Jennifer K
Dick is an author, translator, teacher and poetry event organizer. Director of
the English Department (from Jan 2021), CA member (2020-24), and Maître de
Conférences (since 2010) at the Université de Haute Alsace, she teaches
American Literature, Creative Writing and Civilization and is a member of the ILLE
research lab.
Jennifer K
Dick’s academic research explores the overlapping fields of poetry and visual
poetics. She is fascinated by the liminal spaces between language use in the
visual arts and typography and imported visual work implanted on the page in
contemporary American and European Literature (as seen, for example, in the
work of Susan Howe, Anne-Marie Albaich, Jacques Sivan or even Anne Carson). This
focus on visuality has also lead to recent research on multilingualism as
visual and textual space in the identity poetics of American authors, as seen
in work by Craig Santos Perez, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Myung Mi Kim and others. Publications
on these topics have appeared in La poésie
motléculaire de Jacques Sivan (presses du reel, 2017), American
Multiculturalism in Context (Cambridge, 2017), Point, Dot, Period…The Dynamics of Punctuation in Text and Image
(Cambridge, 2016), Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre (University
of Michigan Press,2015), Trans (university of Paris III), Poétiques
scientifiques dans les revues européennes de la modernité (1900-1940) (Classiques
Garnier, 2013) and in
the volume L’Ecriture Emprisonnée
(Harmattan, 2007). A forthcoming article from the Nov 2019 talk at the
Université de Lyon II conference "Le Depaysment" on Craig Santos
Perez is under peer review. Her talk at "La poésie hors du livre"
conference (Paris, October 2013) extended her focus out of the book space as
she examined billboard and wall publications of poetry.
On the road
to this focus of research, Jennifer completed her DEA with Director Stéphane
Michaud then her PhD with Director Jean Bessière at the Université de Paris
III—la Sorbonne Nouvelle, France, in Comparative Literature (Littérature
générale et comparée). Her DEA focused on the visual use of the page in Maurice
Roche, Lisa Jarnot, Susan Howe and Claude Royet-Journaud’s works. Her doctorate
focused on post-Mallarmean and Appolinairean influences on contemporary authors
Myung Mi Kim, Anne-Marie Albiach and Susan Howe.
She also
co-organized three conferences on Poetry
in Expanded Translation in the UK and France alongside Zoe Skoulding and
Jeff Hilson (Jan 2017-2019), and conceived of and co-organized the
international conference Lex-ICON :
treating text as image and image as text in June 2012 (http://lex-icon21.blogspot.fr/).
Other conferences she co-organized include Station
to Station with Didier Girard and Frédérique Tudoire-Surlapierre to honor
the train industry and new Paris-Dijon-Mulhouse TGV line, and a conference on
translation in the social sciences at EHESS with Stephanie Schwerter.
Other
research interests of Jennifer K Dick's include the varied practices of postmodern
poetic autobiographies (primarily those using visual and collage techniques in
conjunction with more standard written forms of poetry) and cyborg poetry and
poetics (Bhanu Kapil, Jacques Sivan). The interest in autobiography and reality
vs fiction stems as much from her own creative as from her critical work. A
first talk on this topic was presented at the 2013 SAES conference in Dijon,
France ("Self-Naming in Postmodern Poetic Autobiography") though the
roots of this work can be seen in her explorations of Susan Howe's writing (see
her publication "Invisible Collisions: Considering Susan Howe’s Reform of
the Poetic, Critical and Autobiographical Essay," online on Seventeen Seconds: A Journal of Poetry and
Poetics, Ottawa, Canada, issue 7, June 2013, pp 7-24).
Tangential
to her literary study, has been her interest in translation practice and
theory. She has participated in conferences on alternative forms of translation
and on self-translation (invited conference with Cole Swensen for the Nanterre
University’s translation research lab). Jennifer also co-edited with Stephanie
Schwerter 2 books on translation in the social sciences: Transmissibility and Cultural Transfer: Dimensions of Translation in
the Humanities (Ibidem Verlag, Stuttgart, 2012) and Traduire, transmettre ou trahir: Réflexions sur la traduction en
sciences humaines (éditions de la Maison des sciences de l'homme, Paris,
2013).
Outside the
sphere of strictly academic work, Jennifer K Dick co-organizes the bilingual
monthly reading series Ivy Writers Paris
(founded 15 years ago) and, since 2010, the residencies Ecrire l'Art with the Directrice of La Kunsthalle Mulhouse Centre
d'Art Contemporain. Their book assembling 10 years of texts from this project,
accompanied by their avant-propos, was published in Sept 2019: Ecrire l'art: DOSSIER DES OUVRAGES EXECUTES
(Kunsthalle éditions, available through les presses du réel, France).
Jennifer is
also a published author of poetry and prose (most recently Lilith: A Novel in Fragments, Corrupt Books, 2019, and forthcoming That Which I Touch Has No Name, Eyewear,
London, 2021), and a translator of French artist’s statements and writing by poets
or on visual artists--including Vannina Maestri (forthcoming 2021), Véronique Arnaud (gallery
catalogues, 2018), Jean-Michel Espitallier (in READ, 2019), Yves Peyré’s writing in the volume on Takesada Matsutani
(Centre Pompiou/Hauser & Wirth, 2019), poems by Michaël Batalla (for book Concrete LTD, 2014, and in PLU n°3 2015) and poems by Jérôme Mauche,
among others.
