Tom Cheesman is Reader in German, a member of the Modern Languages Admissions Team, and a College of Arts and Humanities Unfair Practice Representative.

Tom is Principal Investigator on the collaborative, multi-disciplinary ‘Version Variation Visualisation’ project: details at www.delightedbeauty.org. This project, investigating Digital Humanities approaches to analysing the multiplicity of Shakespeare re-translations, is currently funded by the Research Institute of Arts and Humanities and supported by ABBYY and Wolfestone Translation.

Other current research projects include: edited book on Feridun Zaimoglu (co-edited with Karin Yesilada); edited book on German ‘Text Crimes’, literary-legal controversies since the 1950s; and critical work on the concepts of cosmopolitanism and super-diversity.

Tom was the Principal Researcher on the Axial Writing Project (1998-2002), part of the ESRC Transnational Communities Research Programme.

With Eric Ngalle Charles and Sylvie Hoffmann, Tom established non-profit Hafan Books in 2003, to publish literary texts by refugees in Wales, alongside work by other writers.  Tom is Treasurer of Swansea Bay Asylum Seekers Support Group.

He is an associate of the Centre for Contemporary German Culture, the Centre for Migration Policy Research, and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity.

Dr Cheesman offers PhD supervision in the following areas: German-language contemporary literature; literary translation (practice, theory and history); digital analysis of literary translation corpora; comparative literature; refugee literature (representations of and by refugees); popular song texts.

21^st-century publications

Books

•  Novels of Turkish German Settlement: Cosmopolite Fictions, Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007, ISBN 9781571133748, x + 232 pp.
• (ed. with Karin E. Yesilada), Zafer Senocak (Contemporary German Writers), Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003, ISBN 0708318118 / 070831810X, xi + 187 pp.  

Hafan Books anthologies

• Latéfa Guémar and Jeni Williams, eds, Fragments from the Dark: Women Writing Home and Self in Wales (Swansea: Hafan Books, 2008), ISBN 9780954514747, 160 pp.
•  TC, Grahame Davies, and Sylvie Hoffmann, eds, Gwyl y Blaidd. Ysgreifennu Ffoaduriaid yng Nghymru / The Festival of the Wolf. Writing Refugees in Wales 4 (Swansea: Hafan Books / Cardigan: Parthian Books, 2006), ISBN 1905762208, vi + 210 pp.
• Eric Ngalle Charles, TC, and Sylvie Hoffmann, eds, Soft Touch: Refugees Writing in Wales 3 (Swansea: Hafan Books, 2005), ISBN 0954514734, 128 pp.
• EGC, TC, SH, eds, Nobody’s Perfect: Refugees Writing in Wales 2 (Swansea: Hafan Books, 2004), ISBN 0954514718, 96 pp.
• EGC, TC, SH, eds, Between a Mountain and a Sea: Refugees Writing in Wales (Swansea: Hafan Books, 2003), ISBN 095451470, 96 pp.

Longer translations

• Volker Braun, What’s Really Wanted: Three Stories, and: Break Down Power Relations, Hafan Books, 2009. Selection online at no man’s land (Berlin), 5 (Winter 2010).
• Zafer Senocak, Perilous Kinship, Hafan Books, 2009. Selection in Habitus 07: Berlin (New York), 2011.
• Zafer Senocak and Berkan Karpat, Nazim Hikmet: On the Ship to Mars, Hafan Books, 2009; first published in Modern Poetry in Translation, series 3 no. 12: Freed Speech (2009).
• Ulrike Draesner, “Twin Spin: Reversions”. Complete text (17 poems): Hafan Books, 2007. Selections in Yang (Ghent), 2 (July 2007), 243-51; and (revised) online at no man’s land (Berlin), 5 (Winter 2010).
• Soleiman Adel Guémar, State of Emergency (trans with John Goodby). Arc Publications, Visible Poets Series, 20. ISBN 978-1904614-39-5 / -66-1 (2007). English PEN Writers in Translation award.
• Manfred Peter Hein, Between Winter and Winter / Milli Vetrar Og Vetrar / Mellem Vinter Og Vinter / Zwischen Winter und Winter. Edited by Gauti Kristmannsson. Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press, 2006. Parallel translations by TC, GK (Icelandic), and Henning Vangsgaard (Danish). 74pp. ISBN 9979-54-708-1.
• Feridun Zaimoglu, ‘Preface to Kanaki Speak’ [Kanak Sprak], in Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955-2005, edited by Deniz Göktürk, David Gramling and Anton Kaes, California UP, 2006, p. 405-8.

Report

• (with Marie Gillespie), After September 11: TV News and Transnational Audiences. Part Two: Audience Research (London: Broadcasting Standards Commission, 2002).

Articles, chapters, essays

• (with Arnd-Michael Nohl and the BBCWS US Elections Study Group), ‘Many Voices, One BBC World Service? The 2008 US Elections, Gatekeeping and Trans-editing.’ Journalism  12/2 (2011), 217-233.
•  ‘Shakespeare and Othello in Filthy Hell: Zaimoglu and Senkel’s Politico-Religious Tradaptation.’ Forum for Modern Language Studies 46/2 (2010), 207-20.
•  ‘Diversity in Cultural Representations: Comedy and Othello.’ MMG Working Papers, WP 09-13, 2009.
•  ‘Pseudopolitisch, pseudokorrekt: Ein deutscher Literaturkritikskandal. Ein später Nachtrag zur Debatte um Feridun Zaimoglus “Leyla”.’ Literaturkritik.de (Nr. 6, Juni 2008).
•  ‘For Feridun Zaimoglu’s Leyla. Crime Facts and Fictions’, GFL, 3 (2008), 4-25.
•  ‘Shall I Compare, Vergleichen, Recombine? Reversioning Ulrike Draesner’s “Twin Spin”‘, In Other Words, 30 (Winter 2007), pp. 6-15.
•  (with John Goodby), ‘Translators’ Preface’, in Soleïman Adel Guémar, State of Emergency (Todmorden: Arc Publications [Visible Poets, 20], 2007), 12-20.
• ‘Juggling Burdens of Representation: Black, Red, Gold and Turquoise’, German Life and Letters 59/4 (October 2006), 471-87. ISSN 0016-8777.
• ‘Über Feridun Zaimoglus “Häute”‘, in 4. Uluslar arasi Dil, Yazin ve Deyisbilim Sempozyumu, Çanakkale, 17-19 Haziran 2004: Bildirileri / IV. Internationales Symposium für Sprache, Literatur und Stilistik, Çanakkale, 17-19 Juni 2004: Tagungsband, eds. Ali Osman Öztürk, Nevide Akpinar-Dellal and Umut Balci (Çanakkale: Nobel Yayin Dagitim, 2005), pp. 133-42.
• (with Marie Gillespie), ‘Les informations télévisées et les téléspectateurs multiethniques’, in Du 11 septembre à la riposte: les débuts d’une nouvelle guerre médiatique, ed. M. Lits (Brussels: de boeck, 2004), pp. 86-103.
• ‘Talking “Kanak”: Zaimoglu contra Leitkultur’, New German Critique, 92 (Spring-Summer 2004), 82-99.
• ‘Wir lebten schon immer unter den Trümmern von Babel’ / ‘We have always lived among the ruins of Babel’, in Türme Babylons: Sehnsucht nach bewohnbarer Sprache. Eine mehrsprachige Anthologie, ed. Nasrin Amirsedghi (Cologne: Romiosini, 2004), pp. 28-41.
• ‘Staðbundin og hnattræn margtyngd ljóðlist og útópísk vefsýn’ [‘Local and Global Multilingual Poetries and a Utopian Web Concept’], trans. G Baldvinsson, Jón á Bægisá: Tímarit um þýdenda [Reykjavik], 8, September 2004, 32-9.
• ‘“Einfach eine neue Form”: Gespräch mit Zafer Senocak’, in Zafer Senocak, ed. Tom Cheesman and Karin E Yesilada (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 19-30.
• ‘S/ß: Zafer Senocak and the Civilization of Clashes’, in Zafer Senocak, ed. Tom Cheesman and Karin E Yesilada (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 144-59.
• ‘Akçam - Zaimoglu - “Kanak Attak”: Turkish Lives and Letters in German’, German Life and Letters, 55/2 (April 2002), 180-95. ISSN 0016-8777.
• ‘Zafer Senocak: Trans-European Internationalist’, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, 149 (Oct-Nov 2001), 78-80. ISSN 0048-4288.
• ‘Lesser-Used Languages of Europe, Old and New: Common Cause?’ in Language, Ethnicity and the State: Regional and Minority Languages of Europe, vol. 1: Minority Languages in the European Union, ed. Camille O’Reilly, Basingstoke: Palgrave; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2001, pp 147-168. ISBN 033392925X.
• ‘The Turkish German Self: Displacing German-German Conflict in Orientalist Street Ballads’, in Imagined States: Nationalism, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures, ed. Luisa Del Giudice and Gerald Porter, Logan: Utah State University Press, 2001, pp. 136-63. ISBN 0874214122.
• ‘The Price of Welsh Internationalism: A Safe Haven for Exiled Writers’, Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, 147 (June-July 2001), 87-94. ISSN 0048-4288. 

Shorter translations

• Albert Ostermaier, 4 poems, commissioned by Karen Leeder for Poetry International: “Brecht on the South Bank”, in Modern Poetry in Translation (series 3, no.6: After-Images) (2006).
• Zafer Senocak, ‘The Bastardized Language’, in Germany in Transit: Nation and Migration, 1955-2005, edited by Deniz Göktürk, David Gramling and Anton Kaes, California UP, 2006, pp. 402-5.
• Soleiman Adel Guémar, 4 poems (trans with John Goodby), with A Note on Hafan Books, Modern Poetry in Translation (series 3, no. 2: Diaspora) (2004), 40-46
• Zafer Senocak, ‘The Capital of the Fragment’, New German Critique, 88 (Winter 2003), 141-46.
• Zafer Senocak, ‘Flying’, in Moving Worlds: A Journal of Transcultural Writings 1/1 (2001), 89-104. ISBN 09540751-0-2.
• Zafer Senocak, Two Stories, in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist, 149 (2001) .
• Gino Chiellino, poems, in Molsak (FASK Germersheim) 3.2 (2000).
• Adel Karasholi, poems, Molsak (FASK Germersheim) 3.1 (2000).
• Various: translations into German (with Juliane Parthier and Mererid Hopwood) of poems by five writers from Wales, text. zeitschrift für literaturen (Ithaka Verlag Stuttgart), 0, 1 and 2 (1998-2000).
• Albert Ostermaier, selected poems in Dimension2 (3/2, 1996); in a booklet for the 30th Rotterdam International Poetry Festival, 1999; readings of translated versions included on the CD accompanying Ostermaier’s collection Heartcore (suhrkamp, 2000).
• Goethe’s Roman Elegies (selections) in verse translation, in: Writing Ulster 1, 1990, 138-41.
• Unpublished translations: Poems by Hasan Özdemir. Albert Ostermaier, Zwischen zwei Feuern. Tollertopographie (1994); Polar (2006).

20^th-century research publications

Books

•  The Shocking Ballad Picture Show: German Popular Literature and Cultural History, Oxford/Providence: Berg, 1994, ISBN 0854968938, xxxv + 240 pp.
• (ed. with Sigrid Rieuwerts), Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child, Berne: Peter Lang, 1997, ISBN 390675734X, 283 pp.; 2nd rev. edn 1999, ISBN 3906761673.
• (ed.), Recent Ballad Research: The Language of Ballads and Other Topics. Proceedings of the 19th SIEF Ballad Commission Conference (Freiburg i.Br. 1989), 2 vols, London: Folklore Society (Library Pamphlets 4/5) 1990, ISBN 1871903106/1871903157.

Articles

• ‘New and Old Lesser-Known Languages of Europe: A Case for Reviewing Cultural Policy’, in Promoting Literature Across Frontiers [Mosaic International Conference Proceedings], Aberystwyth: Mercator Media and Welsh Literature Abroad, 1999, pp. 57-63.
• ‘Das Türkenbild als Eigenbild im Bänkelsang des 19. Jahrhunderts’, in Gender - Culture - Poetics. Zur Geschlechterforschung in der Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaft. Festschrift für Natascha Würzbach, ed. Andrea Gutenberg and Ralf Schneider, Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1999, pp. 151-71.
• (with Deniz Göktürk), ‘German Titles, Turkish Names: The Cosmopolitan Will’, New Books in German (London: The Society of Authors), Autumn 1999, pp. 22-3.
  • ‘Türkische Namen, deutsche Texte. Ein Literaturüberblick Ende 1999’, trans. Alexander Schlutz, parapluie 2, 1999.
  • ‘Titoli tedeschi, nomi turchi: una volontà cosmopolita’, Afriche e Oriente (Bologna) 3-4/2000.
• ‘Moritat’, in Enzyklopädie des Märchens, Band 9, Lieferung 2, ed. R.W. Brednich et al., Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1998, pp. 906-18.
• ‘Polyglot Politics: Hip Hop in Germany’, Debatte 6/2 (November 1998), 191-214.
  • Danish translation (by Henrik Houmark), ‘En mangetunget politik. Rap og unge tyske tyrkere’, Social Kritik: Tidsskrift for Social Analyse & Debat [Copenhagen] 13/74 (June 2001), 102-120. ISSN 0904-3535.
• ‘Apocalypse Nein Danke: The Fall of Werner Herzog’, in Green Thought in German Culture: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, ed. Colin Riordan, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1997, pp. 285-306.
• (with Sigrid Rieuwerts), ‘Preface’ and ‘Introduction: Child Who?’, in Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child, ed. Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts (1997/1999), pp. 5-6, 9-18.
• ‘Online Resources’ and ‘Publications of the SIEF Ballad Commission’, in Ballads into Books: The Legacies of Francis James Child, ed. Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts (1997/1999), pp. 276-7 and 277-80.
• ‘Modernity/Monstrosity: Eating Freaks (Germany, c.1700)’, Body and Society, 2/3 (1996), 1-31.
• ‘Intersubcultural Dialogue on Husband-Killing: “Elise”, A Popular Ballad in 19th-Century Germany’, in Ballads and Boundaries: Narrative Singing in an Intercultural Context, ed. J. Porter (UCLA, 1995), pp. 87-100.
• ‘Goethes Novelle: die Novelle und der Bänkelsang’, Goethe-Jahrbuch, 111 (1994), 125-40.
• ‘Bänkelsang: Seeing, Hearing, Telling and Singing in the German Ballad Picture Show’, in Lore and Language, 12/1-2 (Special Issue: Images, Identities and Ideologies: Papers from the 22nd International Ballad Conference, Belfast 1992, eds J.M. Kirk and C. Neilands), 1994, 41-57.
• ‘Performing Omnivores in Germany circa 1700’, in Studies in the Commedia dell’ arte, ed. David J. George and Christopher J. Gossip, Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1993, pp. 49-68.
• ‘Gluttony Artists: Carnival, Enlightenment and Consumerism in Germany on the Threshold of Modernity’, in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 66/4 (December 1992), 641-66.
• ‘Ballads and the Ethnography of Writing: Some Reflections’, in Mara Herrera-Sobek (ed.), Gender and Print Culture: New Perspectives on International Ballad Studies (n.p.): Kommission für Volksdichtung of the SIEF 1991, pp. 17-25.
• English-language summaries of articles for Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung 1991-2005.
• ‘The Return of the Transformed Son: A Popular Ballad Complex and Cultural History, Germany 1500-1900’, Oxford German Studies, 18/19 (1989/90), 60-91.
• ‘Murderous Mothers in Popular Culture: Narrative Representations of Infanticidal Women in German Bänkelsang and Oral Balladry’, in Walter Puchner (ed.), Tod und Jenseits im europäischen Volkslied. Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Ballad Commission of the Société Internationale d’Ethnologie et de Folklore (Kolympari, Crete, 1986) (University of Jannina, Publications of Folklore Museum and Archives 6), Ioannina 1989, pp. 179-228.