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

Invitations

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

Invitations

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 →

Monograph prize for Dobrota Pucherová

Our colleague Dr. Dobrota Pucherová, D. Phil. has been awarded a prize by the Slovak Academy of Sciences for her monograph FEMINISM AND MODERNITY IN ANGLOPHONE AFRICAN WOMEN’S WRITING: A 21ST-CENTURY GLOBAL CONTEXT (Routledge, 2022). She accepted the prize at the prize ceremony  on Sept. 18, 2023 from the hands of Prof. RNDr. Pavol Šajgalík, DrSc., President of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and Prof. RNDr. Peter Samuely, DrSc., Vice-President for sience, research and innovations. Congratulations!

CfP World Literature Studies 4/2024 Fictional realities of eternal peace

Miscellaneous

Editor: Johannes D. Kaminski (The Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy
of Sciences in Bratislava)

In the wake of Russia’s prolonged attack on Ukraine, this special issue of World Literature Studies reconsiders theoretical and literary ideas of how peace can be established in the long term. Provocatively, this also includes the question why a perennial state of peacefulness might not even be desirable.

While Eternal Peace represents an elusive but necessary goal in philosophy, speculative fiction evinces a striking ambivalence about its desirability. One the one hand, the climaxes of science-fiction narratives frequently coincide with a utopian promise. On the last page of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy (1992–1996), for example, Ann describes her new habitat in glowing terms: “Nowhere on this world were people killing each other, nowhere were they desperate for shelter or food, nowhere were they scared for their kids.” Peace has come, finally. On the other hand, the joyful prospect of Eternal Peace stands at odds with the experiences of those unlucky protagonists who indeed inhabit a society that has already been harmonized. Especially in dystopian writing, the beneficiaries of Eternal Peace are bound to suffer from oppressive laws and homogenized lifestyles. Others simply feel bored beyond belief. The Controller in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) already knows: “Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune.”

 Languages of contribution: English, German

Please send your abstracts and short bio to j.kaminski@savba.sk and a copy to usvlwlit@savba.sk by 31 October 2023. (The submission of the full articles will be February – March 2024.)

Read more HERE.

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

Invitations

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

CfP World Literature Studies 2/2024 Interdiscursive communication between literature and bioethics

Miscellaneous

Editors: Bogumiła Suwara (The Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava), Jana Tomašovičová (The Faculty of Arts, University of Ss. Cyril and Methodius in Trnava)

On the background of the concept of interdiscursive relations  and the concept of narrative bioethics, we are currently witnessing a gradual dissolution and opening of the boundaries between different scientific and artistic discourses. The topic of this monothematic issue is to explore these shifts through the example of interdisciplinary communication between literature and bioethics. The relationship between literature and bioethics has largely been reflected from the point of the traditional biomedical relationship between doctor and patient. In the present day, however, bioethics is an interdisciplinary field that actively engages with the studies of culture, art, and the humanities, but also with the natural sciences and biomedicine. In contrast to the common ethical issues in medicine, modern biomedical technologies reveal entirely new topics to literature, such as preimplantation genetic diagnostics, regenerative medicine, gene editing, or human enhancement, which are becoming increasingly recurring motifs in contemporary literature, film, and visual arts. They are also examples of the mutual opening of discourses and the emergence of a new interdisciplinary area, which includes narrative bioethics. The moral dilemmas emerging in the context of accelerated technological development affect not only the individual but also the society. These dilemmas need to be captured in their complexity, and that is why the approach of extending purely rational ethical discourse and logical argumentation to include humanistic perspectives and narrative aspects is proving to be particularly fruitful.

Please email your abstracts (maximum 3,600 characters) to the volume editors at bsuwara@gmail.com, jana.tomasovicova@ucm.sk and a copy to usvlwlit@savba.sk
by 8 October 2023.

Read more HERE.

Róbert Gáfrik´s guest lecture at the first world literature centre in India

News

Our colleague, the comparatist Róbert Gáfrik, visited the Centre for the Study of World Literature at the International Institute of Information Technology Bhubaneswar in the Indian state of Urisa  in August 2023. This is the first centre dedicated to world literature in India, it was founded by Dr. Lipika Das in 2022. Róbert Gafrik is a member of its advisory board. On August 23, he delivered a guest lecture titled “The Concept and Objectives of World Literature”. The lecture organized in collaboration between IIIT Bhubaneswar and the Centre for Asian Studies was introduced by Professor Jatindra Kumar Nayak.

 

The local newspaper, The Political and Business Daily, reported on this comparative event. Read here: http://pbdodisha.in/Bhubaneswar-25th-August-Friday-2023.

A new publication on translation studies in Ukraine in the European context

New Books

The violence and inhumanity of Russia’s war in Ukraine, with hospitals under fire, innocent civilians mercilessly killed, and a possible threat of nuclear war, put a definitive end to the false feeling of security enjoyed by Europe since the Yugoslav wars. A war of such scale, taking place in the twenty-first century and on the European continent, cannot be perceived as anything other than a direct assault on core values of democracy, freedom, and human rights. Thus, maintaining a friendly dialog with people around the world is now more important than ever to prevent further tragedies. Translation in all its forms is the key practice that can facilitate mutual understanding, which is vital if we are to hand down the planet to further generations in a habitable state.

The collection of studies entitled Translation Studies in Ukraine as an Integral Part of the European Context contains fifteen studies in English and German and is divided into five thematic parts: Thoughts and Reflections; On Historical Justice in Translation Studies; On Methodological Aspects of Translation; On Linguistic Aspects of Translation; On Trauma and Manipulation. The sections open with papers by leading academics in the field of translation studies. This volume is a collection of papers from the eponymous conference held in Bratislava on May 12–13, 2022. It was attended by scholars with immediate ties with Ukraine, and numerous representatives from all major translation schools in Ukraine and also translation studies experts from all around the world.

We found it our duty to help disseminate the knowledge about translation research in Ukraine and, by doing so, reinforce our deepest conviction that Ukraine shares European values and is – and has always been – an integral part of Europe.

The publication was produced within the project VEGA 2/0166/19 Preklad ako súčasť dejín
kultúrneho procesu III. Preklad a prekladanie – texty, osobnosti, inštitúcie v interdiscipli-
nárnych a transdisciplinárnych vzťahoch/Translation as part of the cultural process history III. Translation and translating – texts, personalities, institutions in inter- and transdisciplinary relations.

Full text is HERE.

World Literature Studies 2/2023: The Many Faces of Resilience and Healing in Contemporary Narratives

Miscellaneous

ed. by Ana María Fraile-Marcos, Universidad de Salamanca

Resilience, the capacity to adapt to adversity and rebound, has become a ubiquitous and contested concept, yet approaches to it from the field of literary criticism are still scarce. This issue contributes to filling in this gap by probing current narratives, from which resilience emerges as a central multifaceted paradigm allowing to apprehend contemporary reality and subjectivity. The ten articles gathered here interrogate the global currency of notions of resilience, while mapping an aesthetics of critical resilience that opens new paths to knowledge, hope, and positive agency.

BELÉN MARTÍN-LUCAS
Resilience and healing in the slums of Manila: Merlinda Bobis’s The Solemn
Lantern Maker
MARISOL MORALES-LADRÓN
Embodying the mother, disembodying the icon: Female resistance
in Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary
MIRIAM BORHAM-PUYAL
Nurses, mothers, sisters: Relational resilience and healing vulnerability
in Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder and The Pull of the Stars
LUCÍA LÓPEZ-SERRANO
Subverting resilience in the psychiatric ward: Finding the good death
in Miriam Toews’s All My Puny Sorrows
PETER ARNDS
From defeat to resilience: The human cockroach in world literature after Kafka
SARA CASCO-SOLÍS
Socio-ecological resilience in Sharon Bala’s The Boat People
VICENT CUCARELLA-RAMON
Resilience and ethics of care against racial capitalism in David Chariandy’s Brother
MARTINA HORÁKOVÁ
Words that matter: Yindyamarra, Wiradjuri resilience and the settler-colonial
project in Tara June Winch’s The Yield
SILVIA MARTÍNEZ-FALQUINA
Violence, relation and beauty in Toni Jensen’s “Women in the Fracklands”
KENDRA REYNOLDS
Re-examining the “Hero’s Journey”: A critical reflection on literature selection
for affective bibliotherapy programs on resilience
CHARLES SABATOS
Robert B. Pynsent’s contributions to the study of Slovak literature

The full content of the issue with links to the individual texts can be found HERE.