Special Episode 1: Translation Studies

During the 2024-25 academic year, the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard celebrated its departmental anniversary—and Paraphrasis is launching a series of summer special episodes to commemorate the occasion. In our first edition of the series, guest host Lara Norgaard sits down with Spencer Lee-Lenfield and Sandra Naddaff, two members of the Comp Lit faculty who are also alumni of Harvard College. Together, they discuss the past, present, and future of Translation Studies at Harvard. Along the way, Spencer and Sandra speak to their own journeys into the discipline and how translation developed from something seen as a technical skill into a critical practice and dynamic area of study in North American academia.