Elena Basile’s research and art practice straddles the fields of translation studies, queer theory and contemporary literature, with a specific interest in tracing the evolving ethics of care emerging from multilingual and multimodal poetries that attend to the pervasive displacements and uprootings of colonial modernity. She collaborates regularly with artists and academics in Italy, Canada, and France, focusing her research and poetry on the politics of feminist queer migrant poetics. Recent publications include a poetic contribution to Here and Now. An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing (edited by Licia Canton, Longbridge 2021); the anthology Translation, Semiotics and Feminism: Selected Works of Barbara Godard (Routledge, 2022), coedited with Eva Karpinski; Cosecante Iperbole. Diffracting Translations, a multilingual experiment of poetic translation of the work of Italian poet Angela Marchionni, written in collaboration with Chiara Montini and Letizia Rostagno (ellipse magazine #91, 2022); and the SSHRC funded Speaker Series Who Cares? Sustaining Relations of Health Beyond the Time of Crisis (March-April 2022) co-organized with Roberta Buiani.
Email: ebasile@yorku.ca
Affiliation: York University/English and University of Toronto/Sexual Diversity Studies
Research Interests:
Translation Studies, Multi and Translingual Poetics, Queer Studies.
Topic of MA or PhD research :
“Affect in Translation: Tessera and the Politics of Feminist
Experimental Poetics in Canada (1984-2005)”
Forthcoming Publications
“Of Wood and Water: An Autotopography of Mourning in Translation. Part 1” to be published in volume 33 of Italian Canadiana. Special Issue on Domestic Goods. Edited by Lorella Di Cintio. Fall 2023.
“Making Room for Rumi” in rumi roaming. contemporary engagements and interventions. Curated and edited by Gita Hashemi. Subversive Press, 2024.
Handbook in Gender, Sexuality and Poetics. Co-edited with Heather Milne. Bloomsbury, 2025.