Denis Ferhatovic


Denis Ferhatovic

Associate Professor of English

Joined Connecticut College: 2012

Pronouns: he/his/him

Education
B.A., English (with Distinction) and French, University of Virginia
M.A., M.Phil. (English), M.Phil. (Medieval Studies), Ph.D. (English), Yale University


Specializations

Medieval literature, esp. Old and Middle English poetry

Word and image

Postcolonial theory

Translation

Before coming to Connecticut College, Ferhatovic spent two years at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, first as a visiting assistant professor, then as an assistant professor, teaching two core-humanities classes (Sin-liqe-Unninni to Plato, and Machiavelli to Aitmatov). In Spring 2012, he taught an elective seminar on medieval Germanic epic and saga.

Classes Taught

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Readings in Middle English)
Tasting Difference: Minority Food Writing
Global Middle English
Leather and Glitter: Queer Texts (co-taught with Ari Rotramel, GSIS)
Old Norse/Icelandic (FLAC)
Englishes Then and Now
Bad Immigrants! (first-year seminar)
Theory/Practice of Literary Study
Runes, Riddles, and Dragons: Adventures in Old English
Arthurian Legend (senior seminar)
Love and Sex in the Middle Ages
The Canterbury Tales
Nomads, Shamans, and Mystics: Imagining Central Asia
Visual and Literary Worlds of Medieval England
Essentials of Literary Study (theme: Translations and Transformations)

Publications (* = peer reviewed)

Monographs*

Borrowed Objects and the Art of Poetry:  Spolia in Old English Verse. Manchester:  Manchester University Press, 2019. 

Scholarly Essays*

"How to Say 'Bussy' in Another Language? Sociolingvisticka rasprava i licni osvrt." InterAlia: A Journal of Queer Studies 18 (the Multilingual Issue, 2024): 19-37.
https://interalia.queerstudies.pl/issues/18_2023/18-2023-ferhatovic.pdf

“Fat, Fruit, and Fermentation: Food and Drink in the Old English Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, ” In Old English Medievalism: Reception and Recreation in the 20th and 21st Centuries, ed. Rachel A. Fletcher, Thijs Porck, and Oliver M. Traxel. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2022. 191-208.
https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843846505/old-english-medievalism/

“Detachable Penises and Holes in Knowledge:  Reading Exeter Riddles 44 and 62 Alongside Le Fevre de Creil [The Blacksmith of Creil] and Jean Bodel’s Le Sohait des Vez [The Dream of Cocks]." Exemplaria 33.1 (2021): 1-18.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10412573.2021.1893080

Co-authored with Ariella Rotramel.  “ ‘No, just an alien’:  Disability, Sexuality, and the Extraterrestrial in Gloria Anzaldúa’s ‘Interface.’ ” Journal of Lesbian Studies 25.3 (Special Issue: “Lesbian Lives, Disabled Lives,” 2021): 242-57.  
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/YE9R6V2SIEUZK6TRHRIG/full

“A Portrait of the Translator as Grendel's Mother: The Postcolonial Feminist Polyphony of Meghan Purvis's Beowulf, ” In The Shapes of Early English Poetry: Style, Form, History, ed. Irina Dumitrescu and Eric Weiskott. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2019. 59-81. https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/512341

"Heaneywulf alla turca: The Composite Nature of Nazmi Agil’s Beowulf." Comparative Literature Studies 55.3 (2018): 701-20.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/704953

"Triumphs and Challenges of Two Recent South Slavic Beowulfs," Postmedieval 8.3 (Special Issue: "Thinking Across Tongues," 2017): 277-91. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41280-017-0057-z

“Aliens and Anglo-Saxons in Edwin Morgan’s ‘The First Men on Mercury,’ ” In Medieval Science Fiction, ed. James Paz and Carl Kears. London: Boydell and Brewer for KCLMS, 2016. 133-50. https://boydellandbrewer.com/medieval-science-fiction-hb.html

" 'Life's Interpreter' for the New Millennium: On Three Poetic Translations of the Old English Exodus." Forum for Modern Language Studies 50.3 (2014): 233-46.
https://academic.oup.com/fmls/article/50/3/233/2939863?searchresult=1

"Spolia-Inflected Poetics of the Old English Andreas."Studies in Philology 110.2 (2013): 199-219. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/studies_in_philology/v110/110.2.ferhatovic.html

"Burh & Beam Burning Bright: A Study in the Poetic Imagination of the Old English Exodus." Neophilologus 94.3 (2010): 509-22. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11061-009-9184-6

Shorter Scholarly Pieces and Translations

Hasan Ziyai of Mostar, “Ghazal 97” [a translation of a poem from Ottoman Turkish into English and a translator’s note] DoubleSpeak (Spring 2023): 94-97.
https://www.doublespeakmagazine.org/poems_2023/ghazal-97
https://www.doublespeakmagazine.org/notes_2023/ghazal-97
 
“A Lad on the Road” [a translation of a folk song from Gorani (Kosovo) to English] JoLT: The Trinity Journal of Literary Translation 11.2 (Spring 2023): 66.
https://issuu.com/trinityjolt10/docs/issuu2_jolt
 
“Ramo and Saliha” [a translation of an anonymous 18th-century alhamiado poem from Bosnian to English] Turkoslavia, Issue 1, Fall 2022.
http://exchanges.uiowa.edu/turkoslavia/issues/issue-1/ramo-and-saliha/
 
"Vidjeh, po topraku hode desetoro njih"; "Prema pisanijama ovi stvor je"; "Cesto bi me zakjucala gospa divna";  "Drevna bese moja loza [...]" [translations of Exeter Riddles 13, 39, 61, and 83 into Bosnian/Montenegrin/Croatian/Serbian] The Riddle Ages blog, January 4, 2022. 
 
Co-translated with Eggi Triyadi. "Saya melihat empat makhluk berjalan"; ""Bukan balaiku yang terdiam, bukan juga diriku yang bising" [translations of Exeter Riddles 51 and 85 into Indonesian] The Riddle Ages blog, January 4, 2022.

“Etymology.” A gloss on Iberian Connections: Medieval and Early Modern Studies and Contemporary Critical Thought, ed. Jesús R. Velasco (2020).
https://iberian-connections.yale.edu/glossary/etymology/

“Jozef Pronek’s Underwear: Displacement, Queer Desire, and Eastern European Masculinity in Aleksandar Hemon’s Nowhere Man.”  In Go East!  LGBTQ+ Literature in Eastern Europe, ed. Andrej Zavrl and Alojzija Zupan Sosi?. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Ljubljana University Press, Faculty of Arts, 2020. 58-64. https://e-knjige.ff.uni-lj.si/znanstvena-zalozba/catalog/book/197

“I grew where I s[........................]" [a translation of Exeter Riddle 88 into Modern English and commentary] The Riddle Ages blog, December 19, 2019. 
https://theriddleages.com/riddles/post/exeter-riddle-88/
https://theriddleages.com/riddles/post/commentary-for-exeter-riddle-88/

“Riddle.”  New Literary History 50.3 (Special Issue:  “In Brief,” 2019):  381-86.  
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/740069

Book Reviews

Dating Beowulf: Studies in Intimacy ed. Daniel C. Remein and Erica Weaver. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 122.4 (2023): 543-45.
https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/34/article/908759

The Owl and the Nightingale trans. Simon Armitage. Asymptote (July 2023).
https://www.asymptotejournal.com/criticism/anonymous-the-owl-and-the-nightingale/
 
Karla Mallette, Lives of the Great Languages: Arabic and Latin in the Medieval Mediterranean. The Medieval Review (Spring 2023).
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/36010/39088
 
Cavell/Neville (eds.), Riddles at Work in the Early Medieval Tradition. The Medieval Review (Fall 2021)

Etymology and Wordplay in Medieval Literature, ed. Mikael Males. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 102.3 (2021): 415-18.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.5406/jenglgermphil.120.3.0415

Anne McKendry, Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical OverviewThe Medieval Review (Spring 2021).
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/32341/36162

Allen J. Frantzen. Anglo-Saxon Keywords. English Studies 96.3 (2015): 358-9. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0013838X.2014.998033

The Material Culture of Daily Living in the Anglo-Saxon World, ed. M. C. Hyer and G. R. Owen-Crocker. English Studies 95.6 (2014): 702-3. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0013838X.2014.942116

Lisa Lampert-Weissig. Medieval Literature and Postcolonial Studies. English Studies 94.2 (2013): 237-38. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0013838X.2013.765179

Belletristic Writing

“Inspired by the Book: Ferocious Honesty and Gorgeous Writing” (an interview about books and reading by Researchscapes, a blog run by the Connecticut College library, February 13, 2022).
http://researchscapes.digital.conncoll.edu/inspired-by-the-book/inspired-by-the-book-ferocious-honesty-and-gorgeous-writing/

“What Book Would You Never Burn (for Fuel)?” [essay, 3-14] and “Departure Entrance: Transcreations from the Old English Exodus” [poetry, 145-54]. In Rumba Under Fire: The Arts of Survival from West Point to Delhi, ed. Irina A. Dumitrescu. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2016. https://punctumbooks.com/titles/rumba-under-fire/

Presentations

Ferhatovic has given talks in the United States as well as in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Turkey and the US Virgin Islands.

Visit the English department website.

Majoring in English.

Minoring in Linguistics.

Contact Denis Ferhatovic

Mailing Address

Denis Ferhatovic
Connecticut College
Box #ENGLISH/Blaustein Humanities Center
270 Mohegan Ave.
New London, CT 06320

Office

314 Blaustein Humanities Center