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 and examines 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, poetry, cultural studies, Hip Hop studies, the representation of the mind and consciousness in the arts, literary bilingualism and self-translation.

Teaching

At Oxford, I have been teaching:

seminars on Museum Collections for the Krasis Programme as Junior Teaching Fellow at the Ashmolean Museum.
tutorials on Samuel Beckett and Modern French Literature at Somerville College.
seminars on Translation from and into Modern French as Graduate Teaching Assistant at the Department.
tutorials on essay writing as Graduate Teaching Assistant for French at Lincoln 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 a private institution for continuing education.

Current Roles

Executive Secretary, Senior Guide and Head of Communications at Uncomfortable Oxford, a Social Enterprise which aims at raising awareness about the ‘uncomfortable’ legacies of inequality and imperialism in the city as well as the politics of memory built in its environment. We run walking tours, blog posts, public lectures, and outreach programs.
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 (2020) (forthcoming)
‘Beckett The Bilingual Self-Translator’ in Samuel Beckett: Literature and Translation, ed. Bernardo Santano Moreno, (Peter Lang Editions, 2019) (forthcoming)
Book Review on In Search of Soul : Hop-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

‘ “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).
‘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).
‘ “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 Estramadura, 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).
‘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: