DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE HUMANITIES
(Studies in Literature)
Gjekë Marinaj
Professor: Frederick Turner
Dissertation: Oral Poetry in Albanian and Other Balkan
Cultures: Translating the Labyrinths of Untranslatability
BA, 2006, The University of Texas at Dallas
MA, 2008, The University of Texas at Dallas
“Good poets are rare. Good poets who also have the command of languages to be good translators are rarer. When such a person is also, justifiably, a national hero, as Dr. Gjekë Marinaj is for Albania–having barely escaped the armed pursuit of the goons of the communist regime, seeking his life for having written a poem critical of the regime, a poem that became the rallying cry of the demonstration that freed the nation–we have something rarer still. And when that person has composed for his dissertation a very important anthology of unpublished Albanian folk poetry, and when he is a graduate of our university, we should recognize our luck to be hooding him today.” FRED TURNER
Doctoral Hooding Ceremony, Fall 2012 – in PDF