Denis Ferhatovic
Associate Professor of English
Pronouns: he/his/him
Joined Connecticut College: 2012
Pronouns: he/his/him
EducationM.A., M.Phil. (English), M.Phil. (Medieval Studies), Ph.D. (English), Yale University
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/
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/
“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
https://www.doublespeakmagazine.org/poems_2024/the-song-of-flowers
https://www.doublespeakmagazine.org/notes_2024/the-song-of-flowers
https://www.doublespeakmagazine.org/poems_2023/ghazal-97
https://www.doublespeakmagazine.org/notes_2023/ghazal-97
https://issuu.com/trinityjolt10/docs/issuu2_jolt
http://exchanges.uiowa.edu/turkoslavia/issues/issue-1/ramo-and-saliha/
“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/
“Riddle.” New Literary History 50.3 (Special Issue: “In Brief,” 2019): 381-86.
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/
Book Reviews
https://exchanges.uiowa.edu/reviews/the-long-coming-of-fire
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/
https://scholarworks.iu.edu/journals/index.php/tmr/article/view/36010/39088
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/
Anne McKendry, Medieval Crime Fiction: A Critical Overview. The 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.
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