Brian James Baer is Professor of Russian and Translation Studies at Kent State University, Ohio. He is founding editor of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies and coeditor, with Michelle Woods, of the series Literatures, Cultures, Translation. His most recent publications include the monograph Translation and the Making of Modern Russian Literature; the collected volumes Translation in Russian Contexts (with Susanna Witt) and Queering Translation, Translating the Queer (with Klaus Kaindl); and the translated volumes Culture, Memory and History: Essays in Cultural Semiotics (by Juri Lotman) and Red Crosses (by Sasha Filipenko, with Ellen Vayner).
This book strides through an immense array of translation history and queer experience across many literary traditions, letting heretofore stationary concepts spin with a new multilingual luminosity. Lively, confident, and a true joy to read, Baer brings his decades of ambitious collaborative inquiry to bear in this masterwork, which puts to a certain end the ill-fitting love affair between queer theory and Anglophone monolingualism. David Gramling, University of Arizona, USA Brian James Baer brings elegance and rigour to the conversation between queer theory and translation studies. This is a book rich in insight, immersed in the most vital currents of contemporary thought. The chapter on Charlotte von Mahlsdorf alone will ensure that this book becomes an essential reference. Sherry Simon, Concordia University, Canada