International Collaboration

TRANS is located at Surrey but includes an innovative tri-lateral research collaboration between English and Languages at the University of Surrey, the English Department at the University of Delhi and the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Sao Paulo. Focusing on transnational cultural mobilities from the 19^th-century to the present, researchers at the three universities are engaged in research collaborations in the following areas:

• Transnational Literary Studies: Travelling Texts. This research strand examines the circulation of literary and cultural texts across and between border, regions and continents from the 19^th century to the present. It links to the colonial/postcolonial debates and themes of travel and mobility in the context of transnationalism. But as a multidisciplinary research grouping, it maps the complexity of cultural and historic change and assesses the formulation of ideas, texts, movements and institutions. Focusing on textual and cultural production, and it looks beyond modernity’s twentieth-century forms to its earlier moments of uncertainty and often disputed construction.
• In Transit: Travel Writing, Diaspora, Postcolonialism. This is a research strand maximizes existing and emerging research on world literature, mobility, travel, diaspora and postcolonial studies. The theoretical paradigm and methodology of transnationalism complements synergies between topics in postcolonialism, diaspora studies and travel writing, but it also unites the representation of globalised spaces and transnational experience in text, film, visual culture, cultural and political history. The focus on cross-cultural literature and cultural mobilities relates past and present movements, as well as new geopolitics and questions surrounding globalization and contemporary forms of Empire.
• Translation Studies: Linguistic and Cultural Exchanges. This research strand examines cultural exchanges within and between languages and cultures. Drawing on practiced-based research in translation and theoretical approaches to translation, this strand highlights transnational research through human communication across boundaries. Operating with varying degrees in language and culture, as well as ‘inter’ and ‘intra’, this work combines Surrey’s expertise on practice-based research in interpretation (in language and culture) and USP’s expertise on translation theory (in language and culture).
• Transnational Sexualities. This research strand interrogates the prefix ‘trans’ in relation to contemporary theories of gender and sexuality. Investigating representations, theories and discourses surrounding transgendered subjectivities and transsexuality, we move beyond the queer/heteronormative dyad that has subsumed European and American queer studies and theories of sexuality. Exploring this under the rubric of transnational sexualities, the gridlock of contemporary sexual politics opens outward, beyond early conceptions of queer nationhood, into a post-queer politics that is sensitive to racial, ethnic, religious and national diversity.