Lucija Mandić
(ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies, Institute of World Literature SAS)

4 November 2026 (Wednesday) at 10:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

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Meeting ID: 893 2122 4888
Passcode: 413130

The lecture is presented as part of the mobility project Translating Central Europe: Milan Kundera’s Oeuvre Across Languages, Borders, and Political Contexts and the IMPULZ project Translation and Cross-Lingual Stylistic Transfer: Towards a Theory of Language Contact in Literature, both supported by the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

In 1990, Milan Kundera’s novel Nesmrtelnost was published in French as L’Immortalité, translated by a certain Eva Bloch. Kundera repeatedly referred to her as a “close friend,” yet Jan Rubeš, another Czech–French translator, said of her: “Who is this Eva Bloch? I, personally, have translated a dozen books from Czech into French and so know most, if not all, the translators working in the field, but I have never heard the name of Eva Bloch.” Searches in library databases and archival catalogues reveal that Eva Bloch appears exclusively in connection with Kundera’s work, raising legitimate doubts about her existence. Continue reading Guest lecture – Searching for Eva Bloch: Computational Approaches to Translator Attribution →

Jernej Habjan
(The Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana)

4 November 2026 (Wednesday) at 14:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

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https://us06web.zoom.us/j/86201270716?pwd=TxjPQ5h8d4PvI0yfG61wWDag2XY8K0.1
Meeting ID: 862 0127 0716
Passcode: 927868

The lecture is organized as part of the VEGA Slovak literature in inter-literary and transcultural contexts.

Ever since its first mentions, world literature has been theorised by some of the same figures that are supposed to be theorised as key representatives of world literature, including such obvious candidates as Goethe, Tagore, Gorky, Hesse, Kundera, and Pamuk. Moreover, theorists of world literature have never ceased to draw on the theoretical meditations offered by these writers, thus confirming the impossibility of metalanguage rather than the conceptual availability of world literature. It is hence apt to read theoretical pronouncements on world literature as potential examples of world literature. In this lecture, we will consider not only what theorists of world literature say, but also where and when they say it; not only the truth value of their statements, but also the genre of their utterances. Whether these come from writers or scholars, we will observe the object of their studies while being attentive to their studies as an object. Thus, the history of their mappings of the world will bleed into the history of the world itself. In turn, world literature will appear as that which literary scholars and writers debate when they wish to debate world history. World literature will appear as world-historical literature. Continue reading Guest lecture – World Literature Theory as World Literature →

Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University
Hybernská 3, Room 206, Prague 1
Wednesday, 21 October 2026, 5:30 p.m.

For more information, visit: //uclk.ff.cuni.cz/jakub-kapiciak-akvile-reklailtyte-the-rhetoric-of-sincerity-in-central-and-eastern-european-literatures-prednaska-v-ramci-komparatistickych-stred/

21 October 2026 (Wednesday) at 10:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

Guests: Zoltán Z. Varga (co-editor) and co-authors Orsolya Rákai, David Szolláth and Jessie Labov (Institute of Literary Studies, ELTE-Research Centre for the Humanities, Budapest)

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Meeting ID: 834 1984 7847
Passcode: 739578

The presentation takes place within the framework of the Bilateral mobility project SAS-HAS 2025-2026 Hungarian and Slovak Literature in the Central European Space 6. – Small Literatures in the Global Literary/Cultural Space.

Hungarian Literature as World Literature provides readers less familiar with the Hungarian national context with new access to local variations on an already familiar comparative or historical problem. Rather than reducing the project of situating Hungarian literature as world literature to a search for causal, mechanical and hierarchical types of influence exerted by world literature on Hungarian literature, or investigating the latter’s sporadic occurrences on the ‘great stage’ of literature in the major languages, the volume offers a more complex and nuanced way to reveal the multimodal relationships they form. Continue reading Presentation of the book Hungarian Literature as World Literature →

The Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore (Antakalnio g. 6, Vilnius), 2nd floor room.
Wednesday, 14 October, 16:00

This issue explores literary representations of sincerity across Central and Eastern Europe from the late 19th century to the present. The articles, dealing with Bulgarian, Czech, Lithuanian, Slovak, Polish, Romanian, and Ukrainian literatures, demonstrate how the public disclosure of private feelings functions as a powerful communicative principle. Moving beyond its common association with contemporary post-postmodern paradigms, they explore sincerity as an unstable, relational, and highly context-dependent category.

The event will also be held online via Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84675683867?pwd=vCLGlwjhtz9hPOj0xZTIrPeA0ZJ0MY.1
Meeting ID: 846 7568 3867
Passcode: 450549

For more information, visit: https://www.llla.lt/en/post/join-us-for-the-launch-of-the-latest-issue-of-world-literature-studies

Stephanie Jug
(Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia)

30 September 2026 (Wednesday) at 11:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

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Meeting ID: 845 5321 3152
Passcode: 952969

The lecture is organized as part of the APVV Memory, Space and Identity in German-Speaking /Transcultural/ Literature from Modernity to the Present.

Children’s autonomy, defiance and lack of discipline seem like contemporary problems that often afflict not only worried parents but also their immediate environment. However, writers at the end of the 19th century show examples of defiant, independent and, above all, curious children, with a touch of humor and criticism. Moreover, using the example of their little literary heroes, they also somewhat give didactic lessons about how thin the line between discipline and violence can become, and under what conditions a child can develop into a mature person. Continue reading Guest lecture – (Un)Usual Education Methods and Child Rebellion in German Literature from Slavonia →

Sonja Novak
(Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia)

30 September 2026 (Wednesday) at 10:00 CET
Institute of World Literature SAS + online

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Meeting ID: 845 5321 3152
Passcode: 952969

The lecture is organized as part of the APVV Memory, Space and Identity in German-Speaking /Transcultural/ Literature from Modernity to the Present.

Alexander Roda Roda, a Czech-born German-speaking author from Slavonia from the turn of the 19th into 20th century, often employs in his writing the practice of turning his real biographical experiences into highly stylized, satirical, and anecdotal fiction covering the broader multicultural context of the Austro-Hungariian Monarchy. By treating his life as raw material for entertainment, Roda Roda intentionally blurred the lines between individual memory (“personal story”) and the collective reality of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire (“history”). Continue reading Guest lecture – Roda Roda’s Strategies of Literarization of (Personal) History →