Global Humanities Series, Fall 2018
Margaret Noodin - “Anishinaabe Translations of Global Literature”
Poet Margaret Noodin is a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee associate professor of English and director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education. Noodin will talked about the way indigenous languages contribute to the way people understand literature; her current project is translating works of authors including Geoffrey Chaucer and William Shakespeare into her native language.
Margaret says about her work:
"In addition to being a poet, I am also a teacher and scholar hoping to center more and more of my non-creative work around the issues of spirituality & sexuality, women's empowerment, and racial/cultural reconciliation through workshops, panels, and discussion series. It is not enough to express via words. We must also equip via action, education and resources.”
Margaret Noodin received an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English and Linguistics from the University of Minnesota. She is Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, where she serves as the Director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education. She is the author of Weweni (2015) a collection of poems in Anishinaabemowin and English, and Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams (Michigan State University Press, 2014), and edits www.ojibwe.net.
With her daughters Shannon and Fionna, Margaret Noodin is a member of Miskwaasining Nagamojig (the Swamp Singers): a women’s hand drum group whose lyrics are all in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe).
You can hear her sing, translate and perform the poem quoted above, here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58648/umpaowastewin
You can learn more about Margaret Noodin’s work here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddyFh1Rdho4 and here: http://ojibwe.net
The Fall 2018 event was presented by Department of Comparative Humanities, The Commonwealth Center for the Humanities & Society, The Commission on Diversity and Racial Equality (CODRE).
