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 compares the French and English versions of Molloy, Malone Meurt, and L’Innommable by examining how self-translation affects the representation of the character’s mind and consciousness.

On a broader note, my research interests 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 Paper I: Grammar & Summary

  • Prelims Paper III: Short Texts

  • Prelims Paper IV: French Narrative Fiction

  • FHS Paper II A&B: Translation from and into Modern French

  • FHS Paper III: Translation from Pre-Modern French

  • FHS Paper VII: Early Modern Literature 1530-1800

  • FHS Paper VIII: Modern Literature 1715 to the present

  • FHS Paper X: Modern Prescribed Authors I

  • FHS Paper XI: Modern Prescribed Authors II

  • Access Summerschool Course: Shakespeare and Césaire in Performance

English Language and Literature:

  • FHS Paper VII: supervision of finalist undergraduate dissertations (subjects: African American studies)

  • Access Summerschool Course: 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

  • ‘Should Governments Pay Restitution for their Predecessors’ Acts?’, at the Lincoln Leads 2020 Seminar Series (University of Oxford) (forthcoming)

  • ‘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: Etats présents, états futurs French and Francophone Studies in the 21st Century, (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 (forthcoming)

  • ‘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 17th 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 :

 

Other activities

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

Subscribe to Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages