A photo of Zrinka Stahuljak

Zrinka Stahuljak

Professor

E-mail: zs@humnet.ucla.edu Phone: 310-825-8220 Office: 362 Humanities Building Fields of interest: Middle Ages, Mediterranean & Francophone Studies, Manuscripts, Sexuality, Translation

Growing up in a minor language (Croatian) in a communist regime of the former Yugoslavia, where nationalist (post-imperial, post-Ottoman and post-Habsburg) and universalist (communist internationalism) narratives were in conflict with each other, Zrinka Stahuljak was led to the study of the Middle Ages, a formative period both for European early modern and modern discourses and for the vernacular, later national, languages. She obtained her P.hD.from Emory University and, today, teaches medieval studies at UCLA in the departments of French & Francophone Studies and Comparative Literature. Previously, she taught at Boston University.

Professor Stahuljak’s life-long intellectual project was definitively shaped by her experience as a wartime interpreter on the frontlines of the wars in the former Yugoslavia. As a theorist of translation, she has written about interpreting in conflicts (e.g. Critical Readings in Translation Studies, Routledge, 2010). As a medievalist, Professor Stahuljak has worked on issues of translation, representation, cultural production, and the relationship of historiography to history. Her interests lie in exchange, mediation, and transmission; She has explored and analyzed linguistic predicaments, cultural differences, and power structures. Her current book-in-progress, “Medieval Fixers: Translation in the Mediterranean (1250-1500)” (forthcoming, U of Chicago P), brings together these two parallel strands and strengths central to her scholarly work.

Professor Stahuljak’s research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, Fulbright Research Scholarship, and Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2020, she was elected to the Croatian Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Education

  • Ph.D., Emory University

Featured Works

Selected Publications

Articles

  • “L’empire des livres: imagination, matière d’Orient, et archive du possible aux Pays-Bas bourguignons,” in Tirant. Butlletí informatiu i bibliográfic de literatura de cavalleries 22: 195-206 (2019), special issue Don Quichotte avant Don Quichotte.
  • “The Long Middle Ages of Jacques de Lalaing: Medieval Genres and the Status of History,” 77-89, in A Knight for the Ages: Jacques de Lalaing and the Art of Chivalry, ed. Elizabeth Morrison, J. Paul Getty Publications, 2018.
  • “The Pilgrim Translation Market and the Meaning of Courtoisie,” 201-220, in The French of Outremer: Communities and Communications in the Crusading Mediterranean, eds. Laura Morreale and Nicholas Paul, Fordham University Press, 2018.
  • “La Vie de Saint Alexis and the Alexis Quire in the Crusading Context,” 195-218, in St. Albans and the Markyate Psalter: Seeing and Reading in Twelfth-Century England, eds. Kristen Collins and Matthew Fisher, Medieval Institute Publications, 2017.
  • “Merlin à Jérusalem: Un traité de croisade pour les rois d’Angleterre,” 491-500, in Arthur après Arthur. La matière arthurienne tardive en dehors du roman arthurien, de l’intertextualité au phénomène de mode, ed. Christine Ferlampin Acher, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2017.
  • “Translation and Multilingualism in the Medieval Mediterranean,” Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory26(4): 389-400 (Winter 2014).
  • “Genealogy,” 71-78,  in Medievalism: Critical Terms, eds. Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz, D.S. Brewer, 2014.
  • “History as a Medical Category: Heredity, Positivism, and the Study of the Past in Nineteenth-Century France, ”History of the Present 3 (2): 140-159 (Fall 2013).
  • “The Sexuality of History: The Demise of Hugh Despenser, Roger Mortimer, and Richard II in Jean Le Bel, Froissart, and Jean d’Outremeuse,”133-147, in Violence and The Writing of History in the Medieval Francophone World, eds. Noah D. Guynn and Zrinka Stahuljak, D.S. Brewer, 2013.
  • “Historicity, Violence, and the Medieval Francophone World: Mémoire hystérisée,”1-16, with Noah Guynn, in Violence and The Writing of History in the Medieval Francophone World, eds. Noah D. Guynn and Zrinka Stahuljak, D.S. Brewer, 2013.
  • “Medieval Fixers: Politics of Interpreting in Western Historiography,” 147-163, in Rethinking Medieval Translation: Ethics, Politics, Theory, eds. Bob Mills and Emma Campbell, D.S. Brewer, 2012.
  • “History’s Fixers: Informants, Mediators, and Writers in the Prise d’Alixandre,” 277-292, in A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut. An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Master, eds. Deborah McGrady and Jennifer Bain, Brill, 2012.
  • “Sexuality, Shame, and the Genesis of Romance,” 57-66, in Cambridge History of French Literature, eds. William Burgwinkle, Nicholas Hammond, Emma Wilson, Cambridge University Press, 2011.
  • “Minor Empires: Translation, Conflict, and Postcolonial Critique,”The Translator 16(2): 255-274 (November 2010), special issue on Translation and Violent Conflict.
  • “‘Archéologie pathologique’: Le Moyen Age et l’histoire de la médecine,” 207-14, in Fantasmagories du Moyen Age, Senefiance 56, eds. Élodie Burle-Errecade and Valérie Naudet, Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’université de Provence, CUERMA, 2010.
  • “War, Translation, Transnationalism. Interpreters In and Of the War (Croatia, 1991-1992),” 391-414, in Critical Readings in Translation Studies, ed. Mona Baker, Routledge, 2010.
  • “Traduire la honte (Le Tribunal pénal international pour l’ex-Yougoslavie et son deuxième monde),” 165-183, in Lire, écrire la honte, ed. Bruno Chaouat, Presses universitaires de Lyon, 2007.
  • “Neutrality Affects: Froissart and the Practice of Historiographic Authorship,” 137-156, in The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature, ed. Virginie Greene, Palgrave/McMillan, 2006.
  • “Chrétien de Troyes, moralisateur impossible,” La Revue littéraire 19: 115-131 (October 2005).
  • “Crimes sexuels. Les femmes et latranslatiodans les ‘romans antiques’ écrits en ancien français,” 15-29,  in D’une écriture à l’autre. Les femmes et la traduction sous l’Ancien Régime, ed. Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2004.
  • “An Epistemology of Tension: Translation and Multiculturalism,” The Translator 10 (1): 33-57 (April 2004).
  • “Jean Froissart’s Chroniques:Translatio and the Impossible Apprenticeship of Neutrality,” 121-142, in Politics of Translation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, eds. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Luise von Flotow, Daniel Russell, Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2001.
  •  “Violent Distortions: Bearing Witness to the Task of Wartime Translators, ”Traduction Terminologie Rédaction 13 (1): 37-51 (Spring 2001), special issue Ideologies and Translation.
  • “Future’s Phantoms, or Reincarnations of the Parricidal Past in the Roman d’Eneas,”L’Esprit Créateur 40 (1): 14-24 (Spring 2000), special issue Writing One’s Death: Between Fiction and Testimony.
  • “The Violence of Neutrality: Translators in and of the War (Croatia, 1991-92),” College Literature 26 (1): 34-51 (Winter 1999), special issue Cultural Violence.
  • Introduction and Translation of selections from the Old French Virgilian tradition (Roman de Cléomadés; Image du monde; Noirons li arabis; Renart le contrefait). The Virgilian Tradition to 1500.  Eds. Michael Putnam and Jan Ziolkowski, Yale UP, 2008.

Edited Volumes

Courses commonly taught

  • Medieval Studies: Travel and Translation (CL 220)
  • Old French (FRNCH 214)
  • Francophone Literature of the Medieval Mediterranean (FRNCH 215)
  • Mediterranean Studies (FRNCH 215)
  • Survey of Literature: Middle Ages to 17th century (CL 2BW)
  • Medieval Foundations of European Civilization (FRNCH 112)
  • Survey of French Literature (Middle Ages & Renaissance) (FRNCH 114A)

Honors and Awards

Professional Activities

  • Director, UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, July 2019-to date.
  • Series Editor, Anamnèses: Médiéval/Contemporain, Éditions Macula (Paris).

Other