Category Archives: Invitations

Humanities in Translations – Translation in Humanities. Exploring transfer and reception / Sciences humaines en traduction – traduction des sciences humaines. Questions de transfert et de réception

The Institute of World Literature of the Slovak Academy of Sciences is organizing in
cooperation with the Faculty of Arts of Comenius University Bratislava the International Colloquium Humanities in Translations – Translation in Humanities. Exploring transfer and reception on 15 and 16 May 2025. The colloquium is part of the APVV research project Translation and aspects of reception of social science and humanities texts as cultural and literary transfer in the 20th century. Colloquium languages: French, English.

Call for Papers / Appel à communication

Application Form / Formulaire d’inscription

Guest lecture: The Body Aesthetics in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons: From the Unity of Form and Spirit to the Humanization of Literary Theory

Shunqing Cao & Liu Shishi
(Sichuan University, China)

11 September 2024 (Wednesday) at 10:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS

This talk aims to explore how the body concept in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons (hereafter Wen Xin Diao Long) represents a unique perspective in Chinese literary theory, linking literary works with human physiological structures such as form, spirit, blood, qi, and organs, forming a “heterogeneous isomorphism” in poetics. According to Liu Xie, literary works possess a unique “form” and “spirit”, akin to the human body. This viewpoint is deeply influenced by traditional Chinese “philosophy of experience”, where the style and substance of poetry correspond to the physical features of the human body. Through this analogy, literary creation is not only a mental activity but also an extension of bodily behavior, achieving a fusion of emotion and style, which resonates with the idea that the body is a unity of flesh and spirit. This lecture points out that the body concept plays a central role in ancient Chinese literary criticism, Continue reading Guest lecture: The Body Aesthetics in The Literary Mind and the Carving of Dragons: From the Unity of Form and Spirit to the Humanization of Literary Theory

Guest lecture: Utopia in Central Europe

Zsolt Cziganyik
(English Department at ELTE, Budapest)

24 April 2024 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

 

 

Join Zoom Meeting:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86128836042?pwd=VIV0kHA5jyrW9I9BMSD6IU35nS40w9.1
Meeting ID: 861 2883 6042
Passcode: 305063

Utopia is situated in no-man’s land between literature, social philosophy and the social sciences, where literary and socio-political factors interact. Historian Péter Hanák has argued that Central Europe is a region where reality and utopia have always mingled. In my presentation I would like to reflect on both concepts: how utopian literary works reflect the social and political reality, and how this genre that stemmed from Western Europe was received and developed in our region. I intend to outline briefly Continue reading Guest lecture: Utopia in Central Europe

Guest lecture: Language Contact, Translation and Translingual Reading

Julie Hansen
(Uppsala Universitet, Uppsala)

21 February 2024 (Wednesday) at 10:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

Co-hosted with the East Centre at the University of East Anglia

 

 

 

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/88160376952?pwd=bfArZjYZyLNaoQB5fDEaeeIEzRLRUf.1
Meeting ID: 881 6037 6952
Passcode: 360609

In this book launch seminar, Julie Hansen will present her new monograph Reading Novels Translingually: Twenty-First-Century Case Studies (Academic Studies Press, 2024); soon available in full open access here: https://www.academicstudiespress.com/9781644698778/reading-novels-translingually/

This book analyzes how literary fiction depicts multilingual worlds by incorporating multiple languages into the text. Taking as case studies several contemporary novels as well as Leo Tolstoy’s nineteenth-century classic War and Peace, it explores how reading can become a translingual process. The seminar will focus specifically on the nexus of literary multilingualism, translation and the reading process, exemplified with some of the case studies analyzed in the book.

Julie Hansen is Associate Professor of Slavic Languages at Uppsala University (https://www.katalog.uu.se/profile/?id=N10-225) and a specialist in comparative literature and Slavic literature. She received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and has edited special issues and written numerous articles on literary multilingualism and translation.

BCLT Book Launch

Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages

Monday 11 December 2023
4 – 6pm (GMT)
Online 
(Hybrid) and UEA Campus: JSC 1.03

Register to watch the event ONLINE

In this hybrid (in-person / online) book launch seminar, co-authors Matthew Reynolds (St Anne’s, Oxford), Eugenia Kelbert (UEA), Jernej Habjan (Ljubljana) and Kayvan Tahmasebian (SOAS, London) will be discussing Prismatic Jane Eyre, which is available as an open access download from Open Book Publishers.

Hear about the interesting book and meet one of its co-authors, our new colleague Eugenia Kelbert Rudan. She joined our institute on November 1, 2023, to work on the project TRANSLATION AND CROSS-LINGUAL STYLISTIC TRANSFER: TOWARDS A THEORY OF LANGUAGE CONTACT IN LITERATURE (funded by the grant scheme IMPULZ of SAS).

The event is co-hosted by BCLT, UEA East Centre, Institute of World Literature (Slovak Academy of Sciences) and Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation.

Jane Eyre, written by Charlotte Brontë and first published in 1847, has been translated more than six hundred times into over sixty languages. Prismatic Jane Eyre argues that we should see these many re-writings, not as simple replications of the novel, but as a release of its multiple interpretative possibilities: in other words, as a prism.

Prismatic Jane Eyre develops the theoretical ramifications of this idea, and reads Brontë’s novel in the light of them: together, the English text and the many translations form one vast entity, a multilingual world-work, spanning many times and places, from Cuba in 1850 to 21st-century China; from Calcutta to Bologna, Argentina to Iran. Co-written by many scholars, Prismatic Jane Eyre traces the receptions of the novel across cultures Continue reading

Guest Lecture: Ukrainian Culture after the Revolution of Dignity: Changes and Challenges

Dr. Dr. Olha Voznyuk
(International Research Center for Cultural Studies University of Art and Design Linz, Vienna)

15 November 2023 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

 

 

 

 

Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82090121934?pwd=GBIG7nyn6x1N0pCMmIZiNxSoGJJsDx.1
Meeting ID: 820 9012 1934
Passcode: 055833

The Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine in 2014 has changed the direction of contemporary Ukrainian literature and culture. Modern Ukrainian literature has registered recent historical events in numerous works, which have changed the way of development of Ukrainian culture and Ukrainian identity as well. Some oeuvres of Ukrainian writers seek to recover Ukrainian historical narratives “lost” during the Soviet era and which in turn have influenced the Ukrainian film industry.
Continue reading Guest Lecture: Ukrainian Culture after the Revolution of Dignity: Changes and Challenges

Guest Lecture: No higher purpose: Ursula Le Guin’s existentialist anarchism

Professor Alexis Shotwell
(Carleton University, Canada)

11 October 2023 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

It is a standard existentialist trope that humans come into the world without a pre-given purpose for existence. On this view, there is nothing in particular that we are made for, and we must make for ourselves any meaning or direction. Often this sense of being condemned to our freedom is experienced and discussed at the individual scale. This is odd, since from the beginning of the tradition philosophers have theorized the relationship between individual freedom and the collective context in which we exercise it.
The urgency of thinking beyond the individual becomes clearer when we confront existentially demanding problems such as climate change, migrant crises, global pandemics, wars, or famines. Professor Shotwell will argue that anarchism helps us in thinking about the necessarily collective aspect of addressing wicked problems like these. She will take Ursula Le Guin’s science fiction as a key theoretical resource for an existentialist anarchism and reflect on the following questions: What are the implications of reading fiction as philosophy? How is Le Guin’s conception of shared social responsibility helpful for projects of ongoing life on earth?

Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82936174665?pwd=4nDUtFC35XQ9tQtUrf9Ir1H2Zj5ImJ.1
Meeting ID: 829 3617 4665
Passcode: 272992

Alexis Shotwell’s work focuses on complexity, complicity, and collective transformation. She is a professor at Carleton University, the co-investigator for the AIDS Activist History Project (aidsactivisthistory.ca), and the author of Knowing Otherwise: Race, Gender, and Implicit Understanding and Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times.

Elaheh Karimi Riabi – Literary studies in Iran: history, concepts and institutions

Guest lecture: Dr. Elaheh Karimi Riabi (Asst. Prof. at the University of Tehran, NSP scholarship holder at Slovak Academy of Science)

4 October 2023 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

Literary studies in Iran have a rich and diverse history that spans a millennium, reflecting the country’s cultural heritage, linguistic complexity, and significant contributions to literature. Literature in Iran encompasses a vast and diverse range of literary works from ancient epics to modern novels. Classical Persian literature flourished during the Islamic Golden Age, particularly during the Abbasid Caliphate. Prominent figures like Rumi, Omar Khayyam, and Hafez contributed significantly to Persian literature during this period. Persian literature also absorbed influences from other cultures, including Arabic, Turkish, and Indian, which enriched its literary heritage. Iranian literature continues to thrive and evolve, making an impact on the global literary scene. It often reflects the complexities of modern life and addresses identity and socio-political issues. Continue reading Elaheh Karimi Riabi – Literary studies in Iran: history, concepts and institutions

The image of Persian women in Russian travelogues in the 19th century

Dr. Elaheh Karimi Riabi
(Asst. Prof. in University of Tehran, NSP scholarship holder in Slovak Academy of Science)

13 September 2023 (Wednesday) at 10:00 CET
Institut of World Literature SAS + online

Travelogues are significant sources of knowledge about the culture, rituals, customs, geography, and climate of nations. Although travelogues contain valuable information about nations, countries, and civilizations, they are at times affected by the hegemon’s viewpoints about the status of the concerned society, turning them into strategic tools for the purposeful study of that society. Although the 19th century is marked by the rivalry of Western powers over winning the Persian kings and usurpation of their natural resources, Persia has never been formally colonized. The fact has led to the Western indirect intervention in the country in the disguise of visitors, merchants, orientalists, and spies, giving way to a plethora of travelogues we have today on Persia. The postcolonial literature with its significant figures including Edward Said indicates that texts are not void of meaning. As such, travelogues carry a general message about the colonies that label them with backward, primitive, feudal, and pre-industrial badges. In these texts, the colonized is characterized by passivity rather than agency. Here, the East is framed within a Western perspective and the resulting generalization leaves the colonized bereft of human dignity. The present research is an analysis of Persian women’s images in literary texts (travelogues) of the 19th century with an imagological approach. As a postcolonial investigation, it is the first of its kind to deal with women’s images in Persia. The purpose of the case study of the travelogues by Stanislav Yulyevic Lomnitskii (1854 – 1916) and Egor Ivanovich Cherikov (1804 – 1862) is to shed a critical light on his postcolonial discourse that presents Persia and the Persians as the “other” to the Russian “self”.

Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83093995890?pwd=S040elpKTit6OStzdmJxNEZQZytodz09
Meeting ID: 830 9399 5890
Passcode: 322674

Guest Lecture: Peripherocentrism – Geopolitics of Comparative Literatures between Ethnocentrism and Cosmopolitanism

Prof. Dr. Marko Juvan
(Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana)

26 April 2023 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS (conference room + online)

Organisers:
Institute of World Literature SAS in cooperation with Czech and Slovak Association of Comparative Literature 

Regardless of its actual position in the world-system, each national literary ecology typically perceives its position as the cognitive center. In this respect, peripheral literatures fall into what might be called “peripherocentrism.” As a narrative discourse that shapes collective memory, national literary history is essentially ethnocentric, but it is, especially in so-called small literatures, a gesture of worlding, that is, of imagined self-location in the literary world-system. Comparative literature emerged at a time when ethnocentric literary histories dominated both global centers and peripheries. In its early and classical phase, comparative literature aimed to overcome national parochialism. Nevertheless, recent research has exposed the Eurocentric and ethnocentric orientation of cosmopolitan concepts, including Goethe’s idea of world literature. The literary world-system channels interliterary exchange in ways that correspond to the economic inequality between centers and perihepries. In addition to writers, literary historians themselves depend on the global status of their language and literature. Consequently, comparatists tend to incorporate their cosmopolitan perspectives and methods into ethnocentric, even nationalist agendas: they world their home literature through cross-national comparisons and argue for their geopolitical prestige. The comparatists of the core countries  consolidate the world-systemic dominance of their literatures, while the comparatists of the periphery attempt to place the internationally lesser-known literary production of their homelands – which they nonetheless consider central in their peripherocentrism – in the virtuality of world literature.

Marko Juvan is  a member of Academia Europaea, a senior researcher at the ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies, a professor of literary theory and Slovenian literature at the University of Ljubljana, and a member of the ICLA Executive Committee. His recent publications on genre theory, intertextuality, literary geography, Slovenian Romanticism, and world literature include History and Poetics of Intertextuality (Purdue University Press, 2008), Literary Studies in Reconstruction (Peter Lang, 2011), Prostori slovenske književnosti (ed., Založba ZRC, 2016), Hibridni žanri (LUD Literatura, 2017; Serbian translation 2019), Worlding a Peripheral Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), Med majem ’68 in novembrom ’89: Transformacije sveta, literature in teorije (ed., Založba ZRC, 2021).

Link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82801435424?pwd=MThxbkRDc1pWUFM3ZHB3YzJHR294dz09
Meeting ID: 828 0143 5424
Passcode: 483164