Joyce Zonana wins 2019 Global Humanities Initiative Translation Prize
Northwestern University’s Global Humanities Initiative has selected Joyce Zonana as the winner of the third Annual $5,000 Global Humanities Translation Prize for her translation from the Provençal (Occitan) of Jóusè d’Arbaud’s La Bèstio dóu Vacarés (The Beast of Vaccarès). Northwestern University Press will publish The Beast, and Other Tales this fall, September 15, 2020.
A classic of Provençal literature, Jóusè d’Arbaud’s 1926 masterpiece “The Beast of Vacarés” (also known as “The Beast of Vaccarès”) is a haunting and timely parable about the relationship between humans, nature and the divine. Set during the fifteenth century, the mythic tale is narrated by a solitary bull herder—known as a gardian—who stumbles upon a starving creature that is half man, half goat in the wilderness of the Camargue delta in France’s Provence region. Three additional stories -- “The Caraco,” “Pèire Guilhem’s Remorse,” and “The Longline” -- explore the solitary lives of twentieth-century gardians in the region.
Jóusè d’Arbaud was dedicated to preserving the Provençal language and was a central figure in the Provençal Revival. As Zonana writes in her introduction: “This is a book to be shared, to be passed from hand to hand, to be lived with, read, reread, dreamt . . . Perhaps The Beast of Vaccarès will now claim its rightful place among the humanities texts we turn to for sustenance; perhaps Jóusè d’Arbaud will be recognized as ‘among the masters of world literature,’ as Alphonse V. Roche – a scholar of modern Provençal who taught at Northwestern – called him some eighty years ago.”
Zonana is a previous recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant (2017) and the ALTA Emerging Translator Mentorship (2015-16). Her other translations include Malicroix by Henri Bosco (New York Review Books) and A Land Like You by Tobie Nathan (forthcoming from Seagull Books). She lives in Brooklyn and is Professor Emerita of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, part of the City University of New York.
The Global Humanities Initiative (GHI) is supported jointly by the University’s Buffett Institute for Global Studies and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities and was cofounded in 2015 by Laura Brueck, an associate professor in the department of Asian languages and cultures, and Rajeev Kinra, an associate professor in the department of history at Northwestern.
Brueck described the goal of the prize as “bringing much-needed attention to the diverse and rich humanistic traditions beyond hegemonic Western languages and cultures.” Kinra further contextualized the prize as “placing Northwestern University at the center of a vital international conversation about the continuing role of the humanities in building a more just, tolerant and humane 21st century.”
In conferring the prize, the cofounders offered this statement.
“An early advocate for preserving an endangered language, d’Arbaud not only extended the life of the Provençal language, he refreshed and enriched it with new writings that will captivate readers who discover him for the first time here.” They praised Zonana’s masterful translation as “emblematic of the literary craftsmanship the GHI hopes to encourage and inspire.”
For submission instructions, applicants may visit the Global Humanities Initiative website or write to ghi@northwestern.edu.
Founded in 1893, Northwestern University Press publishes works of enduring scholarly and cultural value, extending the university’s mission to a community of readers throughout the world. The Press has an international reputation for publishing translations of scholarly work as well as fiction, drama, and poetry.
Back to top