OSL Research Day

7 October 2022 | 10:00-17:00 | Leiden University (see below)

Organizers: Professors Maria Boletsi (Leiden University / University of Amsterdam) and Frans-Willem Korsten (Leiden University)

Registration
PLEASE NOTE: When registering, please indicate (under ‘Remarks’): 1) Which panels/sessions you would like to attend; 2) Whether you would like to attend the event onsite or online.

The Research Day aims to celebrate and cultivate OSL’s sense of community, and hopes to stimulate more collaboration between literary scholars and existing research groups in the Netherlands. While literature is our primary focus, we explicitly encourage multidisciplinary research. The programme will combine plenary sessions with a series of panels organized by OSL research groups.

Confirmed keynote speaker: Dr Sundhya Walther (University of Manchester)

Programme

The programme features three panels organized by OSL research groups, as well as a keynote lecture and a plenary roundtable discussion. Please find an overview below:

Main Location/venue: room 1.11, Gravensteen (Pieterskerkhof 6, 2311 SR Leiden), Leiden U
Venue for Panel 2: room 202, Lipsius building (Cleveringaplaats 1), Leiden U
Lunch: restaurant of the Lipsius building (Cleveringaplaats 1).

For those wishing to attend online, there will be a hybrid option for most parts of the programme (links provided after registration).

NB: ALL plenary sessions and Panels 1 and 3 will take place in 1.11 Gravensteen. Panel 2 will take place in 202, Lipsius.

10:30- 11:00 Coffee Reception, welcome & OSL awards

11:00-12:15  Parallel panels:

Panel 1 (research group Theories from the South and the East) (1.11 / Gravensteen building)

“Decolonizing Russian and East European Studies: Perspectives from the Global South and East” – Roundtable
Convenors: Ksenia Robbe (U of Groningen) and Boris Noordenbos (U of Amsterdam)
Panelists: Sudha Rajagopalan (U Amsterdam), Gulnaz Sibgatullina (U Amsterdam) and Kylie Thomas (NIOD)

Panel 2 (Literature, Law and Society) (202 / Lipsius building)

“Humor, Satire and the Law”
Convenors: Ted Laros (Open U) and Alberto Godioli (U of Groningen)

12:15-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14:30 Roundtable discussion

“From Mobilizations of the Past to Future Worlding in Post-Truth Rhetoric and Conspiracy Cultures”
Convenors: Frans-Willem Korsten and Maria Boletsi
Panelists/discussants: Boris Noordenbos (U of Amsterdam) & Sara Polak (Leiden U)

14:30-14:45 Coffee/Tea break

14:45-15:45 Keynote lecture by Sundhya Walther (U of Manchester)
“Multispecies Modernity and The Future(s) of The Environmental Humanities”

15:45-16:00 Coffee/Tea Break

16:00-17:15 Panel 3 (research group on Sustainable Humanities) (1.11 Gravensteen)

“Sustainable Humanities”
Convenor: Michael Boyden (Radboud U Nijmegen)

Panel descriptions

Keynote lecture

Sundhya Walther (U of Manchester)

“Multispecies Modernity and The Future(s) of The Environmental Humanities”

Environmental humanities has, in recent years, grown into a capacious field, full of novel and surprising entanglements among disciplines, spaces, ideas, and beings. In this talk, I look at the ways in which a multispecies reading practice can offer key perspectives on the concerns of the environmental humanities — its methods, its imaginaries of scale, and its temporalities. By adopting a non-devouring practice, I argue, we can unfold new possible futures for our field, and by attending to what I call moments of disorderly multispecies living, we can imagine new ways of thriving as beings enmeshed in a world of relations.

Plenary roundtable discussion

“From Mobilizations of the Past to Future Worlding in Post-truth Rhetoric and Conspiracy Cultures”

Convenors: Frans-Willem Korsten and Maria Boletsi

Panelists/discussants: Boris Noordenbos (U of Amsterdam) & Sara Polak (Leiden U)

This panel will delve into current debates around populist politics, post-truth rhetoric and conspiracy cultures to probe how literary and, more generally, humanities scholars can intervene in, and contribute to, these debates. The discussion will be guided by the following questions: How is the past mobilized in current post-truth populist rhetoric and conspiracy cultures through literary and other narratives? But also: which visions of futurity and modes of ‘worldling’ are fostered and propagated through and against this rhetoric in different areas of the world?

Panel 1

Research group: Theories from the South and the East in Literature and Culture)

“Decolonizing Russian and East European Studies: Perspectives from the Global South and East”

Convenors: Ksenia Robbe (U of Groningen) and Boris Noordenbos (U of Amsterdam) 
Panelists: Sudha Rajagopalan (U Amsterdam), Gulnaz Sibgatullina (U Amsterdam) and Kylie Thomas (NIOD)

With the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the imperative of decolonizing East European studies – i.e., addressing the dominance of Russian studies in the field, institutionalizing Ukrainian studies, rethinking the canons of Russian studies, etc. – has acquired acute urgency. Debate about these questions has occupied public conversations over the past months, often producing sharp controversies between those calling for ‘cancelling’ all things Russian and others defending ‘Russian culture.’

Often overlooked in such polarized debates is the undecided national/imperial status of ‘Russian culture,’ an ambiguity cynically leveraged by the Kremlin for its civilizationist conceptions of ‘Russianness’ and for the neo-imperialist policies such concepts are made to justify. Thus, ‘Russian culture’ cannot be treated in isolation from the regional repercussions that its particular understanding brings. Also, while holding an atypical place in the history of western colonialism, Soviet/Russia’s incomplete post-imperialism resonates, and is entangled with, enduring colonial constellations across the globe.

What does decolonizing mean if we, for a moment, ‘provincialize’ the post-Soviet constellation as a specific but globally entangled case of postcoloniality? What if we situate it in a conversation with postcolonial situations elsewhere, particularly in the Global South, and with the ways in which these societies have been dealing with the challenges of material and epistemic decolonization? What can we learn from these histories and struggles? What kind of dialogues between East European and Global South intellectuals, writers, artists and academics are taking place in the context of the war in Ukraine, and what are their possible problems?

This round table brings together researchers working in East European and Global South studies to reflect on these and related questions from their situated perspectives.

Panel 2

Research group: Literature, Law and Society

“Humor, Satire and the Law”

Convenors: Ted Laros (Open U) and Alberto Godioli (U of Groningen)

Humor in its various forms, from literary satire to stand-up and cartoons, is regularly at the center of juridical debates and actual litigation: from defamation and blasphemy to copyright violations and incitement to hatred. Yet, due to its inherent ambiguity and frequent elusiveness, humor can make it particularly difficult to draw a clear line between lawful and unlawful expression. How exactly does the law regulate humor, and how does that change across different judicial systems or historical periods? How do certain forms and practices of humor respond, in different places and at different times, to the restrictions of the law? How can literary theory and humanities-based humor research illuminate the legal challenges posed by different forms of comic expression? How might humor, moreover, challenge the logics and procedures of law?

Our panel will address these questions in light of recent work by members of the OSL Research Group Literature, Law and Society. In particular, the panel will consist of an open discussion of selected excerpts from the following publications:

– Andrew Bricker, Libel and Lampoon: Satire in the Courts, 1670-1792, Oxford University Press, 2022;

– Brigitte Adriaensen, Andrew Bricker, Alberto Godioli and Ted Laros (eds), Humor and the Law: The Difficulty of Judging Jests, special issue of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, 35(3), 2022.

The reading material will be shared in advance with all registered participants.

Panel 3

Research Group Sustainable Humanities

“Sustainable Humanities”

Convenor: Michael Boyden

Panelists:

• Michael Boyden (Radboud U Nijmegen), Presentation of the OSL research group on the Sustainable Humanities
• Marco Formisano (Ghent U), Presentation of plans for International MA program in Environmental Humanities
• Doro Wiese (Radboud U Nijmegen), Presentation of the Epistemic Justice project at Radboud U

This panel is meant to foster collaboration among scholars working in the overlapping fields of the Environmental Humanities, Indigenous Studies, and Critical Sustainability Studies. We will consider intellectual trends in these closely related fields, including but not limited to questions of knowledge making, co-option, intergenerational dynamics, and scale in relation to narrative and other art forms. In addition, we will discuss institutional challenges involved in inter- and transdisciplinary curricular reform. The panel takes the form of three short presentations of ongoing collaborations and initiatives (10 minutes each) followed by an open discussion.