Dr. Seta Knop (1960), professor of Comparative Literature and Sociology, studied Comparative Literature and Literary Theory and Sociology at the Faculty of Arts in Ljubljana, where she graduated in 1986 with a thesis on Adorno’s aesthetic theory and its resonance in Slovenia. From 1988 to 1993 she worked at the National and University Library, and from 1993 to 2001 at the Cankar Publishing House as editor for lexicography and translated social sciences and humanities. Since 2001 she has been the head of the library of the Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory. In her articles and accompanying texts, she explores various literary themes, especially in relation to aesthetics and the sociology of literature. In 2010, she completed her PhD on the development of the Faustian motif in European literature, which was published in book form a year later under the title From Doctor to Master.
She translates from English, German, Serbian and Croatian (she lived in Zagreb for seven years) and is an active member of the Slovenian Literary Translators’ Association. Her translations include mainly sociological, historical, philosophical and cultural studies works, and more recently also fiction (e.g. Theodor W. Adorno, Terry Eagleton, Eric Hobsbawm, Reinhard Sieder, Susan Sontag, Richard Pipes, Wolf Lepenies, David Graeber, Danilo Kiš, Svetlana Slapšak, Maša Kolanović, etc.) She was nominated for the Sovret Prize for her translation of the novel The Hourglass by Danilo Kiš in 2014. Her most recent translation is Michael Martens’ biography In the Fire of Worlds: Ivo Andrić, the Story of a European Life.
