It is our great honor to announce the Michael Henry Heim Chair in Central and East European Letters at Indiana University. This position has been endowed through a generous gift by Priscilla Heim in honor of her late husband, the eminent literary scholar and translator, Michael Henry Heim (1943-2012). Professor Heim’s work spanned an impressive range of languages and cultures, from Croatian and Serbian to Dutch, Czech, German, Romanian, and Russian. A beloved teacher of literature and language, Heim also spearheaded the translation and dissemination of often unknown literary gems by artists hitherto unknown in the English-reading world. We are honored to carry on his legacy through this award.
The inaugural Michael Henry Heim Chair in Central and East European Letters at Indiana University will be Bill Johnston, Professor of Comparative Literature at IU Bloomington, whose many accomplishments in the field of literary translation made him our clear first choice. Professor Johnston received the National Translation Award in Poetry for his monumental rendering of Adam Mickiewicz’s rhyming verse narrative Pan Tadeusz (Archipelago Books, 2018), for the translation of which he also received a Guggenheim Award. His 2010 translation of Wiesław Myśliwski’s Stone Upon Stone received the PEN Translation Prize and the Best Translated Book Award, both in 2012. He has received the AATSEEL Award for Best Literary Translation into English three times, in 2005, 2012, and 2019, and the Found in Translation Prize twice, in 2008 and 2016. Professor Johnston’s published work includes over forty book-length translations into English from Polish and French, from a wide range of genres and historical periods. Professor Johnston, an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures, offers graduate courses in literary translation at IU Bloomington, as part of the Department of Comparative Literature’s Certificate in Literary Translation. He has also taught at the Bread Loaf Translators Conference in Middlebury, VT and the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA, as well as offering numerous mentorships through the American Literary Translators Association. Professor Johnston’s duties as the Heim Chair will include organizing workshops, symposia, and other programming in collaboration with faculty in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures. He will serve an initial three-year term beginning Fall 2023.
The Heim bequest will also make possible a one-semester visiting professor each year and two graduate recruitment fellowships, each of which will bear the Heim name and highlight our continued commitment to Michael Heim’s lifelong work.
You can read more about this generous gift and its impact over at the IU College of Arts & Sciences website.
The College of Arts