 |
 |
Mapping Experience: on transformation, gender, and generation in Russian and Polish women's writing Date: 15-16 March 2008 Place: University of Tampere, School of Modern Languages and Translation Studies Organizers: The project of “Russian and Polish women's writing in transformation: generation, national identity and the body” and the Department of Russian Language and Culture. We welcome all scholars interested in Eastern European literature and gender studies to a two-day seminar on women's experience and literature. The seminar will concentrate on the themes of transformation, generational change, and gender in Polish and Russian literature. Although the main forum is the Polish and Russian cases, abstract from scholars of women’s writing in all Slavonic area are welcome. Discovering and investigating women's literary history in different national literatures has been the most significant project in feminist literary research during the latter half of the 20th century. This is the case particularly in the study of postsocialist societies and cultures. Women's studies and gender studies in the former socialist states of Eastern and Central Europe have opened up a whole new area of research: women's history, literature, and culture, have been freshly and vividly examined since the collapse of the socialist regime. After years of groundbreaking research on women's literature of different nationalities, it is time to take stock of this theoretical effort, and assess its relative merits in comparative perspective. The seminar is keen to discover among other matters, what kind of theoretical challenges does the phenomenon of Eastern women's writing pose? Is Eastern European women’s writing essentially different from women’s writing in Western Europe? How does the experience of eastern European women differ from that reflected in women’s writing in Western Europe? Is that kind of distinction useful? Have gender issues changed our perspective on literature in post-socialist literature? We also strive to look into the presentations of experience of cultural breaking points, moments of social, political, economic transformation and war. Depictions of individual transformations, changes in body, transformation of family relations, and transformation of the generations will also be concerns of the seminar. This two-day seminar is jointly organized by the project “Russian and Polish women's writing in transformation: generation, national identity and the body” led by Marja Rytkönen, Urszula Chowaniec, and Kirsi Räisälä, and the Department of Russian Language and Culture at University of Tampere. The seminar will be organized in small exclusive discussion group (no more than 20 persons). Sessions will be devoted to particular themes (to be finalized when the abstracts are in). All the participants will be asked to send the papers (5000 words max) in advance so let other participants a chance to read them. The presentation time on the day will be limited to 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes of discussion), so presenters have a choice of presenting a short version of their articles or summarize their papers. The stress is put on discussion of the articles. Themes may include: · Experience in modernist/postmodernist discourse and its applicability in postsoviet countries. · Experience of the body and writing the body. · Traumatic experiences (experience of war) in writing. · The experience of political, economic, and social transformations in women's writing. · The question of experience and generic transformations. · The history of women's writing and the question of generational experience in women's writing. · The experience of religion depicted in literary works. · The experience of the East and West and their literary representations. Other themes will be considered. All disciplines within the field of literary studies are welcome. Deadline for abstracts: November 30, 2007. Abstracts (500 words) should be submitted electronically to [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] Please specify three keywords for your abstract. The final programme will be announced no later than January 10, 2008. All invited participants will be requested to send their papers (5000 words max) to the organizers by February 25, so all participants will have a chance to read the papers in advance. We look forward to reading your abstract Marja Rytkönen Kirsi Räisälä Urszula Chowaniec University of Tampere e-mail: [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask], [log in to unmask]