KINGSTON, R.I. -- February 19, 2001 -- Ralph Schoolcraft, author and assistant professor of French literature at Texas A&M University, will visit the University of Rhode Island to speak on the topic of "Beckett Translating Beckett."

Schoolcraft will speak on Tuesday, February 27 at 5 p.m. in the Multicultural Center's Hardge Forum on the Kingston Campus. The lecture is in English and is free and open to the public.

Schoolcraft’s talk will examine how Samuel Beckett translated his own works, and how he had the chance to rewrite substantial portions of his own texts. In later years, even the length of Beckett’s original texts varied greatly from the translated versions. Critics often say that this blurs the line between translation and writing, calling it a "poetics of translation." Schoolcraft will refute this notion and provide a model for Beckett’s understanding of translation.

Schoolcraft is an assistant professor of French at Texas A&M. He has also taught courses at Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, France; and at the University of Oklahoma. His research interests include pseudonymous authorship, Romain Gary, the Goncourt Prize as cultural institution, and the writings of Gaullist authors in France.

He has written two books to be published in 2001 by Pennsylvania Press: The Man Who Sold His Shadow: Public Image and Self-Invention in The Works of Romain Gary, and a translation of Henry Rousso’s The Haunting Past: Memory, Justice and History in Contemporary France. He has also written for numerous publications and journals.

Schoolcraft earned bachelor’s degrees in English and French from the University of California at Berkeley. He earned a certificate in French language and phonetics from the Université de Paris-IV in Sorbonne, France. He also earned a master’s degree in French literature from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in French literature from Emory University.

The lecture is sponsored by URI’s Honors Program and Visiting Scholars Committee and the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures.

For Information: Alain-Philippe Durand, 401-874-4708, Jhodi Redlich, 401-874-2116, Jennifer Smith, 401-874-2116