Dr Cosima Bruno

I obtained a bachelor’s degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Ca’ Foscari University, Venice.

I worked as a translator and interpreter from Chinese for almost a decade before coming to SOAS at the turn of the millennium to undertake doctoral research on contemporary Chinese poetry in translation. My research to date has been focusing on the role of translation and other forms of cultural mediation in the evolution, contestation and renegotiation of literary authority and power.

My first monograph, Between the Lines: Yang Lian’s Poetry through Translation challenges dichotomous approaches to translation, and offers a new methodology of studying poetry through translation. Another main strand of my research pertains to inter-arts transculturation, and aims at synthesizing and revising relational theories of literature and translation, so as to provide new tools for a critical understanding of the literary work and its environment.

What I hope to do in my lectures is to ask questions about China, and use literature to examine how we go about answering them. I welcome PhD applications in modern and contemporary Chinese and Sinophone literatures and translation studies.

• contemporary Chinese poetry
• poetry performativity
• translation studies
• Chinese language art
• bilingual migrant poetry 
• intermedial poetry