Dr Mary Besemeres
Honorary Lecturer, School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics
ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
Areas of expertise
- Biography 210304
- Multicultural, Intercultural And Cross Cultural Studies 200209
- Central And Eastern European Languages (Incl. Russian) 200304
- Australian Literature (Excl. Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Literature) 200502
- Migrant Cultural Studies 200208
- Comparative Literature Studies 200524
- Other Language, Communication And Culture 2099
Research interests
Cross-cultural autobiography, contemporary life writing, bilingualism and migrant experience, travel writing, language, culture and emotion.
Biography
Mary Besemeres is the author of Translating One's Self: Language and Selfhood in Cross-Cultural Autobiography (Peter Lang, 2002) and refereed articles and book chapters on translingual and cross-cultural autobiography. With Anna Wierzbicka, she co-edited Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures (UQP, 2007). She was founding co-editor, with Maureen Perkins, of the Routledge journal Life Writing, and now serves on its editorial board.
Researcher's projects
'Anglos Abroad: Memoirs of Immersion in a Foreign Language and Culture'. ARC Discovery Grant 2006-2008.
Research Associate on ARC grant 'English: Meaning, History and Culture', 2005-2009 (CI Anna Wierzbicka).
Publications
- Besemeres, M 2022, 'Translingual Memoir', in Steven G. Kellman, Natasha Lvovich (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Literary Multilingualism, Routledge, New York, pp. 3-17.
- Besemeres, M & Williams, Kwapisz K 2021, 'Waltzing St Kilda: Writing in Polish in Australia', Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, vol. 21, no. 1.
- Besemeres, M 2020, The Adventures of Sindbad the Seafarer, by Boleslaw Lesmian, translated from Polish into English by Mary Besemeres, excerpt from 'The First Adventure'. Przekrój Magazine, 13.05.2020: https://przekroj.pl/en/literature/the-adventures-of-sindbad-the-seafarer-boleslaw-lesmian
- Williams, Kwapisz K & Besemeres, M 2020, 'Literary Ambitions: The Polish-Language Press in Australia', in Catherine Dewhirst and Richard Scully (ed.), The Transnational Voices of Australia's Migrant and Minority Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Australia, pp. 127-149.
- Besemeres, M 2019, 'Listening to the Grandmother Tongue: Writers on Other-Languaged Grandparents and Transcultural Identity', Biography - an interdisciplinary quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4, pp. 846-868.
- Besemeres, M 2019, 'On Translating Wislawa Szymborska's Poem "Widok z ziarnkiem piasku"', The AALITRA Review: A Journal of Literary Translation 14 (December 2019): 131-134.
- Besemeres, M 2017, 'Evoking a Displaced Homeland: the 'Poetic Memoir' of Andrzej Chciuk', Transnational Literature, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 15pp.
- Besemeres, M 2016, 'Travels through Russian in English: Dale Pesmen, Maria Tumarkin, Maxim Shrayer and Gary Shteyngart', Flusser Studies, no. 22, pp. 17pp.
- Jaireth, S, Besemeres, M, Magee, P et al 2015, 'Translating Anna Akhmatova's Tri Oseni (Three Autumns)', Axon: Creative Explorations, vol. online, no. C1 Axon Capsule 1, pp. 1-13.
- Besemeres, M, Eakin, J & Freadman, R 2015, 'Remembering David Parker (1943-2015)', Biography - an interdisciplinary quarterly, vol. 38, no. 4, pp. 479-486.
- Besemeres, M 2015, 'Mixed Mother Tongues: Memoirs of Interlingual Childhoods', Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, pp. 233-248.
- Besemeres, M 2015, 'Involuntary Dissent: The Minority Voice of Translingual Life Writers', L2 Journal, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 18-29.
- Besemeres, M 2014, 'Poles Apart? Two Polish Australian Women Poets, Krystyna Wanda Jackiewicz and Liliana Rydzynska', Life Writing, vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 411-422.
- Besemeres, M 2014, 'Translingual arts', International Journal of Bilingualism, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 198-200.
- Besemeres, M 2012, 'The Ethnographic Work of Cross-Cultural Memoir', Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 219-230.
- Besemeres, M 2011, 'Emotions in Bilingual Life Narratives', in Vivian Cook & Benedetta Bassetti (ed.), Language and Bilingual Cognition: A Different Way of Thinking, Psychology Press, Taylor & Francis, New York, pp. 479-506.
- Besemeres, M 2011, 'Intimately Strange Societies: Cultural Translation in Travel Memoirs of Origin', Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 47-57.
- Besemeres, M & Wierzbicka, A 2010, 'Emotion terms as a window on culture, social psychology and subjective experience', in S V Ionov (ed.), Jazyk i emociia, Volgogradskoe Nauchnoe Izdatel'stvo, Volgograd, pp. 14-32.
- Besemeres, M 2010, 'Remembering transcultural childhoods', in Sonia Mycak and Amit Sarwal (ed.), Australian Made: A Multicultural Reader, Sydney University Press, Sydney, pp. 33-45.
- Besemeres, M & Wierzbicka, A 2010, 'Is there thought without language?', in Marek Kuczynski (ed.), Language, Thought and Education: Vol. 2, Uniwersytet Zielonogorski, Zielona Gora, Poland, pp. 11-21.
- Besemeres, M 2009, 'Editorial: Life Writing', Life Writing, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 167-169.
- Besemeres, M & Wierzbicka, A 2009, 'The Concept of Frustration: A Culture-Specific Emotion and a Cultural Key Word', in Agata Blachnio and Aneta Przepiorka (ed.), Closer to Emotions III, Wydawnictwo KUL, Lublin, pp. 211-226.
- Besemeres, M 2008, 'Australian Immersion Narratives', in Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woollacott (ed.), Transnational ties: Australian lives in the world, ANU ePress, Canberra, ACT, pp. 245-257.
- Besemeres, M 2007, 'Between zal and emotional blackmail: Ways of being in Polish and English', in Mary Besemeres & Anna Wierzbicka (ed.), Translating Lives: Living with Two Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia Australia, pp. 128-138.
- Besemeres, M & Perkins, M 2007, 'Life Writing', Life Writing, vol. 4:2.
- Besemeres, M & Perkins, M, eds, 2007, Editorial, 4:1.
- Besemeres, M 2006, 'Language and Emotional Experience: the voice of translingual memoir', in Aneta Pavlenko (ed.), Bilingual Minds: Emotional Experience, Expression and Representation, Multilingual Matters Ltd, Bristol, UK, pp. 34-58.
- Besemeres, M & Tridgell, S 2005, 'Eva Hoffman, Entry, Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography', in Jo Malin and Victoria Boynton (ed.), Encyclopedia of Women's Autobiography, Greenwood Publishing Group, UK, pp. 664pp.
- Besemeres, M 2005, 'Anglos Abroad: Memoirs of Immersion in a Foreign Language', Biography - an interdisciplinary quarterly, vol. 28, no. 1, pp. 27-42.
- Besemeres, M 2004, 'The Family in Exile, Between Languages: Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation, Lisa Appignanesi's Losing the Dead, Anca Vlasopolos's No Return Address', Auto/Biography Studies, vol. 19, no. 1-2, pp. 239-248.
- Besemeres, M 2004, 'Different Languages, Different Emotions? Perspectives from Autobiographical Literature', Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 140-158.
- Besemeres, M 2004, 'Lost in Translations? Eva Hoffman and Tim Parks', in Peter Wagstaff (ed.), Border Crossings: Mapping Identities in Modern Europe, Peter Lang Publishing Group, Oxford, UK, pp. 125-143.
- Besemeres, M 2004, 'When one's point of view changes with one's language', in Jerzy Bartminski, Stanislawa Niebrzegowska, Ryszard Nycz (ed.), Kategoria Punktu Widzenia w Jezyku i Kulturze (Point of View in Language and Culture), Uniwersytet Marie Curie, Lublin, Poland, pp. 293-308.
- Besemeres, M & Perkins, M, eds, 2004, Editorial, 1:1.
- Besemeres, M, Life Writing - several issues.
- Besemeres, M & Perkins, M 2003, 'Editorial, Mots pluriels, no 23', Mots Pluriels, vol. 23.
- Besemeres, M 2003, 'Translating the Self in Hsu-Ming Teo's Love and Vertigo and Shirley Lim's Among the White Moon Faces', in Rudiger Ahrens, David Parker, Klaus Stierstorfer, Kwok-Kan Tam (ed.), Anglophone Cultures in Southeast Asia: Appropriations, Continuities, Contexts, Universitatsverlag Winter GmbH, Heidelberg, Germany, pp. 115-122.
- Besemeres, M & Wierzbicka, A 2003, 'The meaning of the particle Iah in Singapore English', Pragmatics and Cognition, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 3-38.
- Besemeres, M 2003, 'Cultural Translation and the Translingual Self in the Memoirs of Edward Said and Andre Aciman', in Magda Stroinska and Vittorina Cecchetto (ed.), Exile, Language and Identity, Peter Lang Publishing Group, Bern, Switzerland, pp. 19-33.
- Besemeres, M 2002, Translating One's Self: Language and Selfhood in Cross-Cultural Autobiography, Peter Lang Publishing Group, Oxford, UK.
- Besemeres, M 2002, 'Immigrant Embarrassment and Self-Translation in Andrew Riemer's "The Habsburg Cafe"', in Rosamund Dalziell (ed.), Selves Crossing Cultures: autobiography and globalisation, Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd, Melbourne, pp. 102-111.
- Besemeres, M 2000, 'Self-translation in Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin', The Russian Review, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 390-407.
- Besemeres, M 1998, 'Language and Self in Cross-Cultural Autobiography: Eva Hoffman's Lost in Translation', Canadian Slavonic Papers, vol. 40, no. 3-4, pp. 327-344.
