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A Note from the New Editor
Ben Hebblethwaite

Greetings! I’m Ben Hebblethwaite, and I’m serving as the new Editor of Delos 
from 2022 to  2024. Rori Bloom is serving as the Book Review Editor and 
Roxana Walker-Canton as Film Review Editor. We continue the groundwork 
laid by Hal Rennert, Judy Shoaf, and Alexander Burak in curating Delos as a 
venue for literary translations and research on the languages and literatures of 
the world. We will also branch out in some new ways: we want scholarly scaf-
folding for translations as well as more scholarly articles, and we will offer 
film and media reviews, interviews, and debates.

One feature of Delos going forward will be the dual publication of texts 
that reflect a selected theme as well as general texts. Benjamin Hebblethwaite 
and Kole Odutola will co- edit Delos 37-1 (Spring 2022) on “The Sacred Texts 
and Images from Africa and the African Diaspora” and will also publish gen-
eral submissions. Benjamin Hebblethwaite and Youssef Haddad will co- edit 
Delos 37-2 (Fall 2022) and likewise general submissions will also appear.

Linguistic, literary, historical, cultural, textual, and biographical context 
is needed for the translations that appear in Delos. Future submissions should 
include the following elements to serve our readers:

• A title that identifies the author, language, geographical and histori-
cal provenance of the text (using a date).

• An introduction to the text that explains the linguistic, historical, cul-
tural, textual, and biographical context of the translation or research.

• Footnoted commentaries about the text are welcome.
• A closing discussion and analysis of the author’s life and work, genre,

style, and key features of the text translated, including linguistic infor-
mation, historical context, and bibliographical references that allow
readers to undertake further readings.

• Bibliographical entries should be alphabetized in a section titled
“references.”

Delos Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 133–134. Copyright © 2021 University of Florida Press. 
doi: 10.5744/delos.2021.2002



134    Forum

• Authors should use The Chicago Manual of Style Online: https:// www 
. chicagomanualofstyle . org / tools_citationguide / citation - guide - 1 . html

Translations, articles, and reviews should be accompanied by the above- 
mentioned scholarly resources so that readers can gain an appreciation for the 
historical, literary, and intellectual context of the selections published in Delos. 
Including scholarly articles and scholarly features with translations is closely 
tied with the long- term goal of augmenting the journal’s role as a tool for 
research. We strongly encourage prospective authors to submit their work for 
double- blind peer review.

Hal H. Rennert. Photo by Sylvie Blum-Reid, May 9, 2021.

https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html
https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/citation-guide-1.html


Interview with Hal H. Rennert,  
Editor- in- Chief of Delos 2015– 2021

Sylvie Blum-Reid

SBR: How did you become the Delos editor? How did you run into Delos?
HHR: This may seem very odd from today’s view of things. In the 1990s 

Physics professor, Vice Provost for Research and somehow publisher 
and— in his spare time— editor of Delos Harold P. Hanson had inher-
ited the journal from the University of Maryland. At the University 
of Florida, Harold approached me, along with fellow faculty mem-
bers in foreign languages, for contributions to Delos. I contributed a 
translation of a short story by Marie Luise Kaschnitz, and then in 
1997 I guest- edited the annual issue of Delos with focus on source 
texts in German. I continued assisting Harold with proof- reading 
until his final issue of Delos in 2003.1

Living in the same neighborhood as Harold in Gainesville, I was 
aware that he was increasingly frail. Harold’s daughter and caretaker 
persuaded me to take ownership of Delos. She and Harold handed 
over past issues and correspondence, as well as the original art work 
by UF art professor Hiram Williams, in April 2015. Harold died in 
Gainesville in April 2016; I dedicated my first issue of Delos, in 
August 2016 (#31), in his memory.

Harold’s translation language was Norwegian. His book- length 
translation of Sigrid Undset’s 1910 poem cycle, Ungdom, Youth 
(2010), was part of his Delos project and was well- received as a cen-
tenary tribute to the Nobel- Prize- winning writer. A copy of this book 
is now part of the Delos archive in room 370 Dauer Hall at the Uni-
versity of Florida.

Noteworthy for historical reasons is the very founding of Delos 
with translation luminaries such as George Steiner and William 

1 This issue was officially Delos, ser. 2, XII.1– 2, for Summer– Winter 1999, but published 
in July 2003. It also had a sequential number, #29– 30, indicating how many issues had 
been published in the second series.

Delos Vol. 36, No. 2, pp. 135–140. Copyright © 2021 University of Florida Press.  
doi: 10.5744/delos.2021.2003



136    Interview with Hal H. Rennert

Arrowsmith at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas, in 1968. 
The project drew on a gigantic $500,000 grant from the Ford Foun-
dation. At the time Harold, coincidentally, happened to be chairing 
the physics department at UT, but without any tangible connection 
to Delos whatsoever— merely, no doubt, at the time, as an interested 
observer!

SBR: What made you decide to acquire Delos and continue the journal? 
How long did it take you to develop the first issue, #31 in 2016, and 
find board members and solicit submissions?

HHR: It didn’t take much art- of- persuasion for Harold’s daughter, Beverly 
Hanson- Herbert, to talk me into taking over ownership of Delos in 
April 2015. I immediately saw the connection between the graduate 
seminar in translation, part of the curriculum in Comparative Lit-
erature at the University of Washington I was taking in 1969, taught 
by Professor Frank Jones (well known for his publication of his trans-
lation of Brecht’s Saint Joan of the Stockyards). Simply put, the 
Frank Jones model was: any graduate student working on a source 
text translation in any national language— French, German, Korean, 
Chinese, Russian— what have you— could enroll in the translation 
seminar with the professor teaching, advising, sometimes even 
rewriting the target text translation project in idiomatic publishable 
American English! I, as editor- in- chief, could do the same thing as 
Frank Jones did with submissions from anyone and anywhere in the 
world to Delos! And the rest is history, so to speak. Well, not quite. 
I should mention that as a PhD candidate I supported myself as a 
teaching assistant teaching English composition at the UW. In other 
words, I had a pretty good command of written American English, 
besides being a native speaker/reader of German.

It took me the rest of 2015— while, as usual, spending my sum-
mer at the German Literature Archive in Marbach, Germany— 
contacting previous contributors of Delos with pleas for help and 
submissions for the revival of Delos after a thirteen- year hiatus. All 
of this initial contacting (Cynthia Chennault, Diane Arnson Svarlien, 
Stephen Rojcewicz et al.) I did via the Internet. Back on the UF cam-
pus in late 2015 I was successful and grateful to have younger col-
leagues (UF- based Sidney Wade, Charles Perrone, Dror Abend 
David, Alexander Burak, Ben Hebblethwaite) join Delos as members 
of the Editorial Board and, in the case of Sasha Burak, even in the 



Sylvie Blum-Reid    137

executive position of Review Editor. The most experienced of the 
UF- based colleagues was Elizabeth Lowe, as past director of the 
translation program within the UF Center of Latin American Stud-
ies (her own specialty is Portuguese): after leaving UF, she had 
achieved national prominence at the University of Illinois and at 
NYU, all along physically being located in Gainesville. It was her 
and Ben Hebblethwaite’s close connection to the University Press of 
Florida (UPF), which contributed to the Press’s takeover of Delos in 
2017— clearly a major step forward in the national and international 
profile of Delos. Most important to that step turning into a leap for-
ward as it were, was Judy Shoaf with her decades- long experience 
in translation from Medieval French as well as her editing and schol-
arship on the journal Exemplaria; she joined Delos as Managing 
Editor and Co- Editor in 2017.

Special recognition among those former contributors under the 
late Harold Hanson era should go to Stephen Rojcewicz an essential 
contributor from his expertise in ancient Greek and classical Latin. 
I never get tired of repeating, Delos without the translations and re- 
translations from ancient Greek and classical Latin is incomplete! 
Jumping all the way to current spring of 2021, I am delighted to note 
that Victoria Pagán is the contact person in UF Classics for the new 
tri- departmental certificate of translation.

SBR: Did you have a favorite piece that Delos has published in the past 
five years, or a moment as editor that was particularly satisfying?

HHR: My favorite piece is actually the entire issue guest- edited by Ralf 
Remshardt. Its special theme was Performance. True, the fact that 
part of Ralf’s expertise is in German Studies made his guest edi-
torship additionally attractive, but much much more important is 
Ralf’s scholarship, directorship in drama, stage- production, and 
theater in the UF College of Fine Arts. Almost all English depart-
ments and foreign language/literature departments located in the 
separate College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in this country are 
afflicted with an Achilles heel: In their teaching and research of 
drama and plays they neglect the live performances of university- 
campus theater stage productions. Ralf Remshardt‘s guest- edited 
Delos issue (vol. 35, no. 1, Spring 2020) filled an important gap, 
the neglected branch of literature in translation written for the 
stage.



SBR: Can you recall a specific event/moment in your classroom or con-
ference papers, when you worked with a significant and specific work 
of translation?

HHR: In the last thirty years of my teaching in German Studies, I almost 
never had occasion to include analysis of translation, because, in line 
with prevalent pedagogical practice, teaching concentrates on lan-
guage acquisition and literary analysis using such methodologies as 
the so- called communicative method. Therefore, translation is a no- 
no! After all, you cannot teach students to speak a foreign language 
by using translations and analysis of translations! But in my research, 
publications, and conference presentations I did deal with some key 
examples of translations, including with one of the great classics, 
Goethe’s Faust, which I have had occasion to teach in the original 
German as well as in English translation. On the basis of my read-
ing and interpretation of Goethe’s use of the Lutheran translation of 
the Book of Job in the Bible for a passage in “The Prologue in 
Heaven” of Faust, I have come to make the outrageous claim that if 
Goethe would have been born in England and therefore grown up 
with the so- called King James version of the Bible, the famous wager 
in Faust would not have happened and therefore the work Faust 
would not have been written! My claim is based on a small but essen-
tial embellishment in the Book of Job by Luther that does not exist 
in the King James version. In German it is the expression by Satan/
Mephistopheles “Was gilt’s” (“What is the validity?” or “What is the 
bet?”). The bet, of course, is whether Job or his incarnation Faust will 
ultimately align himself with the forces of evil or the forces of good. 
For the limited context of this interview, I cannot here and now go 
into further detail; suffice it to say that translators acquire the mar-
velous additional skill of translation as interpretation as a by- product 
of an additional deep knowledge through the command of another 
language.

SBR: If today you were the chair of a foreign language department at an 
American university, what would be a change you would make in 
regard to the teaching and research of translation?

HHR: As you know, teaching and research of translation in foreign lan-
guage departments in this country is minimal or non- existent. And 
yet it is painfully obvious, publishable literary translation requires 

138    Interview with Hal H. Rennert



Sylvie Blum-Reid    139

an exquisite command of a foreign language and culture. Thus, I 
would include translation ability as part of the curriculum and as an 
option in requisite skills of college graduates in foreign languages, 
initially on the graduate studies or post B.A. level. This would mean 
that the job descriptions in the hiring of at least some new faculty 
should specify, in addition to “native or near- native ability” in what-
ever foreign language is to be taught and researched, “native or near- 
native ability in English.” In other words, foreign- language teachers 
who are designated or tasked with the extra responsibility of teach-
ing translation should have a command of idiomatic, publishable 
grasp of English. By the way, although born in Germany but having 
maintained a nearly perfect command of German, I claim to have 
native ability in American English. I am as bilingual as Henry A. 
Kissinger— perhaps even more so!

SBR: Is there any aspect of Delos that you feel has not been covered or 
touched upon that you would like to bring up?

HHR: Yes, there is. One of your specialties, Professor Blum, is French and 
European film, and undoubtedly films and film scripts are often 
based on literary masterpieces— not to mention those pesky trans-
lated subtitles of foreign- language films. How about doing a guest- 
edited issue of Delos based entirely on the role of translation and 
literary works for films!? I had hoped that in his guest- edited issue 
of Performance, Ralf Remshardt would include films, but translations 
of plays for the theatre are a vast area in itself. Delos is fortunate, 
however, to have currently another film- literature- translation scholar, 
Dror Abend- David, a member of the Editorial Board. He has 
researched the film versions of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Ven-
ice in Hebrew, Yiddish, and German. No doubt he would make a fine 
collaborator.

One of my very first publications after coming to UF in 1979 was 
a short article: “Transformations: Thoughts Regarding Film Title 
Translations,” in POST SCRIPT: Essays in Film and the Humani-
ties, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Fall 1981), pages 33– 35.

Another possible future Delos issue might focus on translations 
of works in international science fiction.






