International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Justus-Liebig-University, Giessen
Schloss Rauischholzhausen, University of Giessen (Germany)
17.00 Shuttle leaves Giessen main station
17.45 Arrival at Rauischholzhausen Castle
18.30 Reception & dinner
from 7:30 Breakfast
9.00 Welcome
9.15 Keynote: Travelling Concepts, Metaphors and Narratives. On the Complexity, Risks and Chances of Conceptual Transfers (Wolfgang Hallet & Ansgar Nünning)
10.00 Discussion
10.30 Coffee break
11.00 Session 1: Aesthetic Stability and Literary Unreliability (chair: Karen M. Simonsen)
1. Poul Bjergegaard (Aarhus): “Authority, Knowledge, Fiction, and the Question of Aesthetic Stability”
2. Robert Vogt (GCSC): “What is True After All? The Concept of Narrative Unreliability in Literary Studies and Film Studies”
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Session 2: Space and Time as Travelling Concepts (chair: Jan Baetens)
3. Astrid Bryder Steffensen (Aarhus): “Space as Intermedium: A Transhistorical Perspective on the Concept of Space”
4. Jessica R. Boll (Wisconsin-Madison): “A Tale of Two Cities: The Image of Urban Space in Early Modern Spain and the Ottoman Empire”
5. Nina Lange (GCSC): “Time as Travelling Concept”
16.00 Coffee break
16.30 Session 3: Monstrous Metaphors and Mobility (chair: Ansgar Nünning)
6. Tanja Poulsen (Aarhus): “The Monster as Metaphor”
7. Lisa Villarreal (Stanford): “Dead Man Walking: Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Monstrous Form of Nineteenth-Century Mobility”
18.00 End of sessions
18.30 Dinner
20.00 Screening of Hans Christian Schmid’s Lichter
from 7:30 Breakfast
9.00 Session 4: Narratological Concepts (chair: tba)
8. Jonas Ivo Meyer (GCSC): “Export and Reimport: The ‘Travels’ of Narratological Concepts”
9. Greice Schneider (Leuven): “The Dynamics of Boredom in the Narrative Tissue”
10.30 Coffee break
11.00 Session 5: Hearing Voices & Speaking Silence: Travelling Senses (chair: Ellen Sapega)
10. Thomas Bjørnsten Kristensen (Aarhus): “Intermedial Silences and Pervasive Noises“
11. Steven Surdiacourt (Leuven): “Can You Hear Me Drawing? ‘Voice’ and the Graphic Novel”
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Session 6: Concepts of Self and Identity (chair: Sibylle Baumbach )
12. Georgia Panteli (UCL): “Travelling Archetype”
13. Netta Nakari (Finnish Grad School): “‘Writing about the Self Through Time and Discipline”
14. Karolina May-Chu (Wisconsin-Madison): “Identity at the Border: Imagining the East in Hans Christian Schmid’s Film Lichter”
16.00 Coffee break
16.30 Session 7: Morality, Historiography and Literature (chair: Pirjo Lyytikäinen)
15. Nuno Gomes Ferreira (Lisbon): “Narrative as Moral Commitment: from Theory of History to Literature”
16. Lynn Wolff (Wisconsin-Madison): “Historiography and Literary Discourse: The Diachronic Journey of a Co-Dependence”
18.00 End of sessions
18.30 Dinner
from 7:30 Breakfast
9.00 Shuttle-bus leaves Rauischholzhausen
10.00 Symposium starts (Alexander von Humboldt Guesthouse, JLU)
10.30 B. Venkat Mani (Wisconsin-Madison): “Travelling Books: World Literatures and Bibliomigrancy”
11.30 Herbert Grabes (JLU): “Emergence as Travelling Concept”
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Anneleen Masschelein (Leuven): Conceptualization and Heterogeneity: The Uncanny Encounter of Humanities, Robotics and the Return of Animism
15.00 Peter Haslinger (Herder Institute/JLU): “Shifting spaces – Hanging Concepts of Territory in Historiography and Critical Geography”
16.00 Guided tour Giessen (Vera Stadelmann)
18.00 Shuttle to Rauischholzhausen Castle
19.00 Dinner
from 7:30 Breakfast
9.00 Session 8: Concepts of Liberalism and Experientiality (chair: César Dominguez)
17. Frederick Van Dam (Leuven): “The Concept of Liberalism in Victorian Studies: Anthony Trollope and the Casualties of Aesthetic Ideology”
18. Christina Mohr (GCSC): “The Feeling of What It’s Like – Experientiality as a Travelling Concept”
10.30 Coffee break
11.00 Session 9: Intersectionality (chair: Beatrice Michaelis)
19. Duarte Drumond Braga (Lisbon): “Fernando Pessoa’s Orientalism and the ‘mystic East’ of Theosophical Literature”
20. Thibaut Raboin (UCL): “LGBT Asylum Seekers in French and British Public Spheres: Studying the Emergence of a ‘Social Problem’”
12.30 Lunch
14.00 Master Classes (parallel sessions)
1. “Travelling Concepts as a Model for the Study of Culture” (Birgit Neumann)
2. “Travelling Concepts of Authorship in Literature, Culture, and the Digital Humanities” (Ingo Berensmeyer)
In-between (16.00-16.30): coffee break
14.00 Hermes-Consortium: Business Meeting
18.30 Dinner
from 7:30 Breakfast
9.00 Session 10: Lost in Translation? (chair: Sibylle Baumbach)
21. Tuomas Juntunen (Finnish Grad School): “Manifestations of the Tragic in Juha Seppälä’s Fiction“
22. Djurdja Trajkovic (Wisconsin-Madison): “Lost in Translation: Cartonera Publishers in Latin America”
11.00 Coffee break
11.30 Final discussion
12.30 Bus leaves for Heidelberg
15.00 Arrival & check-in
16.00 Heidelberg & Heidelberg University guided tour (Vera Stadelmann)
19.30 Final conference dinner, Kulturbrauerei Heidelberg
Individual departure of participants
Call for Papers
In the current age of interdisciplinary research, a common, shared language is indispensable to enable discussion and exchange across different disciplines and to support the dialogue and collaboration between scholars from different (national) cultures of knowledge. Concepts such as ‘performance’, ‘narration’, ‘space’, ‘media’, ‘communication’, ‘identity’, ‘body’, ‘intertextuality’, and ‘knowledge’ (Mieke Bal 2002), succeed in establishing a transdisciplinary contact zone and thus provide the foundation for such a common language. Like metaphors and narratives, they shape and structure the ways in which we discuss literature and culture, engage in interdisciplinary research, and order our experiences and knowledge of the world.
Rather than being univocal or firmly established, however, the meaning and operational value of concepts, metaphors, and narratives are subject to variation and expansion as they are continuously re-embedded and re-defined in different cultural and literary contexts: ‘Travelling’ back and forth between disciplines, historical periods, and (national) cultures of knowledge and research, answering the demands of the time, and adhering to paradigms dominant in a specific field of research, the cultural ‘baggage’ of concepts, metaphors, and narratives is continuously checked and contested and might be expanded or modified as new meanings are added or old ones become lost. Especially nowadays, in an age of interdisciplinary and increasingly transnational research, concepts, metaphors, and narratives are ‘on the move’, travelling across different cultural contexts, gaining access to new fields of investigation while promoting their continuous re-negotiation and re-adaptation.
The Hermes symposium 2010 invites participants to trace the journeys of concepts, metaphors, and narratives across different boundaries in the fields of literary and cultural studies and further explore the challenges, impediments, and transformations that occur during their literary and cultural transition(s). What actually happens when concepts, metaphors, and narratives travel across disciplinary, historical, and national boundaries? How do these ‘travellers’ change, what do they leave behind or gain on their way to new territories? What role does literature play in these journeys, especially in the establishment of newly adapted concepts, metaphors, and narratives? And, finally, are there any hazards, dangers, or even limits to the travelling of concepts?
Participants are invited to address the topic of the conference by identifying key concepts, metaphors, and narratives which are at the core of their own research. Papers should explore the travelling of one (or more) specific concept, metaphor, or narrative in a (historical) case-study, investigating its (e.g. heuristic) function(s) and tracing its journey across different disciplines, cultures of research, and historical periods.
Aspects to be discussed might include, but are not restricted to, the analysis of
Abstracts of approximately 250 words should be submitted to Sibylle Baumbach ( sibylle.baumbach@gcsc.uni-giessen.de ) and Ansgar Nünning ( ansgar.nuenning@anglistik.uni-giessen.de ) by 01 March 2010 .
