Boundless Affections: Methodologies in Transnational History of Same-Sex Desire

Boundless Affections.
Methodologies in Transnational History of Same-Sex Desire in Literature (19th-20th centuries)

This international workshop is conceived as a preparatory event for the ICLA Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages Series’ Topic Volume Representing Same-Sex Desire. Local Contexts, Global Circulations in European Literary Cultures. (CHLEL : https://www.uantwerpen.be/en/projects/chlel/).

Date: September 19-20, 2024
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague and online (to register, please write to the address cefres@cefres.cz)
Language: English

Organisateurs

Partners          

  • Coordinating Committee for the Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages Series, International Comparative Literature Association (CHLEL-ICLA)
  • National Scientific Research Fund, Belgium (FNRS)
  • Adelphi University (New York), United States
  • French Research Centre in Humanities and Social Sciences (CEFRES), Prague
  • Department of Czech & Comparative Literature, Charles University, Prague (ÚČLK FF UK

THURSDAY,  SEPTEMBER 19, 2024

10:00-10:30      Opening Remarks & Morning Coffee

  •  Helga Mitterbauer (ULB), President of the ICLA Committee of History Literatures in European Languages
  • Mateusz Chmurski (CEFRES/Sorbonne Université), Director of the French Research Center in Humanities and Social Sciences
  • Josef Šebek (ÚČLK FF UK), Clément Dessy (ULB) & Ana Isabel Simon-Alegre (Adelphi University)

10:30-12:00      Session 1: Genres and Canons in Question

Chair : Mateusz CHMURSKI (CEFRES / Sorbonne Université)

  • (Sorbonne Université, Paris) : “Where Is the German AIDS novel?” Circulations, centralities and provincialisms in European ‘Aids literatures’ (1990-2000)
  • Eva SPIŠIAKOVÁ (Constantin the Philosopher University, Nitra, FF UKF): Translating Desire: Linguistic Pathways of Same-Sex Desire in Central Europe and the Role of the Translator at Its Centre
  • Zoltan CSEHY (Comenius University, Bratislava): Same sex desire and new trends in contemporary Hungarian poetry from a transcultural perspective

12:00-13:30      Lunch break

13:30-15:00 Session 2: Coded Languages and Common References

Chair: Clément DESSY (Université libre de Bruxelles / FNRS)

  • Xavier GALMICHE (Sorbonne Université) : “The infinitely graceful waist of the young man”: homosexual motives, practices of fictional camouflage. A few hints from William Ritter’s readings
  • Błażej WARKOCKI (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań): Wilde at heart. Uses of Oscar Wilde and other figures of queerness in the works of the young Witold Gombrowicz
  • Anton JUUL (Copenhagen University): A Romeo is a Romeo is a Romeo”: On Chemsex, Pharmakon and Figurative Language in Nikolaj Tange Lange’s Romeo & Seahorse

15:00-15:30      Coffee Break

15:30-17:00      Session 3: Queer Reading

Chair:  Josef ŠEBEK (Department of Czech & Comparative Literature, Charles University)

  • Salomé HONÓRIO (ICS, University of Lisbon): Queer, Kwir, Cuir – Towards a Decolonial Critique of National Culture and Queer Universalism
  •  Peter DEMETER (University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice, FF JČU): Beyond the Surface – Queer Readings in Homosocial Environments
  • Rebeka PAP (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest): Lonely Struggle and Marginalized Rebellion – A Gender Reading of Erzsébet Galgóczi’s Novel Another Love

19:00    Conference dinner

FRIDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER, 2024

10:30-11:30      Session 4: Writing Identities

Chair: Matěj HŘIB (Faculty of Humanities, Charles University)

  •  Thibaut CASAGRANDE (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle) : Literary aestheticism: camp as a transnational and intertextual practice / questioning a European camp
  •  Tomasz KALIŚCIAK (University of Silesia, Katowice) : Same-sex marriages in 19th and 20th century Polish literature

11:30-13:00      Lunch break

13:00-14:30      Session 5: Circulations and Networks

Chair : Hélène MARTINELLI (CEFRES/ENS de Lyon)

  • Darko ILIN (University of Nova Gorica) : The Emergence of the (Trans)national Queer Literary Subcanons in the Post-Yugoslav Space: A Comparative Study
  •  Adriana KOVACHEVA (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań): Mach and Dobrev – Experiment, Communism, and Social Advancement from a Polish-Bulgarian Queer Perspective
  • Natalia TOPOROWSKA (University of Warsaw): “To be visible it is necessary to speak”?

14:30-15:00      Coffee Break

15:00-16:30 Session 6: Poetry across Borders

Chair : Ana Isabel SIMON-ALEGRE (Adelphi University)

  • Anna DŻABAGINA (CEFRES/University of Warsaw): Lonesome Archipelagos. Sapphic Modernism on the Territories of the Russian Empire and Beyond (Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian Literature)
  •  Julie OLIVEIRA DA SILVA (Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris) : Between the spoken and the unspoken : strategies of expression and dissimulation of same-sex desire in the poetry of Renée Vivien, Judith Teixeira, Virginia Victorino and Gilka Machado
  •  Lorenzo RUZZENE (Sorbonne Université, Paris) : Same-sex desire and urban public spaces in Western European poetry (1940-1999)

16:30-17:30      Conclusive Remarks & Future Steps