Call for Papers: "Vladimir Sorokin's Languages: Mediality, Interculturality,
Translation"

Aarhus University, Denmark, 29 March - 1 April 2012
Conference organisers: Tine Roesen (U of Aarhus, Denmark), Dirk Uffelmann (U
of Passau,
Germany)
Special guest: the author himself
Keynote speaker: Mark Lipovetsky (U of Colorado, Boulder, USA)
Conference language: English

Since coming to the attention of a broader Russian public in the wake of the
scandal whipped up around "Goluboe salo" [The Blue Lard] in 2002, Vladimir
Sorokin (born 1955) has become indisputably one of the most prominent and
prolific writers in contemporary Russia. Whereas Sorokin's works are widely
discussed in Russia and in the German-speaking countries (the first and
hitherto only Sorokin conference took place in Mannheim in 1997),
there is still scant research devoted to his oeuvre in the Anglo-American
world. Since the translation of "Ochered'" [The Queue] in 1986, it has taken
a quarter of a century for further books by Sorokin to be translated into
English ("Den' oprichnika" [Day of the Oprichnik] and the "Led" [Ice]
trilogy, 2011).

Taking translation as an anchoring point, this conference is devoted to the
multifaceted dimensions of language(s) in Sorokin's works, including
archaisms and neologisms, German and Chinese terms or intercultural
stereotypes. Even more important, the discussions will focus on the
(meta)linguistic constituents of Sorokin's poetics: the author as a medium
for other discourses, the plurality of conceptualised literary styles, the
metadiscursive distance
and the materialisation of metaphors from colloquial and vulgar language.

After a keynote lecture, to be delivered by Mark Lipovetsky (confirmed) on
the evening of Thursday 29 March, the subsequent one-and-a-half days will
consist of academic papers in English by international scholars (20 min + 10
min discussion for each paper). Vladimir Sorokin himself will join in on
Saturday afternoon (31 March, confirmed) to meet his translators, who will
engage in a discussion about the challenge of translating his works into
other linguistic and cultural contexts. The conference will end with Sorokin
reading from "Metel'" [The Snowstorm] (2010) and the book launch of this
novel's Danish translation by the Copenhagen-based publisher Vandkunsten.
We encourage paper proposals addressing issues of language or metalanguage
in Sorokin's works, in their poetics and their reception.

Proposals shall consist of an abstract of 300-500 words and a short CV,
including a list of those of the submitter's previous publications that are
relevant to the conference topic. They should be sent to
[log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] by 1 June 2011. The
conference organisers will provide participants with accommodation in Aarhus
from 29 March to 1 April 2012. Some funding for reimbursement of travel
expenses, especially for
scholars from Eastern Europe and further overseas, will be available. The
reimbursement will be negotiated on an individual basis.

We plan to publish the papers presented at the conference in a conference
volume. 

A note on travel: Aarhus is situated in the East Jutland region of Denmark.
Aarhus Airport, Tirstrup, has a direct service (appr. 30 minutes) from
Copenhagen, but also direct connections from London, Oslo, Stockholm and
Gothenburg. Copenhagen Airport is served by several international airlines,
with direct flights from cities such as New York, Chicago, Washington,
Moscow and St. Petersburg and from most hubs in Western Europe. From
Copenhagen the flight to Aarhus is appr. 30 minutes, while trains take 3-4
hours.