Conference "Fictions of Europe: Imaginary Topographies and Transnational Identities across the Arts"

This international conference explores how Europe is imagined in contemporary literature, theatre, and film, both within and beyond Europe’s ever-shifting borders. Rather than concentrate on representations of Europe as seen through European eyes only, the conference wishes to draw attention to the manifold ways in which the idea of Europe has inspired artists from across the globe. It is particularly interested in how ongoing processes of European integration, non-European migration as well as regionalism and decentralization within Europe have diversified artistic articulations about Europe. The conference features 23 speakers from 12 countries (including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Portugal, Spain, the UK, and the US)

Programme:

Thursday, 28 March 2019

9:15 Registration
9:45 Welcome & Introduction

10:00 Keynote I
Prof Dr Frank Schulze-Engler (UNIVERSITY OF FRANKFURT, D):
“Multipolar Imaginations: Fictions of Europe in a New World Order”

11:30 – 12:30 Panel I: “Postcolonial Europe”
Prof Dr Lars Jensen (U ROSKILDE, DK):
“Deconstructing Nationhood for a Contemporary Postcolonial Europe”

Dr Anna-Leena Toivanen (U LIÈGE, BE):
“Afroeuropean Itineraries and Representations of Europe in Francophone African Literatures”

13:30-15:00 Panel II: “Imagining Europe ‘from Without’”
Dr Maggie Ann Bowers (U PORTSMOUTH, UK):
“European/Alternative/Indigenous Modernity”

Prof Dr David Callahan (U AVEIRO, P):
“Europe as Damage in the Work of Janette Turner Hospital”

Dr Janine Hauthal (VUB BRUSSEL, BE):
“Countering the Eurocentric Gaze? Europe in Contemporary Australasian Films”

15:30 – 17:00 Panel III: “Mapping Central and Eastern European Spaces”
Lucy Gasser (U POTSDAM, D):
“Mapping a Prague Text: Views from Czechoslovakia, India and South Africa”

Dr Dorota Kołodziejczyk (U WROCŁAW, PL):
“The Other Europe Heading: Mobility and/as European Identity in Central and Eastern European Post-1989 Fiction”

Dr Martyna Bryla (U MÁLAGA, ES):
“Mapping Transnational Spaces of Contemporary Europe: A Look at the Post-2004 Fiction by Polish Migrant Authors”

17:15 – 18:15 Panel IV: “Imagining Europe in German-Language Literatures”
Dr Lesley Penné (VUB Brussel, BE):
“Images of Europe in East Belgian Literature: The Case of Leo Wintgens”

Dr Lena Wetenkamp (U MAINZ, D):
“Palimpsestic Topographies of Europe in Contemporary German-Language Literature”

Friday, 29 March 2019

9:30 – 10:30 Panel V: “Fictions of EUrope”
Reto Rössler (U FLENSBURG, D):
“The Making of ‘Europe’ and the ‘Institutional Novel’: Robert Menasse’s The Capital”

Dr Lilla Balint (U CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, US):
“Rue Edel, Strasburg: Europe, Interactional”

10:45 – 11:45 Keynote II
Prof Dr Jopi Nyman (UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND, FIN):
“Revisiting Britain’s Europes: Emerging Narratives of Borders and Borderscapes in Contemporary Writing”

11:45 Poster Session with Bojana Janković (ROYAL CENTRAL SCHOOL OF SPEECH AND DRAMA, UK), Zhuyun Song (VUB BRUSSEL, BE), Alex Watson (ROYAL HOLLOWAY, UK)

13:30 – 14:30 Panel VI: “Remaking Europe from Subaltern Perspectives”
Dr Maria Ridda (U KENT, UK):
“Remaking Europe from the Backstreets of Naples”

Prof Dr Margriet Van der Waal (U GRONINGEN, NL):
“‘Eminently Forgettable Persons’: Literary Narratives about Europe's ‘Losers’”
 
14:45 – 15:45 Panel VII: “Migration and/in Europe”
Dr Christine Berberich (U PORTSMOUTH, UK):
“The Migrant Experience in Europe: God’s Own Country, or Site of Nightmares?”

Dr Liesbeth Minnaard (U LEIDEN, NL):
“Lampedusa in Europe; or Touching Tales of Vulnerability”

16:00 – 17:00 Panel VIII: “Europe in the Cinematic Imagination”
Prof Dr Kris Van Heuckelom (KU LEUVEN, BE):
“Camp/Theatre – House – Hotel: Chronotopes of Europeanisation in European Film (1950-2010)”

Dr Stella Lange (U INNSBRUCK, AT):
“Hyperreal Europe? Jonas Carpignano’s, Moussa Touré’s and Ai Weiwei’s Migration Cinema”

17:00 – 17:45 New Zealand novelist and short-story writer Paula Morris (U AUCKLAND, NZ) reads from her work (www.paula-morris.com)

17:45 Closing Remarks

For further info, directions and registration: https://fictionsofeurope.wordpress.com