The Self Translation of Mental Verbs in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy’, at the Creative Multilingual Identities Conference 2018, (University of Reading).

Publications

‘The Self Translation of the Representation of the Mind in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy ’ in Samuel Beckett and Translation, eds. José Francisco Fernández and Mar Garre García, Edinburgh University Press, 2021
‘The Self Translation of Personal Pronouns in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy ’ in Transdisciplinary Beckett/Beckett Transdisciplinar, 2020 (forthcoming)
‘Beckett The Bilingual Self-Translator’ in Samuel Beckett: Literature and Translation, ed. Moreno, Alvarez and Gonzalez, pp.247-264, Peter Lang Editions, 2020.
Book Review on In Search of Soul : Hip-Hop Literature, and Religion by Alejandro Nava in Journal of Hip Hop Studies Special Issue Religion and Hip Hop And Volume 5, Issue 1, Summer 2019, pp.175-177

Translation Work

Transcription and translation of 17^th century documents for the Pitt Rivers Museum.
Charles-Irénée Castel de Saint Pierre, Project for Perpetual Peace in Europe in The Idea of Europe: Enlightenment Perspectives. Texts selected by Catriona Seth and Rotraud von Kulessa. Translated by Catriona Seth et al. (June 2017).
2015-2017: Translator for Lombard Odier & Cie.

Creative writing

Poetry published in the University of Geneva’s English journal Noted :

The Particle Chronicles and Morning Bash in the 2015 Spring edition
Un-Int-Eruptible and A maze’n’maze in the 2016 Spring edition

Other activities

Theatre and opera reviews published on the University of Lausanne’s Atelier Critique website: