Mark Harman, professor emeritus of German and English at Elizabethtown College and award-winning translator of Franz Kafka’s Amerika: The Missing Person, The Castle, and most recently, Selected Stories, will give a talk, read from Kafka's stories, and have a conversation on translation as part of the university’s 2025 Spotlight on the Arts festival. Harman’s visit is presented by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, the departments of English and comparative literature and intercultural studies, and The Georgia Review.

Of Selected Stories, published in 2024 by Harvard University Press, the Washington Post’s Pulitzer-winning critic Michael Dirda wrote that “you couldn’t ask for a better introduction to Kafka… if you’ve never read Kafka before or if you already love him, you’ll still want Harman’s Selected Stories.”

Harman's article, "The Case for Renaming Kafka’s Metamorphosis as The Transformation," was published by Lit Hub in August, 2025.

He will be joined in conversation by Roland Végső, professor and head of the department of English.