Waqas Mirza

PhD Candidate & Teacher (Modern French Literature & Translation)

Research

My PhD thesis explores self-translation in Samuel Beckett’s artistic process. It compares the English and French 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 include 20^th century French and English literature, the representation of the mind and consciousness in the arts, literary bilingualism, self-translation, poetry, cultural studies and Hip Hop studies.

Teaching

At Oxford, I have been teaching:

tutorials on Shakespeare and Césaire for Pembroke College’s ‘OxNet’ Access Summer School.
interdisciplinary symposia on Museum Collections for the Krasis Programme at the Ashmolean Museum.
tutorials on Beckett for FHS Paper XI and Modern French Literature at Somerville College and Wycliffe Hall.
seminars on Translation from and into Modern French for FHS Paper III at the French Sub-Faculty.
tutorials on Essay Writing and Commentary Writing for Prelims Paper III & IV at Lincoln College.
supervision of finalist undergraduate dissertations on African American Studies for FHS English Literature at St Hilda’s College.

Between 2009 to 2016, I taught different courses in Switzerland including:

French and English languages and literature to students in the Swiss public system.
French as a foreign language to unemployed adults in an institute for continuing education.

Current Roles

Executive Secretary and Senior Guide 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.
Academic Representative for Lincoln College 2018-19 & 2019-20.

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, 2020 (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

Papers, Talks & Conferences

‘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) (forthcoming)
‘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).
‘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).
‘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 in Literature (University of Oxford).
‘ “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).
‘ “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 Mental Verbs in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy’, at the Creative Multilingual Identities Conference 2018, (University of Reading).
‘The Self Translation of Mental Verbs in Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy’, presented at the French Graduate Seminar (All Soul’s College).

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: