A workshop organised in the framework of the 4EU+ Alliance project, entitled UNES: UNDER EASTERN EYES. East European Writers Reimagining the West from the Great War to the Present Times.
Organizing committee: Maxime DECOUT (CELFF – Sorbonne University), Clara ROYER (Eur’ORBEM – Sorbonne University), Danuta SOSNOWSKA (Institute of Slavic Studies – University of Warsaw) & Josef ŠEBEK (Faculty of Arts – Charles University / CEFRES)
Date: 14–15 October, 2026
Location: CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Prague 1
Language: English
This workshop aims at positioning the East–West relation into a wider spatial dynamic within Europe and postcolonial space, especially regarding the North and the South. The imagination of the North and the South decenters the notion of the uniform West and East, becomes a reservoir of alternative – desired as well contested – models and allows for the overcoming of the East–West binarism. Contacts, networks and coalitions existed between the North and the South in East Central Europe as well as across the East–West divide. In the workshop we want to address representations, images and critical reflections of the West in relation to the European as well as global North and South in East Central European literatures throughout the last century, taking into account also Western literature written by immigrants.
More broadly, we want to focus on various spatial differentiations which complicate the simple East–West dichotomy in literary works, critical discussions, and spatial mobility of authors. For example, Przemysław Czapliński (2023) has pointed out that in East Central European literatures, there exists an imagination of the Scandinavian North as an alternative model to Western (neoliberal) capitalism in terms of life values and social justice. Manuela Boatcă applies concepts and phenomena from Latin America such as creolization to European cultures and territories. A rich cluster of images and connotations adheres to the South as the cultural cradle shared by the European East and West, as well as the “Other” in relation to the geographic “North”. Political ideologies of the 20th century also problematized the East–West divide through coalitions, from the communist international to feminist movements, forming at times surprising alliances in the postcolonial space. Nomadic imaginaries and individual author’s spatial trajectories have also contributed to intricate geographical patterns problematizing the East–West dichotomy.
Program
Wednesday 14 October, 2026
CEFRES, Na Florenci 3, Lower Hall
14:00 Introduction by the organizers
Panel 1 – Chair: Maxime Decout (Sorbonne University)
14:15–15:00
Františka SCHORMOVÁ (Czech Academy of Sciences)
Alternative Spaces Have Borders, Too: A Czech Take on Djagalov’s People’s Republic of Letters
15:00–15:45
Filip ŚWIERCZYŃSKI (University of Warsaw)
Seen from the Semiperiphery: Stanisław Lem and the Uneven Geographies of (Post-)Modern War
Coffee break
Panel 2 – Chair: Anna Kobylińska (University of Warsaw)
16:00–16:45
Anastasia TORMAKHOVA (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv)
A View of the South from the East: The Tourist Perspective and the Limits of the Decolonial Gaze in Maxim Bespalov’s African Novel
16:45–17:30
Jana KANTOŘÍKOVÁ (Sorbonne University)
Czechoslovak “African Diaries”: Storytelling in the Service of the Nation and an Idea
Thursday 15 October, 2026
ÚČL, Na Florenci 3, Upper Hall
Panel 3 – Chair: Clara Royer (Sorbonne University)
09:30–10:15
Josef ŠEBEK (Charles University / CEFRES)
The (Queer) Cultural Geography in the Three Magicians Trilogy by Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic
10:15–11:00
Xavier GALMICHE (Sorbonne University)
The Serbian “bijou d’art” and its Orients: From Vienna to “Enchanted India”. The Many Lives (1921) of Bojidar Karageorgevitch (Кнез Божидар Карађорђевић / Knez Božidar Karađorđević)
Coffee break
Panel 4 – Chair: Josef Šebek (Charles University)
11:15–12:00
Danuta SOSNOWSKA (University of Warsaw)
Representations of the South in the Essays, Reportage, and Memoirs of J. Iwaszkiewicz and K. Čapek
12:00–12:45
Charles SABATOS (Yeditepe University)
Postmodernist, Postcolonial, and Postsocialist Images of ‘Easternness’ in Contemporary Slovak Writing
Lunch break
Panel 5 – Chair: Danuta Sosnowska (University of Warsaw)
14:00–14:45
Clara ROYER (Sorbonne University)
Hungarian Writers and the Algerian War through the Reception of North-African Writers (1954–1962)
14:45–15:30
Maika NGUYEN (CEFRES, Prague)
Depictions of East/West Clashes in Vietnamese-Czech Women’s Writing: Imagining East Central European Hybridity?
Coffee break
Panel 6 – Chair: Jana Kantoříková (Sorbonne University)
15:45–16:30
Míla JANIŠOVÁ (Charles University)
Errance or Conquest: Mobilities and Moral Hierarchies in Olga Tokarczuk, Fabienne Kanor and Marie Darrieussecq
16:30–17:15
Anna KOBYLIŃSKA (University of Warsaw)
The Wooden Skeleton of Seamless Europe: North-East-West Triangulations of Dominik Tatarka
Coffee break
17:30–18:00
Closing round table
Literary Geography Under Eastern Eyes: Europe and the Global Space