29 January 2020

This year’s Ravenstein on War, Literature and Law took place in Leiden from 22 to 24 January. We would like to thank the organizing team (Frans-Willem Korsten, Ted Laros, Mariëlle Matthee and Yasco Horsman) for the amazing work, the keynote speakers (Richard Weisberg, Carrol Clarkson and Gisèle Sapiro) for their exciting lectures, and all participants for their great input throughout the three days of the winter school!

More soon,

The OSL Team

Dates: 12-13 December 2019
Venue: Amsterdam, Roeterseiland REC A 1.02 (12 December); Amsterdam, NIAS Seminar Room, Korte Spinhuissteeg 3 (13 December)
Open to: PhD Candidates and RMa Students, OSL members will have first access
Credits: 1-2 EC (depending on attending 1 or 2 days)
Organizers: Dr Nilgun Bayraktar (California College of the Arts; NIAS) and Dr Alberto Godioli (University of Groningen)
Registration
Please specify which day(s) you want to attend when you register (see below).

NOTE: The conference is fully booked, however we still have places available on the first day (12 December). Please send an e-mail to osl@rug.nl if you want to attend the first day. Don’t forget to mention your name, university and national research school.

If you want to be on the waiting list for both days, please send an e-mail to osl@rug.nl. Don’t forget to mention your name, university and national research school.

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The notion of defamiliarization is strikingly undertheorized; when it comes to systematic definitions of this concept, not much progress has been made since Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky’s work on ostranenie in literature in the early 20th century, or German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s theorization of Verfremdungseffekt in the 1930s to describe theatrical devices that break audiences’ passive absorption in theatrical illusion.

Defamiliarizing practices today play a key role in contemporary artworks engaging with highly topical issues, such as migration, climate change or the rise of right-wing populist discourses. Whether we are dealing with retro-futuristic dystopias, films breaking the fourth wall, or darkly humorous cartoons, defamiliarization can be an effective tool for political activation – one based on formal innovation, rather than on content or on superficial emotional engagement.

But how exactly can we distinguish between different forms of defamiliarization? How can we investigate its effects on the reader/viewer? How does defamiliarization relate to neighboring notions such as the weird, the eerie, or the uncanny? During this two-day conference, a team of scholars working on defamiliarization across media will tackle these questions. The conference will also feature a panel with artists whose work addresses these issues.

Confirmed keynote speakers: Prof. Caroline Levine (Cornell University; Skype lecture and discussion) and Prof. Dr. Sandra Ponzanesi (Utrecht University).

Confirmed speakers: Dr Nilgun Bayraktar (California College of the Arts / NIAS); Prof. Dr. Maria Boletsi (UvA / Leiden); Prof. Dr. Esther Pereen, Lora Sariaslan (UvA); Dr Alberto Godioli, Dr Christian Kirchmeier, Dr Florian Lippert, Prof. Dr. Annie van den Oever, Prof. Dr. Pablo Valdivia, Ruby de Vos (RUG); alaa minawi, Jo-Lene Ong.

FULL PROGRAMME AND BIOS AVAILABLE HERE

Credits: 

• 1 EC can be obtained by attending 1 day of the conference and writing a critical review of one chosen session (750 words, +/- 10%, not counting bibliography). 2 EC can be obtained by attending both days, and writing a critical review about two sessions (one per day; 750 words per session, +/- 10%).
• Critical reviews should directly engage with the talks given in the selected session(s), and include references to at least two relevant academic sources. They should be submitted via email to osl@rug.nl by Monday 13 January 2020, 23:59.
• If you wish to find out more about the concept of defamiliarization before the conference, you can start with Viktor Shklovsky’s ‘Art as Technique‘ (1917) and with the volume Ostrannenie. On “Strangeness” and the Moving Image, ed. by Annie van den Oever (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2010). More reading suggestions for your critical reviews will come from the speakers’ presentations.

Centre for Advanced Studies (CIEDUS), Universidade de Santiago de Compostela | 22-26 June 2020

Research Group – Theory of Literature and Comparative Literature, PhD Programme in Literary and Cultural Studies. University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain)

Call for Papers

Bringing together the notions of space, affect, and memory results in an appealing intersection in the field of literary and cultural studies, as each one of them can act as an axis for setting in motion a reorientation of cultural studies, and even of social sciences (because of their strong impact on what have been called the spatial turn, the memory turn, and the affect turn). These things, we are aware, are not new. However, we believe that the interaction between these three notions opens a path for new, complex analyses of the events taking place in the context of the contemporary revival of humanities.

What’s more, this brings about new, exciting research prospects for literary studies, as well as for cinematic, artistic or visual studies. The connections between memory and space (or place) are rooted in a well-known theoretical and methodological tradition that includes classical authors as Halbwachs, Benjamin, Poulet, Nora, Assmann, and Shama. Many of them, indeed, gave an important role to the category of affect in their theories, as is the case with Poulet, who reinforced it with the notion of affective memory that he developed in his work L’espace proustien. Still, it was not until recently that affect gained a more firm, established position in cultural and literary studies, especially in spatial studies. The influence of psychogeography and, at a different level, of nonrepresentational geography has been a determining factor in this respect.

We want Hermes Summer School 2020 to set up a framework for exploring these interconnections. That is why we will certainly welcome proposals offering original theoretical analyses on the matter, but we also encourage applicants to submit case studies on artistic, visual and literary works that approach these relations aesthetically, not only in theory but also in practice. We consider the tension between practices relying on representation and those based on performativity to be especially relevant, since it constitutes one of main the turning points that currently affect the ongoing debates on gender studies, ecocriticism, memory studies, and poetry and drama studies. Applicants are free to focus on any of the suggested notions –affect, space, or memory– but we strongly encourage participants to explore the intersections between them, knowing that the spatial dimension can be used as a rallying point for structuring proposals.

Each paper will be allotted 20 minutes. In addition to presenting their own research, speakers are strongly encouraged to reflect on the concepts they employ in their analyses. Please send your proposals including an abstract (200 words) and a short bio note (150 words, with your name, email address, institutional affiliation, dissertation topic, and disciplinary anchoring) to hermes.2020.compostela@gmail.com by January 31, 2020. We welcome abstracts related but not limited to the topics listed below:

• Theories of affect, memory and place
• Affect and memory as space connectors in fiction
• Affective performances of local and global spaces
• Ecocriticism and affect theory
• Haunted spaces in literary, cinematic, artistic or visual representations.
• Emotional and/or mnemonic communities and the sense of place
• Gendered and/or queer places of affect and memory
• Affect and memory: the predicament of representation
• Historical perspectives on affect, space and memory in literature and visual arts.
• Walking as performance

Keynote Speakers

• Ben Anderson, Department of Geography, Durham University.
• Germán Labrador, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Princeton University.
• Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, School of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics,
• Bangor University.

Doctoral Workshop

Iván Villarmea Álvarez, Department of Art History (Film Studies), University of Santiago de Compostela.

General Information

The University of Santiago de Compostela is a member of the Hermes Consortium for Literary and Cultural Studies, a long-standing collaboration of eleven doctoral schools in Belgium, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and the USA. The Consortium’s annual summer school, hosted in turn by each partner institution, brings together specialists, delegates from the partner universities and a selected number of PhD students. An intensive training workshop and work-in-progress presentations focus on shared methodologies and interdisciplinary themes and lead to the publication of an annual edited volume, published by UCL Press in the Comparative Literature and Culture series.

Practical Information

Participants in the conference (delegates and PhD students) will be provided accommodation by the organization at hotels and university housing facilities in the area of the conference’s venue, the Centro de Estudios Avanzados (CEA) of the University of Santiago de Compostela. The CEA building and the accommodation facilities are a 10-minute walk from the city’s historic centre. Santiago de Compostela’s airport is at a 15-minute ride from the city (transport from the airport includes bus or taxi). The railway station is located at the city centre, a 30-minute walk from the conference’s venue (the CEA building). Transportation to and from Santiago will be covered by the participants.

The conference fee (EUR 270.00 per participant) covers the applicant’s participation in the conference, accommodation, lunch on four days, and the conference dinner. The payment method will be indicated once attendance is confirmed.

Some Bibliographic References

Ben Anderson, Encountering Affect. Capacities, Apparatuses, Conditions, Ashgate, Farnham, 2014.

Aleida Assmann, Cultural memory and Western Civilization: Functions, Media, Archives, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011.

Christine Berberich, Neil Campbell, and Roberts Hudson (eds.), Affective Landscapes in Literature, Art and Everyday Life: Memory, Place and the Senses, Ashgate Publishing, Farnham, 2015.

Kyle Bladow and Jennifer Ladino (eds.), Affective Ecocriticism: Emotion, Embodiment, Environment, U of Nebraska P., Lincoln, 2018.

Tonya K. Davidson, Ondine Park, and Rob Shields (eds.), Ecologies of Affect. Placing Nostalgia, Desire, and Hope, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Waterloo (Ontario), 2011.

Stef Craps and others, “Memory Studies and the Anthropocene: A Roundtable”. Memory Studies, 11 (2018), 498-515.

Astrid Erll and Ansgar Nunning (eds.), A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2010.

Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds.), The Affect Theory Reader, Durham, Duke University Press, 2010.

Ursula K. Heise, Jon Cristensen, and Michelle Niemann (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Environmental Humanities, New York, Routledge, 2017.

Bruno Latour, “Agency at the Time of the Anthropocene”, New Literary History, 45 (2014), 1-18.

Doreen Massey, For Space, SAGE, London, 2005.

Helena Miguélez-Carballeira, Galicia, A Sentimental Nation: Gender, Culture and Politics, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2013.

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity, Durham, Duke University Press, 2003.

Organizing Committee

Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza, César Domínguez Prieto, Büke Saglam, Cristina Tamames Gala, Belén Tortosa Pujante

Groningen | 11 October 2019

The winners of the 2019 OSL Awards are Marieke Winkler and Tom Idema. They received their prize during the annual OSL Research Day in Groningen on October 11, 2019.

Each year, OSL rewards two of its members with an OSL Award for the publication of an excellent scholarly book and article. The Awards are intended to acknowledge original and innovative contributions to the field of literary studies and to highlight the work of talented scholars at the beginning of their careers. The OSL Awards come with prize money of € 500,- for each award.

Marieke Winkler is assistant professor in Literary Studies at the Open University in Utrecht. Her research mostly focuses on the interaction and mutual exchanges between literature, literary criticism and literary studies. For the OSL Awards, she submitted an article titled ‘Criticism in the History of the Modern Humanities. The Case of Literary Studies in the late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Netherlands’, published in the 2018 Fall Issue of the journal History of Humanities (University of Chicago Press).

In the words of the Jury, her article provides a ‘clear and well documented exposition of a neglected historical critical debate situated in the Netherlands,’ but also a ‘well-reflected approach to a highly relevant topic in both past and contemporary humanities, convincingly illustrated through two illuminating case studies.’

Tom Idema is a lecturer in comparative literature at the University of Utrecht. In his book Stages of Transmutation: Science Fiction, Biology, and Environmental Posthumanism, published by Routledge in 2019, he analyzes contemporary works of American science fiction, reading these novels together with biological and philosophical theories of human-environment interaction. By so doing, the book show how the novels offer biocultural stories in which bodies are socially and culturally constructed, while social and cultural systems are ecologically constructed.

Quoting from the Jury’s motivation: ‘Published by a very renowned international publisher (Routledge), this book comprises a cutting-edge study of contemporary science fiction literature in view of the concept of the posthuman and ecocriticism. The close readings of these understudied works of fiction are very solid and provide reflections on our current times and environmental change. The works are placed in the longstanding tradition of the genre in fiction and sometimes even cinema. This is a well written and compelling study, addressing a timely topic from a fresh perspective.’