Dr Karine Zbinden
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Co-ordinator for French
+44 114 222 7158
Full contact details
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
E07
Ella Armitage Building
40 Leavygreave Road
Sheffield
S3 7RD
- Profile
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I grew up in Lausanne, on the sunny shores of Lake Geneva, Switzerland, where I graduated in French, English and Russian languages and literatures.
Modern Foreign Languages, culture(s) and translations are lifelong interests of mine. I came to the Bakhtin Centre here at the University of Sheffield to pursue my interest in the connections and intellectual debates arising from the dialogue of cultures and wrote my PhD on Russian thinker Mikhail Bakhtin, in particular on the transformations his thought encountered when it was translated into French and English. I then pursued my research still here at Sheffield with a postdoctoral project on French intellectual Tzvetan Todorov.
I have taught French language and culture, first at Oxford Brookes University, then in the School of Languages and Cultures here, and moved to the Modern Languages Teaching Centre to take up the position of French Coordinator in 2021.
I am passionate about sharing my interest in languages, especially in sharing the richness and quirks of my mother tongue, and I am always amazed at how learning a new language can transform our own worldview and open up new horizons.
I have taught and designed courses in French from Absolute Beginner to Proficient levels.
And I also practice translation. I am particularly interested in using translation in language teaching as a way of deepening understanding and command of the target language (and sometimes of one's own!) and of its creative potential.
The latest developments in GenAI provide us with fantastic opportunities but also with some challenges. I am currently exploring with our Proficient and Higher Proficient students some of the advantages and drawbacks of using GenAI for language learning. You can learn more about a project I'm currently leading using GenAI to bring a 200 year old publication to life here.
I look forward to meeting you and teaching you on one of our modules!
- Research interests
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Here are some of my academic publications:
- I am co-editor (with Martine Hennard Dutheil de la Rochère) of ‘Traduire la pensée - Traduire la littérature: Perspectives interdisciplinaires sur le texte, la langue et la culture’, Etudes de Lettres, 318 (2022)
- I am co-editor (with Professor Henk de Berg) of the collection of essays Tzvetan Todorov: Thinker and Humanist (Rochester, NY: 2020). https://boydellandbrewer.com/tzvetan-todorov.html
- In March 2016, I conducted an interview (with Professor Henk de Berg, German) with Tzvetan Todorov, one of the world’s foremost public intellectuals. Todorov’s critical interventions cover an astounding range of topics, from narratology to the French Occupation, from painting to politics, and from Enlightenment philosophers such as Rousseau, Constant and Montesquieu to current affairs. His more recent work focuses on the internal threats to democracy and on the rise of Islamophobia.
- I am co-editor (with Irene Weber Henking) of ‘La Quadrature du Cercle Bakhtine: Traductions, influences et remises en contexte’, Cahiers du Centre de Traduction Littéraire, 45 (2005)
I am the author of:
- ‘“Man of No Party”: Tzvetan Todorov and Intellectual Engagement’, South Central Review, 35.2 (2018), 43-59‘Bakhtin and Voloshinov in French: Remarks on the translations of sloveo, ideologiia and vyskazyvanie’, ‘Traduire la pensée - Traduire la littérature: Perspectives interdisciplinaires sur le texte, la langue et la culture’, Etudes de Lettres, 318 (2022)151-76
- Bakhtin between East and West: Cross-cultural Transmission (London: Legenda, 2006) (Research monograph)
- ‘The Bakhtin Circle and Translation’, The Yearbook of English Studies, 36.1 (2006), 157-67
I created a video course on ‘Todorov and Narratology’ for the Massolit video lecture platform.
Translations
I was appointed to the translation team by Caroline Pearce for the large project edited by the German Federal Archives: “The Persecution and Murder of European Jews by Nazi Germany, 1933–45”, Institute for Contemporary History, Munich – Berlin. The documents range from business correspondence to private letters, diary entries, testimonials from concentration camp inmates, telegrams from government officials, new laws, etc. in 16 volumes, organised thematically to document the Holocaust. The resource is available to all with an interest in the Holocaust. The documents are annotated and most were published in English for the first time. I contributed to Volumes 5 and 12.
I also published a number of academic translations, including articles by MIka Lähteenmäki, Galin Tihanov and Tzvetan Todorov.