Please join us for the PAMLA Presidential Address, “The Stories We Retranslate,” on Friday, November 8, at 4:50 pm in Crosby Ballroom North. PAMLA President and Professor Emeritus Juan Delgado explores translation as seen in three community art projects. Translation is uniquely suited to dealing with the intricacies of otherness, with forgotten testimonies, with the acceptance of differences, with confronting ambiguity, and with providing a middle ground to navigate through cultural, linguistic, political, and historical clashes and disjunctions. This middle ground or in-betweenness is also a possible place for re-creation and growth.
Juan Delgado is Professor Emeritus in the English Department at California State University, San Bernardino, where, in addition to his professorial duties, he chaired the English and Communication Studies Departments and served as the university’s interim provost. His collections of poetry include Green Web (1994), published by the University of Georgia Press and selected by poet Dara Weir for the Contemporary Poetry Prize; El Campo (1998), a collaboration with the Chicano painter Simon Silva and published by Capra Press; and Rush of Hands (2003), published by the University of Arizona Press. Vital Signs (2013) was a collaboration with photographer Thomas McGovern and won the Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Award. His most recent accomplishments include art installations at the Cheech Art Museum and the Riverside Art Museum. He recently won the California Established Artist Award. He lives in Forest Falls, CA with wife, Jean. They have three children, Anna, Marco and Clara, and five grandchildren: Asher, Georgia, Olive, Raen, and Maisie.