Ph.D. - Comparative Literature
University of Michigan

M.A. - Humanities
University of Texas at Dallas

B.A. - English Literature
Loyola University, New Orleans

Cotter, Sean, trans. FEM by Magda Cârneci. Dallas, TX: Deep Vellum Books, 2021. 
Finalist: PEN America Translation PrizeReviewed:       Los Angeles Review of Books, Publisher's Weekly, Ezra, Calvert Journal 2021 - Book

Cotter, Sean, trans. Curl by T. O. Bobe. Boston, MA: Wakefield Press, 2019.             Finalist:           Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry (2020)            Reviewed:       The Complete Review, Counterpunch 2019 - Book

Cotter, Sean. “Interdisciplinary Humanities: an Introduction through Translation.” In Teaching Translation: Programs, Courses, Pedagogies, ed. Lawrence Venuti (Routledge, 2016), 141 – 149. Reprinted in Translation Forum 2 (2017), 1-8. 2016 - Chapter

Cotter, Sean. Literary Translation and the Idea of a Minor Romania. University of Rochester Press. 
            Winner:           Society for Romanian Studies Biennial Book Prize            Reviewed:       Comparative Literature Studies, Finnish Journal for Romanian Studies, Journal of Contemporary European Studies 2014 - Book

Allen, Esther, Sean Cotter, and Russell Valentino, eds. The Man Between: Michael Henry Heim & a Life in Translation. Rochester, NY: Open Letter Books, 2014.            Reviewed:       The Arts-Fuse, The Complete Review, The Northwest Review of Books, Translating and Interpreting Studies 2014 - Book

"Rainer Maria Rilke in Lucian Blaga's Translations from English." Perspectives on Literature and Translation: Creation, Circulation, Reception. Ed.Brian Nelson and Brigid Maher (Routledge, 2013). 2013 - Chapter

Cotter, Sean, trans. Blinding: the Left Wing by Mircea Cărtărescu. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2013.            Finalist:           Three Percent Best Translated Book Award (2014)            Reviewed:       American Book Review, The Cleaver, The Complete Review, Dallas Morning News, The Independent, Kenyon Review, KGB Bar.com, London Review of Books, Los Angeles Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Numero Cinq Magazine, The Paris Review, Publishers Weekly, Quarterly Conversation, Three Percent, Words without Borders 2013 - Book

Cotter, Sean, ed., trans. and afterword. Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems by Nichita Stănescu. Brooklyn, NY: Archipelago Books, 2012.            Winner:           Three Percent Best Translated Book Award for poetry (2013)            World Literature Today 2013 Notable Translation            Reviewed:       The Arts Fuse, Los Angeles Review of Books, Pleiades, Words without Borders 2012 - Book

"Romania as Europe's Translator: Translation in Constantin Noica's National Imagination." Contexts, Subtexts, and Pretexts: Literary Translation in Eastern Europe and Russia. Ed. Brian James Baer (John Benjamins, 2011) 79 - 95. 2011 - Chapter

"East-Central European Literatures Twenty Years After." East European Politics and Societies 23:4 (2009) 552-81. Co-authored article, edited by Michael Heim. 2009 - Article

Professor of Literature and Translation Studies
University of Texas at Dallas [2016–Present]

Associate Professor of Literature and Translation Studies
University of Texas at Dallas [2010–2016]

Assistant Professor of Literature and Translation Studies
University of Texas at Dallas [2004–2006]

English as a Foreign Language Teacher and Peace Corps Volunteer
Ioan Cuza High School, Str. Negustorilor 14, Bucharest, Romania [1994–1996]

Spanish Teacher, 6 - 8th grade
Bailey Magnet School [1993–1994]

Professional recognitions and honors (study, teaching, research, service)

• Translation Fellowship, 2021, National Endowment for the Arts
• Translator in Residence, 2019, Romanian Literature Museum, Iași, Romania
• Assessment Innovator, awarded to the Literature Subcommittee, 2018, Provost Office of Assessment, The University of Texas at Dallas
• Biennial Book Prize, 2014, Society for Romanian Studies
• Best Translated Book Award (Poetry), 2013, Three Percent
• PEN/Heim Translation Fund, 2013, PEN America
• Translation Fellowship, 2011, National Endowment for the Arts
• Extraordinary Contributions to the Promotion of Romanian Literature through Translation, 2009, The Institute of Romanian Culture 
• PEN Southwest Book Award for Translation, 2009, PEN USA
• President Mihai Cimpoi Award, 2003, Moldovan Writers Union
• Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant, 2001, United States Department of Education
• Horace H. Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship Predoctoral Fellowship, 2002 
• Harry C. Routledge Prize, 2001, Southern Comparative Literature Association

Professor Sean Cotter Receives National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship

Today, the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Sean Cotter will receive a Literature Translation Fellowship of $25,000 to translate Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu into English. Cotter is one of 24 Literature Translation Fellows selected for fiscal year 2021. In total, the Arts Endowment will award $325,000 in grants to support the translation of works written in 16 different languages into English.

“Supporting literary translation not only means that many of the world’s talented writers reach a new audience, but also new and different perspectives and experiences are made available to readers in this country,” said Amy Stolls, director of literary arts at the National Endowment for the Arts. “The Arts Endowment is proud to continue its long history of supporting the art of translation through these 24 fellowships.”

Mircea Cărtărescu (b. 1956) is a celebrity and arguably the most famous poet, essayist, and prose writer of his generation. This project will translate his monumental 847-page novel, which ranges in scope from dust mites to the cosmos. Originally published in 2015 and a bestseller in Romania, translations of Solenoid have won the Prix Transfuge in French and the Thomas Mann Preis in German. Partly autobiographical, the novel is a first-person account of a high school teacher with literary ambitions who experiences rejection after presenting at an important literary workshop, leading him on a diverging path from Cărtărescu’s actual life. Grounded in the realities of the late 1970s to ’80s Communist Romania, this novel is interspersed with elements of surrealism—the narrator’s house, for example, resembles a boat on the outside, but on the inside contains numberless rooms and an enormous solenoid that is a portal to other dimensions. Solenoid has never been translated into English.

Sean Cotter is a translator and professor of literature and translation at the University of Texas at Dallas. A previous National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, Cotter is the translator of 11 books, including T.O. Bobe’s Curl and Nichita Stănescu’s Wheel with a Single Spoke and Other Poems, which was awarded the Best Translated Book Award for Poetry.

Professor Wins Prize for Translations of Romanian Poet

Dr. Sean Cotter, associate professor of literature and translation studies, has won the 2013 Best Translated Book Award in poetry given by Three Percent, the international literature magazine of the University of Rochester. Cotter’s winning book, Wheel With a Single Spoke and Other Poems, crosses the language barriers of Eastern Europe and brings the works of one of Romania’s most influential poets, Nichita Stanescu, to English for the first time. “I am very pleased to receive the award and thrilled that people are reading Stanescu,” said Cotter. “In an era of intense cultural politics, his aesthetics made him a leader of his generation, and his poetry was widely read.” Stanescu was the defining poet of Communist-era Romania. Cotter calls Stanescu’s work “innovative, conceptual and challenging poetry charged with energy.”

Romanian Literature Translator Wins NEA Grant

A National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant will support a UT Dallas professor’s quest to make the work of an acclaimed Romanian poet available to readers in English. Dr. Sean Cotter, associate professor of translation studies, international modernist literature and Romanian literature, was among the 20 recipients of a 2011 Literature Fellowship for Translation Projects from the NEA. The $12,500 grant will support the translation from the Romanian of Belgrade in Five Friends and Other Poems by Nichita Stanescu. Stanescu is a major figure in Romanian postwar poetry, credited with bringing modernism into the Communist era, but remains largely un-translated into English.