Editors: Zuzana Malinovská (Comenius University, Bratislava), Ján Jambor (Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences)

This issue of World Literature Studies follows upon the thematic issue Autobiography– autofiction – fiction and contemporary (novelistic) discourse (2/2011) edited by Katarína Bednárová. Our aim is to offer a representative variety of the above-mentioned literary phenomenon with an emphasis on a diversity of expressions, strategies and techniques of autobiographical writing and autofiction published after 2000. We propose that in the new millennium there has been an increase in the significance of individual (literary) self-expression as a result of various political, social, economic, environmental, cultural and media developments. In addition to case studies and comparative analyses of relevant texts (of various linguistic and cultural provenance) we are particularly interested in new tendencies in autobiographical writing and autofiction, such as meta-autobiograhy or interdiscursivity. We also welcome contributions reviewing the productivity of various typologies (e.g., Colonna’s four types of autofiction) and new theoretical approaches to contemporary autobiographical writing and autofiction, as well as studies on the paradoxes of the writing subject in the process of self-representation and on the issues of style and modes of expression, i.e., autobiographical writing and autofiction as a “linguistic adventure” (Philippe Gasparini: Autofiction : une aventure du langage, 2008).

Please send abstracts (max. 1800 characters with spaces) by 31. 1. 2023 to usvlwlit@savba.sk, jan.jambor@savba.sk, zuzana.malinovska@fedu.uniba.sk

Read more HERE

The Many Faces of Resilience and Healing in Contemporary Narratives

Editor: Prof. Ana MŞ Fraile Marcos, Universidad de Salamanca

Keywords: resilience, healing, vulnerability, ethics of care, narrative therapy.

Resilience has become a ubiquitous and contested concept. As a “pervasive idiom of global governance” (Walker and Cooper 144), it has become part of political speechesand everyday conversations, especially as in the midst of the pandemic citizens all around the world were asked to build resilience. This overuse calls for a reassessment of its validity and accuracy as a working concept, as well as a deeper study on the nuanced implications it holds, especially in regard to related notions such as vulnerability, precarity or the ethics of care. Moreover, as Fraile-Marcos has evinced, “the alignment of the discourse of resilience and neoliberal ideology” demands a critical approach (4-6).

More information HERE.

Editors: Roman Mikuláš – Ján Jambor (Institute of World Literature SAS)

The main focus of this thematic issue is to consider theoretical and methodological questions that are still open and to specify the perspectives that can be derived from them, all of which should in the end enable us to grasp the broad and dynamic spectrum of interrelationships between literature and knowledge in a new, different, or at least clearer way.

Please send abstracts for articles in Slovak, German or English to: usvlwlit@savba.sk; roman.mikulas@savba.sk and jan.jambor@savba.sk by January 31, 2022.

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(Foto: Pixabay)

The international conference Translation, Interpreting and Culture 2: Rehumanising Translation and Interpreting Studies will take place in Banská Bystrica (in-person and on-line) on 22-24 September 2021. On the occasion of this major scholarly event, we would like to draw your attention to seven thematic issues of our journal World Literature Studies in the field of translation studies, available online.

• World Literature Studies 1/2020

Komunikácia, konformnosť a vzdor v medzikontextových kontaktoch / Communication, Compliance and Resistance in Inter-Contextual Encounters IVANA HOSTOVÁ – MÁRIA KUSÁ (eds.)

• World Literature Studies 1/2019

Preklad a kánon / Translation and Canon MÁRIA KUSÁ (ed.)

• World Literature Studies 2/2017

Popovičovo a Holmesovo dedičstvo v súčasnosti / Legacy of Popovič and Holmes beyond their century EMÍLIA PEREZ – MARTIN DJOVČOŠ – MÁRIA KUSÁ (eds.)

• World Literature Studies 1/2016

Slovenská translatológia na priesečníku kultúrnych trajektórií súčasnosti a budúcnosti / Slovak translation studies at the intersection on the cultural trajectories of the present and future MÁRIA KUSÁ – LIBUŠA VAJDOVÁ (eds.)

• World Literature Studies 4/2013

• World Literature Studies 4/2011

• World Literature Studies 3/2009

Editors: Róbert Gáfrik (Institute of World Literature SAS, Bratislava) and Miloš Zelenka (University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice and University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra)

The concept of world literature has recently become subject of intense discussion. Although it is referred to by various other terms such as “literature of the world”, “worldliness of literature”, “the world literary system”, “the world republic of letters”, etc., the methodological frameworks for discussing the concept of world literature were most clearly set by Pascale Casanova, Franco Moretti and David Damrosch, who understand it as a system into which texts enter through the so-called “large” literature, most often written in English. The historical experience of the so-called “small” literatures (e.g. Central and Eastern European ones) points to the fact that methodological discourse cannot be limited to a single approach, but rather in theoretical practice it takes place in different languages and among different power relations. Theorists from these (small) countries question the idea of such a “network” or standardized canon, which would mean accepting inequality as a certain epistemological framework and a way of presentation codifying the binary oppositions of “development” vs. “underdevelopment” or “center” vs. “periphery”. On the other hand, it is not possible to ignore the real power of this hegemony, which presents itself as universal.

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Online Guest Lecture
Wednesday, 23th June 2021, 14:00

In the game Chinese whispers, all the excitement lies in the emergence of new meaning, as a phrase is passed around and abandons its original wording. When it comes to transcultural migration of texts, however, distortion of meaning is met with a less welcoming response. Here, different interpretations are often dismissed as misunderstandings.
The case of Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther serves to illustrate the dilemma of a text that moved far beyond its ‘intended audience’. After the novel’s enthusiastic reception in France, England and Italy in the 19th century, it also triggered waves of translations and adaptations in China and Japan in the early 20th century. Inevitably, Weite (Chinese for Werther) and Ueruteru (Japanese) depart significantly from the Werther portrayed in established critical discussions. Is is possible to engage these revenants in a dialogue?
Join the Zoom meeting: https://zoom.us/j/99534164952?pwd=WTZLSm1sRWxuaTVKRnFVT2ZFeitIdz09

Johannes D. Kaminski studied German and Chinese at the University of Vienna. Continue reading Johannes D. Kaminski: The Global Sorrows of Werther: A Modular Approach to Cross-Cultural Transfer →

Editors: Mária Bátorová, Róbert Gáfrik

Comparative literature has been associated with national and transnational frameworks since its inception, and this relationship in literature and in the formation of identities is one of the key aspects of the present. It is a relationship formed in multidimensional socio-political and broader cultural processes, and the ideas about them change as the discipline itself changes. The articles in this thematic block show the current concept of the transnational in various aspects that go beyond thinking about literature in a national context.

Read more HERE.

World Literature Studies 2/2019

Editors:

Anton Pokrivčák (anton.pokrivcak@truni.sk), University of Trnava

Miloš Zelenka (zelenka.milos@centrum.cz), University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice – Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra

The research into interliterary relations in Central and Eastern Europe has mostly been focused on the neighbouring countries. Scholarly attention has also been paid to the image of the neighbouring countries, or of significant national minorities. However, in current global world the contacts with remote cultures are becoming more frequent in this region as well, and, therefore, they will be explored in the proposed issue of the Journal in more detail. The criticism of Orientalism and postcolonial studies have brought new views on the depiction of the colonialised cultures of Asia, Africa and Latin America. The aim of the proposed issue will thus be to discuss

Continue reading Call for Papers: Images of Remote Countries in the Literatures of Central and Eastern Europe →

Cultural icons arise from symbolic practices and refer to widely circulating literary products or particularly visible artefacts of “high art” and popular culture. Iconicity possesses strong emotive potential as it relates to particular places, figures, actors, and the narratives consolidated within them. This issue traces the emergence, perpetuation, transposition, and mobility of cultural icons within the East-Central European artistic – and especially literary – field in an interdisciplinary frame of references and in an extended time period, spanning a mythical folkloric past to modernity and the most contemporary era.