Rosanna Simons is Draper's Latest Travel Grant Winner! You Could be Next!

Congratulations to Rosanna Simons!

Rosanna won Draper's travel grant for the January/February period.

Another $200 award is up for grabs in the current application period, which ends April 30 at 5:00pm. If you'll be traveling to a conference and would like some additional funding, please apply! The application form is also available from our Forms page, and has additional information, including eligibility.

Rosanna was able to put her $200 toward her travel to a conference at York University, in Toronto -- Multilingual Identities: Translators and Interpreters as Cross-cultural Migrants. Rosanna's paper was entitled Translated, Translator: Hybridized Language in Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

Here is her abstract:

Junot Díaz, who was born in 1968 in the Dominican Republic and was relocated by his mother to New Jersey at the age of six, composed his 2007 novel, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in what New York Times critic, Michiko Kakutani called “a sort of streetwise brand of Spanglish…” In this paper, I will explain how the in-between space that Junot Díaz occupies as a translated man enables him to create a hybridized language in his novel. Expanding on Maria Tymoczko’s theory of literary translation as an analogue for post-colonial writing, I will then argue that the hybridized language of Oscar Wao does not only indicate that Díaz is a translator, but also requires that his readers become translators themselves. Díaz calls his readers into a hermeneutic community wherein traditional binaries such as original/translation and empire/colony are complicated, and the imperative to form counter-histories is expressed.

Once again, congratulations, Rosanna!