Bio
Yopie Prins is the Irene Butter Collegiate Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Ladies’ Greek: Victorian Translations of Tragedy (2017) and Victorian Sappho (1999), and co-editor of The Lyric Theory Reader: A Critical Anthology (2014) and Dwelling in Possibility: Women Poets and Critics on Poetry (1997).
Her areas of research and teaching include classical reception studies, nineteenth-century poetry and historical prosody, comparative poetics and lyric theory, critical translation studies and gender studies. She is the recipient of two NEH Fellowships (1993, 1999) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2003).
She grew up in Delft, The Netherlands and in Syracuse, New York. In 1981 she graduated with Highest Honors in Ancient Greek from Swarthmore College, where her teachers included Lucy McDiarmid, Helen North, Georgia Nugent, Martin Ostwald, and Gil Rose. As a Marshall Scholar, she continued her studies at Newnham College in Cambridge University for a B.A./M.A. in English Literature, completed in 1983. During 1983-84, she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to translate Dutch poetry and pursue Translation Studies with James S Holmes at the University of Amsterdam.
In 1991 she completed a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University, specializing in Classical Greek and English Literature. She studied with Anne Carson, Richard Martin, and Glenn Most, and her doctoral dissertation on translations of Greek tragedy by Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning was advised by David Bromwich, Robert Fagles, Ulrich Knoepflmacher, and Froma Zeitlin.
After teaching for four years in the English Department at Oberlin College in Ohio, Yopie Prins moved to Ann Arbor in 1994 to join the faculty at the University of Michigan. She served as Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature from 2008-2012 and again from 2016-2022. She is a member of the interdepartmental faculty consortium, Contexts for Classics (founded in 2000) and has been involved in various translation initiatives at the University of Michigan, including a Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest (2021-23).
She was elected to serve as Vice President (2013-15) and President (2015-16) of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA). Currently she is a member of the Executive Committee for the Association of Departments and Programs of Comparative Literature (ADPCL).
Links
Follow Yopie Prins on Academia.edu
Special thanks to Andrea Eis for permission to feature her works from andreaeisart.com
Awards and Fellowships
Co-PI, Mellon Sawyer Seminar Series, “Sites of Translation in the Multilingual Midwest” (2021-23)
Robert Lowry Patten Prize in 19th-c Literature, SEL Studies in English Literature (2018)
Best Book Prize, North American Victorian Studies Association (2018)
Collegiate Professorship, University of Michigan (2015)
Commendation,Vondel Prize for Translation from the Dutch, Society of Authors, London (2014)
Faculty Recognition Award, University of Michigan (2011)
Visiting Fellow, Princeton University Council for the Humanities (2004)
Guggenheim Fellowship (2003-2004)
Henry Russel Award for Research and Teaching, University of Michigan (2002)
Honorable Mention, MLA First Book Prize (1999)
Sonya Rudikoff Prize for First Book in Victorian Studies (1999)
Prize for Best Essay, Women’s Classical Caucus of the American Philological Association (1999)
NEH Fellowship for University Teachers (1999-2000)
LS&A Class of 1929 Distinguished Teaching Award, University of Michigan (1998)
Research Fellow, Institute for Research on Women & Gender, University of Michigan (Fall 1996)
NEH Fellowship for College Teachers (1993-1994)
Incentive Award, Journal of Classical and Modern Literature (1992)
Seeger Fellow for Hellenic Studies, Princeton University (Summer 1988)
Whiting Fellow, Princeton University (1987-1988)
Mellon Fellow, Princeton University (1984-1989)
Fulbright Scholar, The Netherlands (1983-1983)
Marshall Scholar, Cambridge University (1981-1983)
Phi Beta Kappa, Swarthmore College (1981)
Hayes Prize for Translation, Swarthmore College (1980)
National Scholar, Swarthmore College (1977-1981)