Deadline: December 15, 2024
We are delighted to announce a Call for Papers for an upcoming graduate student conference “Slavic and World Literatures,” hosted by the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University on March 8th, 2025.
Over the past two decades, the concept of “world literature” has been in the spotlight of scholarly attention. This influential discourse, which can be traced back to Goethe’s idea of Weltliteratur, was put forth by three groundbreaking studies that came out at the turn of the 21st century: Pascale Casanova’s La République mondiale des Lettres (1999), Franco Moretti’s pair of essays “Conjectures on World Literature” (2000) and “More Conjectures” (2004), and David Damrosch’s What Is World Literature? (2003). They each propose a distinct conceptualization and theoretical method: adopting a sociological perspective, Casanova analyzes the diffusion of literary ideas from peripheral locations to the center, which she clearly identifies with Paris; Moretti describes an opposite route of circulation: from a European core to a global periphery; and Damrosch comes up with a threefold definition of the discipline, which states that world literature is “an elliptical refraction of national literatures,” “writing that gains in translation,” and “a mode of reading” rather than a set canon of mostly Western texts (281). This approach to world literature, which pays close attention to foreign reception of works and the mobility of literary artifacts, has become a subject of lively debate in academia, stirring up reactions from scholars of national literatures, area studies, postcolonialism, and translation studies. Slavicists are often absent from these discussions or focus solely on the Soviet model of world literature, whose best expression is the activity of the Gorky Institute of World Literature. For its own part, world literature as a field of study has not tended to incorporate Slavic literatures into the discussion. With this conference, our aim is to bridge this “communication gap” and bring these conversations into the present of Slavic Studies, while also bringing Slavic literatures into focus for scholars of world literature.
Potential panel topics may include:
- World literary studies. A critical examination of the international history of Slavic Studies. “National” academic lenses and approaches to how we see and study literature, from within and outside of the national borders. ‘Major’ and ‘minor’ academias. Scholarship in translation.
- Domestication and foreignization; the history and politics of cultural and linguistic translation in the region; reception of Slavic literatures around the world, world literatures in Slavic countries.
- Linguistic aspirations toward regional cohesion or rupture. Panslavism, interslavic language, Esperanto in the region, Old Church Slavonic, politics of alphabets and scripts, minor and ultra-minor languages, non-Slavic languages in the region.
- Socialist legacies. Socialist internationalism, global socialisms and post-socialisms, cultural networks of the “Second” and “Third” World.
- Travel writing. Real and imagined travelogues (visits from abroad to the “second world” and vice versa), tourism, food cultures.
Format: This conference will be held in person on Harvard’s campus in the Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Presenters will have 15-20 minutes to share their papers, followed by commentary from the panel discussant, then open discussion. This conference is intended to provide graduate students with the opportunity to present their work, receive constructive feedback, and make connections with fellow researchers. The working language will be English.
Please submit abstracts (no more than 300 words) and a short bio (50-75 words) to slavicgradconference2025@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is December 15th, 2024. Notification of acceptance will be sent by mid-January.
We can provide limited travel grants for students whose home institution cannot cover the cost or full cost of travel. If this applies to you, please let us know when you submit your abstract and indicate the estimated cost of your travel that you request to be funded. The grant amount will be determined based on the distance/travel costs.
Any questions should be addressed to slavicgradconference2025@gmail.com.