{"id":102,"date":"2025-02-08T08:12:11","date_gmt":"2025-02-08T08:12:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/strasyn\/?page_id=102"},"modified":"2025-05-21T18:27:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T18:27:52","slug":"conference","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/grants.ulbsibiu.ro\/strasyn\/conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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\n\t\tMAY 9-10, 2025\u00a0| International conference\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\tTheorizing (Sub)peripheries: Strategies of Synchronization in Southeast European Literary and Cultural Criticism (1821\u20132025)\t<\/h2>\n\t\t\t

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Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, Romania<\/p><\/div>\n\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\n\t\tKEYNOTE SPEAKERS\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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\n\n Vladimir Biti\n \n <\/h3>\n
\n Vladimir Biti is Chair Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature at the University of\nVienna. He is the author of twelve books, with Tracing Global Democracy: Literature,\nTheory, and the Politics of Trauma, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2016 (second, paperback\nedition 2017), Attached to Dispossession: Sacrificial Narratives in Post-imperial Europe,\nLeiden and Boston: Brill, 2018, Post-imperial Literature: Translatio Imperii in Kafka and\nCoetzee, Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2021 (second, paperback edition 2024), and\nPerpetrators\u2019 Legacies: Post-imperial Condition in Sebald and McEwan, New York and\nLondon: Routledge, 2024 among the most recent. He is the editor of the volumes\nReexamining the National-Philological Legacy: Quest for a New Paradigm, Amsterdam and\nNew York: Rodopi, 2014, Claiming the Dispossession: The Politics of Hi\/storytelling in Post-\nimperial Europe, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2017, and co-editor of The Idea of Europe: The\nClash of Projections, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2021. In addition, he is co-editor of arcadia:\nJournal of Literary Culture and Honorary President of the ICLA Committee on Literary\nTheory. From 2016-2022, he has been the Chair of the Academy of Europe\u2019s Literary and\nTheatrical Section. <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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\n\n Diana Mishkova\n \n <\/h3>\n
\n A historian by training, Diana Mishkova has specialized in modern and contemporary history of\nSoutheastern Europe. Since 2000 she has been the director of the Centre for Advanced Study in Sofia.\nHer research interests include Southeast European history, intellectual history, area studies and\nhistoriography. Her latest publications include Rival Byzantiums: Empire and Identity in Southeastern\nEurope (Cambridge University Press, 2022) and Beyond Balkanism. The Scholarly Politics of Region\nMaking (Routledge, 2018). She is the editor of eight international volumes and collective monographs,\namong them Balkan Historiographical Wars (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2025), European Regions\nand Boundaries. A Conceptual History (Berghahn Books, 2017), \u2018Regimes of Historicity\u2019 in Southeastern\nand Northern Europe, 1890-1945 (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014); Entangled Histories of the Balkans. Vols. 2\nand 4 (Brill, 2014, 2017). <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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\n\t\tPANEL 1: From Formalism to (Post)structuralism\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t

Room 3, Chair: Adriana Stan<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Adriana Stan (Babes Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca [UBB]\/ULBS)<\/strong>, The Linguistic Turn and Critical Modernization in Cold War Eastern Europe<\/em><\/p>\n

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Kamelia Spassova (Sofia University \u201cSt. Kliment Ohridski\u201d\/ ULBS)<\/strong>, Intertextuality and Autotextuality: Powers of Repetition in Kristeva and Kolarov<\/em><\/p>\n

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Senida Poenariu (ULBS)<\/strong>, Methodological reconfigurations in the work of Julia Kristeva, Thomas Pavel and Tzvetan Todorov<\/em><\/p>\n

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Roxana Eichel (University of Bucharest)<\/strong>, Unfolding Continuities in Theoretical Shifts: Thomas G. Pavel\u2019s Intellectual Trajectory Across \u201cRegimes of Relevance\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n\t\tPANEL 2: World-Systems Analysis, World Literature & More (I)\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t

Room 1, Chair: Snejana Ung<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Snejana Ung (ULBS)<\/strong>, Small, Underdeveloped and Multinational Southeastern European Literatures: Svetozar Petrovi\u0107\u2019s Contributions to World Literary Debates<\/em><\/p>\n

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Bla\u017e Gselman (University of Ljubljana)<\/strong>, Is there a world-system of literary criticism?<\/em><\/p>\n

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Andrei Terian (ULBS)<\/strong>, From \u201cMinor\u201d Literatures to Subperipheries<\/em><\/p>\n

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Alex Ciorogar (UBB)<\/strong>, Hypo-Semiperiphery: Poetry as Sub-Commodity Chain and Authorship as World-Apparatus<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n\t\tPANEL 3: Critique of Speculative Science and Fiction\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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Room 1, Chair: \u0218tefan Baghiu<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Stefan Baghiu (ULBS)<\/strong>, Communist Cyberaesthetics and Literary Criticism: Beyond Structuralism, Not Quite Poststructuralism<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mihai \u021aapu (UBB)<\/strong>, (Sub)peripheral Instrumentalizations of \u201cTheory-Fiction\u201d: Comparing the Romanian and Slovenian Cases<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mihai Iov\u0103nel (G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory\/ULBS)<\/strong>, The Present Begins Tomorrow: Theories of Science Fiction Literature and Utopia by Darko Suvin, Stanis\u0142aw Lem and Cornel Robu<\/em><\/p>\n

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Mihnea B\u00e2lici (UBB)<\/strong>, Aspirational Postmodernism: The Naturalization of the Free Market Culture in Late and Post-Socialist Romania<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n\t\tPANEL 4: The Minor & Exile\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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Room 3, Chair: Ovio Olaru<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Borislava Ivanova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)<\/strong>, The Birth of the Balkan Intellectual and His Weapons in Intervening the Literary Field<\/em><\/p>\n

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Ovio Olaru (ULBS)<\/strong>, Subaltern European Modernism: The Case for a Romanian-German Minor Canon<\/em><\/p>\n

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Alin C. C\u00eertog (ULBS)<\/strong>, Matei C\u0103linescu and the Myth of the Hydra: A Paradigm of Critical Innovation that Overcoming the Southest European Periphery<\/em><\/p>\n

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Cristina Dicusar & Andreea Mironescu (Al. I. Cuza University of Ia\u0219i)<\/strong>, Post-imperial Nation Rebuilding: Strategies of Mixed Synchronization in the Republic of Moldova<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n\t\tPANEL 5: Cultural Theory (I)\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t

Room 1, Chair: Vlad Pojoga<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Noemi Stoichkova & Kristina Yordanova (Sofia University \u201cSt. Kliment Ohridski\u201d)<\/strong>, Mythmakers of the Subperiphery. The Bulgarian Revival in Toncho Zhechev and Nikolay Genchev\u2019s Work<\/em><\/p>\n

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Boyko Penchev (Sofia University \u201cSt. Kliment Ohridski\u201d\/ ULBS)<\/strong>, Naming the Nation\u2019s Beginning. The interplay between \u201cRevival\u201d and \u201cRenaissance\u201d in the Bulgarian Literary Criticism<\/em><\/p>\n

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Vlad Pojoga (ULBS)<\/strong>, The Participatory Regime of Relevance: A Framework Extension<\/em><\/p>\n

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Dimitar Kambourov (Trinity College Dublin\/Sofia University \u201cSt. Kliment Ohridski\u201d)<\/strong>, (Re)Theorizing In-Betweeness: Strategies of Seeing the Lay of the Land of Two Bulgarian Literary Theorists Starting from the 1960s<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n\t\tPANEL 6: World-Systems Analysis, World Literature & More (II)\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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Room 3, Chair: Snejana Ung [online panel]<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Marius Virgil Florea (Shanghai International Studies University)<\/strong>, Toward an Embodied Methodology: Cognitive-Philosophical Pathways for Literary Criticism<\/em><\/p>\n

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Nadezhda Stoyanova (Sofia University \u201cSt. Kliment Ohridski\u201d\/ ULBS)<\/strong>, Event and Cultural Identity. Three Cases from Bulgarian Cultural and Literary Criticism of the Early 1920s<\/em><\/p>\n

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Tijana Matijevi\u0107 (University of Belgrade)<\/strong>, Praxis literary theory: Unmapped Yugoslav Marxist criticism beyond Cold War dichotomies<\/em><\/p>\n

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Aleksandar Mijatovi\u0107 (University of Rijeka\/ULBS)<\/strong>, The Temporality of Literary (Sub)peripherality<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n\t\tPANEL 7: Cultural Theory (II)\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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Room 1, Chair: Olga Bartosiewicz-Nikolaev<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Teodora Dumitru (G. Calinescu Institute of Literary History and Theory\/ ULBS)<\/strong>, The \u201cAutonomy of the Aesthetic\u201d Theory: Philosophical and Scientistic Strands of Representing the Function of Literature in 19th and 20th Century Romanian Literary Criticism<\/em><\/p>\n

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Olga Bartosiewicz-Nikolaev (Jagiellonian University, Krakow\/ ULBS)<\/strong>, Revisiting B. Fundoianu\u2019s Literary and Cultural Criticism<\/em><\/p>\n

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Daniel Coman (ULBS)<\/strong>, Romanian Theories of Literary Character: The Narratological Perspective (1882-1997)<\/em><\/p>\n

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Aleksandra Antonova (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences)<\/strong>, Boyan Penev\u2019s Ideas on the Methods of Literary Critics<\/em><\/p>\n

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\n\t\tPANEL 8: World-Systems Analysis, World Literature & More (III)\t\t\t<\/h5>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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Room 3, Chair: Maria Chiorean<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Marko Juvan (ZRC-SAZU Ljubljana\/ ULBS)<\/strong>, Diagnosing Belatedness, Acceleration, Synchronicity in Slovenian Literature<\/em><\/p>\n

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Maria Chiorean (ULBS)<\/strong>, Subperipheral Articulations of World Literature:\u00a0<\/em> De-Westernizing a Discipline in Soviet Russia,\u00a0<\/em>Romania, and Bulgaria<\/em><\/p>\n

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Doris Mironescu (Al. I. Cuza University of Ia\u0219i\/ULBS)<\/strong>, Romancing the Periphery: Paths to cultural affiliation\u00a0<\/em>in early modern Romanian literature<\/em><\/p>\n

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While East-Central European literary criticism has attained a canonical status in modern literary studies, featuring figures such as Gy\u00f6rgy Lukacs in Hungary, Roman Ingarden in Poland, and the Czech scholars and Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9s from the Prague Linguistic Circle, Southeast European literary criticism remains relatively obscure in mainstream academic discussions. However, even if literary theory was not developed in this region with the same coherence as in East-Central Europe, Southeast Europe is arguably the cradle of a specific cultural theory of peripherality.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

To better understand both the status of the cultures in this region and the relevance of their theoretical production, we advance the concept of \u201csubperiphery,\u201d which is yet to receive its application in cultural and literary history. First, this term refers to a cultural and economic periphery that has largely failed to export or contribute the \u201craw material\u201d for theoretical advances to what are usually seen as the core Western producers of theory. Second, building on Immanuel Wallerstein\u2019s world-systems theory and informed by Galin Tihanov\u2019s conceptualization of what he calls regimes of relevance, we understand the \u201csubperiphery\u201d as characterized by a hybrid regime of relevance that diverges from those defining the literary cultures of East-Central Europe during the same period. Unlike the unambiguous transitions observed in East-Central Europe, the subperiphery remained in a hybrid \u201caestethnic\u201d state, a term we employ to explore the distinct coexistence of modern and traditional ways of theorizing in Southeast Europe that makes its literary and cultural criticism different from what one can observe in East-Central Europe. Third, the subperiphery is characterized by the \u201cmutual ignorance\u201d of \u201cminor\u201d cultures, indicating that the cultures in this region have not extensively shared ideas with each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n

Therefore, the subperiphery represents an initial stage of cultural marginality, in which distinct cultures have not yet been fully integrated into the world literary system. Our hypothesis is that this was the case of most critical cultures from the geopolitical region traditionally labeled as the \u201cBalkans\u201d (i.e., including countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, etc.) from the middle of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. These countries become actual peripheries only much later, when the import of critical theories and concepts from the West is paralleled by export towards the West, as proven by names such as Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva, Mihajlo Mihajlov, Darko Suvin, Matei C\u0103linescu, and Thomas G. Pavel. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n

However, we believe that the \u201ccultural theory\u201d produced in the Southeast European subperiphery is highly (and even more) relevant today, especially in reshaping discussions on the heterogeneity of world literature, in readdressing the status of \u201cminor\u201d or \u201cinsular\u201d knowledge production, and in discussing the phenomenon of \u201ctraveling ideas.\u201d For instance, the Romanian critic Eugen Lovinescu\u2019s concept of \u201csynchronism\u201d (sincronism, 1924) can be placed in dialogue not only with the thesis of \u201caccelerated development\u201d (uskorennoe razvitie, 1964) of Bulgarian-Belarussian-Russian scholar Georgii Gachev and with the Croatian critic Svetozar Petrovi\u0107\u2019s idea of \u201catypical development\u201d (atipi\u010dan razvoj, 1972), but also with Pascale Casanova\u2019s theory of asymmetric \u201cworld literary space\u201d and Franco Moretti\u2019s \u201claw\u201d of foreign forms adapted to local contents.<\/p>\n\n

Themes and topics:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n

We welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following areas:<\/p>\n\n