Evelyn Scaramella

Associate Professor, Modern Languages & Literatures

I am currently working on a book manuscript, Anti-fascist Archives: The Avant-Garde, Translation, and the Spanish Civil War. This project examines the politicization of the Spanish avant-garde and the role of translation in literary production during the years preceding, during, and following the Spanish Civil War. Spanish, North American, British, and South American writers —including Langston Hughes, Dorothy Peterson, Muriel Rukeyser, Mildred Adams, Nancy Cunard, Rolfe Humphries, Rafael Alberti, María Teresa León, Manuel Altolaguirre, and León Felipe—used the translation of literary texts in Spanish and English to foster international awareness of the antifascist cause. I study how translation practices had the power to forge a transnational network between writers with collective political purpose. I investigate how translation became an artistic and political strategy to create activist solidarities and preserve an antifascist literary archive. The collaboration between, translation of, and anthologizing of pro-Republican writers between 1936 and 1939 and during the post-war exile period became a means of memorializing antifascist literary legacies and rebuilding from the destruction of war.

I am also working on two co-edited book volumes. Fabulous Leviathan: Visions of New York in Modern Iberian Culture, 1875-1975, with Dr. Antonio Córdoba (Manhattan College), explores the role of New York City as a site of inspiration, solidarity, and cultural exchange for Iberian writers in the last century. Translation and Cultural Mediation: New Critical Approaches to Women Intellectuals of Early 20th Century Spain, with Dr. Leslie Harkema (Baylor U), uses the lens of feminist translation studies to recover forgotten literary and cultural histories of modern Iberian women writers, translators, editors, and artists. 

Education

  • PHD, Yale University
  • MA, Dartmouth College
  • BA, Bowdoin College

Courses Taught

SPAN 101      Spanish for Beginners I

SPAN 102      Spanish for Beginners II

SPAN 201      Spanish for Communication I

SPAN 202      Spanish for Communication II

SPAN 203      Writing Spanish

SPAN 204      Speaking Spanish

SPAN 303      Hispanic Culture Through Film

SPAN 307      Advanced Grammar and Composition

SPAN 308      Translation

SPAN 351      Masterworks in Spanish

SPAN 320      New York, Nueva York: Visions of New York City in Modern      Hispanic Literature and Culture

SPAN 320     Federico García Lorca

SPAN 420     Representations of the Spanish Civil War in Hispanic Literature and Film

LLRN 151      First Year Seminar: Love and War in Ancient Greece: Classical Origins, Modern Retellings

LLRN 102      Classical Origins of Western Civilization

  • Research
    • Contemporary Peninsular Literature and Culture, 19th – 21st centuries: the Generation of 1927, the Spanish Civil War, poetry, theatre, autobiography, historiography
    • Comparative Literature: translation studies, critical race and ethnicity studies, women and gender studies, the internationalism of the Harlem Renaissance, the black diaspora in the Hispanic world, transatlantic modernist and avant-garde poetry, intersections between Hispanophone and Anglophone authors
  • Publications and Scholarly Activities
    • “Four Poems from Langston Hughes’s Spanish Civil War Verse.” Co-authored with Dr. Anne Donlon. PMLA. 134.3 (2019). 
    • https://www.mlajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1632/pmla.2019.134.3.562
    • "Reading the Harlem Renaissance in Spanish: Translation, African American Culture, and the Spanish Avant-Garde." Black USA and Spain: Shared Memories in the Twentieth Century. Routledge: 2019.
    • Avenues of Translation: The City in Iberian and Latin American Writing. Co-edited book volume with Dr. Regina Galasso. Bucknell University Press, 2019. 
    • https://www.amazon.com/Avenues-Translation-Iberian-American-Writing/dp/1684480558
    • “Imagining Andalusia: Race, Translation, and the Early Critical Reception of Federico García Lorca in the U.S.” Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos. 41.2 (Invierno 2017)
    • "Recovering the Ruins of al-Andalus: Convivencia, Sephardism, and the Spanish Avant-Garde, 1920-1936." The Challenge of Modernity: Avant-Garde Cultural Practices in Spain (1914-1936). Brill/Rodopi Press, 2016
    • “Translating the Spanish Civil War: Langston Hughes’s Transnational Poetics.” The Massachusetts Review. 55.2 (Summer 2014)
    • http://www.massreview.org/sites/default/files/Scaramella%2C%20Evelyn.pdf
    • “Literary Liaisons: Translating the Avant-Garde from Spain to Harlem.” Translation Review 81, Spring 2011
    • “Past and Present Politics: Visions of the romances fronterizos in García Lorca’s Romancero gitano.” Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Fall 2009

    Presentations In National Academic Conferences:

    • “Las Guerrillas del Teatro: María Teresa León, Translation, and Networks of Anti-Fascism during the Spanish Civil War and Exile Period" at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, April 9-11, 2021
    • “Recovering the Lost Voices of the Republic: New York Hispanism, Translation, and the Spanish Civil War” at the American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Georgetown University, Washington DC, March 6-9, 2019

    • “Muriel Rukeyser’s Spanish Civil War Translations: Archives of Solidarity and Resistance.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, New York, NY, January 6, 2018

    • “Literary Collaborations between Langston Hughes, María Teresa León, and Rafael Alberti during the Spanish Civil War.” II Symposium on Literary Translation and Contemporary Iberia: Translation, Conflict and Memory, Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland, November 3-4, 2017

    • Translational New York: The Poetics and Politics of Translation during the Spanish Civil War.” Transatlantic New York Conference at City College-CUNY, New York, New York, May 25, 2017

    • “Performing Anti-fascism”: African American Intellectuals, the Spanish Avant-Garde, and Radical Theater during the Spanish Civil War.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Philadelphia, PA, January 5-8, 2017
    • “Translating the Spanish Civil War: Langston Hughes and the Archives of Activism.” Dartmouth College, Department of Comparative Literature, conference “Future of Comparative Literature.” November, 5, 2016
    • “Fighting the Ephemeral: Print Culture, Multilingualism, and Translation in the Spanish Civil War Work of Nancy Cunard.” Modernist Studies Association Annual Convention, Boston, MA, November 20-22, 2015
    •  “‘We will guard your memory, your constant presence’: Langston Hughes’s Translations of Federico García Lorca.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Seattle, Washington, March 26–29, 2015
    • “Spanish Harlem: Transatlantic Modernism and the Performance of African American Culture.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Vancouver, Canada, January 8–11, 2015
    • “‘In the darkness of her broken clocks/ Madrid cries NO!’: Translation and Intertextuality in Langston Hughes’s Spanish Civil War Poetry.” Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Chicago, Illinois, January 9–12, 2014
    • “Auto/biography and the Archive: Langston Hughes’s Spanish Civil War Notebooks.” Modernist Studies Association Annual Convention, University of Sussex, Brighton, England, August 29–Sept 1, 2013
    • "Translating the Spanish Civil War: Langston Hughes, Madrid, and the Alliance of Antifascist Intellectuals." American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, University of Toronto, April 4-7 2013.
    • "Wars of Words and Images: Photography and the Politicization of the Avant-Garde in 1930s Spain." American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Brown University, March 31-April 1, 2012.
    • "Recovering the Ruins of al-Andalus: Sephardic and Arabic Identity in Modern Spanish Colonial Texts." Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Rochester, NY, March 16-18, 2012.
    • “Agitprop Painting at the MoMA: Luis Quintanilla, The Spanish Civil War, and the ‘Lost Generation’.” “The City and Hispanic Literatures” Symposium, Lehman College-CUNY, April 1-2, 2011
    • “Searching for al-Andalus: Empire, Arabism, and Federico García Lorca’s Diván del Tamarit.” American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, April 1-4, 2010
    • “From Black Internationalism to Anti-Fascism: Langston Hughes and Rafael Alberti in Mexico City.”  Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, McGill University, April 7-11, 2010
    • “Remembering al-Andalus: Representations of Race during the Spanish Civil War.” Kentucky Foreign Language Conference, Lexington, KY, April 16-18, 2009.
    • “(Mis)Understanding Spain: The Curious Critical Reception of Federico García Lorca in the U.S.”  American Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Harvard University, March 26-29, 2009.
    • “Peripheral Modernisms: New York, The Harlem Renaissance, and the Hispanic World.” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Boston University, February 26-March 1, 2009.
    • “Visions of the romances fronterizos in García Lorca’s Romancero gitano.” Midwest Modern Language Association Annual Convention, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, November 13-16, 2008.
    • “Cartographies of Crossing:  (Re)Writing Self and History in the Poetry of Federico García Lorca and Langston Hughes.”  Southern Comparative Literature Association Annual Convention, Auburn University, October 2-4, 2008.
  • Honors, Awards, and Grants

    Fellowships

         NYU Faculty Resource Network Summer Scholar-In-Residence (2013, 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020)

    Honors & Awards

    • Yale University Prize Teaching Fellowship 2008-2009 for excellence in undergraduate teaching 

    Grants

    • Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Archival Research Fellowship (Summer 2008)
    • Paul C. Gignilliat Dissertation Fellowship, Yale University (2008-2009)
    • Yale University Graduate School Fellowship (2004-2008)
    • Dartmouth College Graduate School Fellowship (2003-2004)