Rajnesh Chakrapani

Rajnesh Chakrapani

PhD Student, Comparative Literature

My research is to document my experience conducting clusters of translation workshops around the globe between communities that live close together but have a history of social and political conflict and oppression. This idea grew over the course of my Fulbright year and through several experiences bringing literary translators from different cultures and communities into conversation in the same room. I became aware of the power translation holds to open a discussion and find cultural understanding within a larger global audience and within the community being translated. With this experience in mind, I want to conduct, research, and document how translation workshops for the various heritage languages of immigrants in the USA can help immigrant communities learn from each other about the struggles of other immigrants in the USA. Such a rich conversation would ultimately lead to the creation of an online archive of these literary translations along with testimonies and interviews of the experiences of marginalized groups across the globe.