Writing Between Languages and Cultures with Yoko Tawada (04/14/14)
Join us for a lecture and conversation with the internationally renowned writer Yoko Tawada. Tawada was born in Tokyo in 1960 and moved to Hamburg, where she received a PhD in German literature, when she was twenty-two, and then to Berlin in 2006. She writes in both Japanese and German and has published several books in both languages. She has received numerous awards for her writing including the Akutagawa Prize, the Adelbert von Chamisso Prize (a German award recognizing foreign writers for their contributions to German culture), the Tanizaki Prize, the Goethe Medal (an official decoration of the Federal Republic of Germany), and the prestigious Yomiurui Prize for Literature. New Directions has published her story collections Where Europe Begins (with a Preface by Wim Wenders) and Facing the Bridge, and her novel of Catherine Deneuve obsession, The Naked Eye, and a stand alone edition of her famous story, The Bridegroom Was a Dog.
This event will be moderated by Anna Zielinska-Elliott and Peter Schwartz. Elliott is Senior Lecturer in Japanese at Boston University and a translator of modern Japanese literature into Polish. She has published numerous translations of novels, stories, and plays by Murakami Haruki, Mishima Yukio, Yoshimoto Banana, and others. Schwartz is Associate Professor of German & Comparative Literature at Boston University. His interests include the Enlightenment (as historical event and unfinished process), European neoclassicism and modernism, American, French, Dutch and Japanese literature, early film and photography, the history of New York City, the critical work of the Frankfurt School, and the “science of culture” (Kulturwissenschaft) of the art historian Aby Warburg and his circle.
Tuesday, April 15, 2014
6 PM – 7:30 PM
Boston University Photonics Center, 8 St. Mary’s Street, 9th floor
Reception and book-signing to follow
This event is jointly sponsored by the Center for the Study of Europe and the Center for the Study of Asia at Boston University and the Japan Society Boston in cooperation with the Goethe Institut Boston.
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Yoko Tawada gives a rare performance featuring her verse interspersed with onomatopoeic elements. Interludes showcase Tawada’s CD »diagonal« recorded in 2002 with the internationally renowned jazz pianist Aki Takase. Texts will be read in German with projected English translations. No knowledge of German is necessary.