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Slavisches Seminar

Workshop: Exile, Migration, Multilingualism

Date: September 7, 2024
Venue: University of Zurich, PLG-2-211 (Slavisches Seminar), Plattenstrasse 43, 8032 Zürich

Participants and topics (in alphabetical order)

Stéphanie Cirac

I'm working on two different subjects. The first, in general terms, concerns Russian emigration to Prague and Central Europe in the inter-war period. For this research, I have worked mainly on sources from Prague archives.
More specifically, I would like to look at the links between different types of movement - exile and travel, which may seem to be opposed: one is supposed to be for pleasure, the other is imposed. I am observing how they can intersect. Taking the history of Russian exiles as a starting point, I'm interested in how émigrés informed, in a way coached, travellers who went to Russia - and then how these travellers in turn informed them. I am studying the ways in which information circulates. Are these exchanges, these crossroads, the only meeting points between these two types of movement?
 I'm also working on other periods, particularly on the 1980s. This research is more recent, and I'm interested in French travellers who went to Czechoslovakia in the 1980s. This research is always about the movement and circulation of information, about decentralisation. I'm looking in particular at a trip that took place in 1981, which resulted in its protagonists being jailed for three weeks and a large number of Czech dissidents being imprisoned for months (this repression became known as the Siklova Affair). For the time being, I have studied the archives of the secret police, a file kept in the Libri Prohibiti archives (compiled by VONS on support for prisoners, both inside and outside the country). I have also conducted interviews with one of these travellers (Françoise Anis); I am currently studying the French and Czech press. What interests me are the images, the rumours, the truths and untruths that circulated, and the way in which they circulated, what form they took. The facts and clichés that may have been constructed on either side. This research is ongoing. I'm concentrating on one trip, but I could extend my research to others. top

Miriam Finkelstein   

previous research areas:
1. Russian-American und Russian-German Translingual Fiction and the Poetics of Memory
2. Multilingual Literature (Poetry written in Russian and other Languages)
3. Global Russophone Literatures (Russian-language texts written primarily outside of Russia)

Future plans:
In future, I will continue looking at Russophone literatures in different contexts, in the post-Soviet continuum but also in Europe and in Israel. Hereby, I am particularly interested in multilingual practices in these texts, in (potential) changes and developments of the Russian poetic language outside of Russia and the diversification of poetic tradition(s). Furthermore, I am interested in literary depictions of encounters between emigres from Russia, East European and other European and non-European states. top

Patrick Flack

Interwar Russian Emigration in Prague, Paris, Berlin: I am exploring the systematic impact of émigrés in particular on the development of new discourses and approaches in philosophy and the human sciences. My working hypothesis is that Russian émigrés as a network constitute an absolutely vital and massive transfer vector between German Romanticism and "French Theory", manifested especially through the interaction of philosophy and literature and in themes such as titanism, existentialist anthropology, new theories of the sign, of dialogue, etc. top

Tomáš Glanc

The genesis of this working group, the experience of cooperation and the findings so far, based on the experience of a new perspective on the study of Eastern European avant-garde, neo-avant-garde, political reading of literature and tamizdat. top

Libuše Heczková

Czechoslovak prewar conservative and liberal  feminism was after 1948 completely left behind.  Up to now this is a blind spot in our culture. My aim is to trace the stories of women who emmigrated after 1948, what was forgotten with them. One of the key question is what happend to agrarian women elite after 1948. It would be very interesting to make some comparative analysis of the situation in whole Eastern block. top

Anna Hodel

„Poetics and Politics of Polyglossia. From Empire to Postmigration, Eastern European Perspectives“ // Workshop, FS 25: "Women Writers and the Imperial and Intersectional Construction of National Identities: Comparative Perspectives“ (where the imagination of the Nation in the imperial space is scrutinized, starting from Ukraine and spreading over Middle and South Eastern Europe – thus operating with the crucial meaning of multilingualism for the national projects in the forms of translation, internationalism, migration, and intersectionalism). top

Petra James

Cultural transfers between regional centres and the influence of migration on the development of modernism and avant-garde - presentation of the ARC, FER and PDR (Projet de recherche) projects, presentation of MODERNITAS.
Presentation of the possibility of funding joint projects between Belgium and Switzerland. top

Katrin Bente Karl

1. Project UnVergessen: This project is located at the interface of research, teaching, and social engagement. It was initiated in 2016 at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum and was carried out for the first time in Bern in FS 2024. The project focuses on encounters between multilingual people in need of care living in German-speaking nursing homes and students with the same linguistic background. The students visit the people in need of care in the nursing homes and collect data on their linguistic and biographical situation. The languages covered in the FS 24 project in Bern were English, French, Italian, Spanish, BKMS, Russian and Ukrainian. The focus was on collecting narrative interviews, covering language biography, life in the nursing home, and the view of one's life. The project is to be carried out annually. It aims to bring together and raise awareness among students and older people and collect data that will be compiled in a constantly growing corpus and can serve as a starting point for scientific research.

2. The situation of the Slavic languages in Switzerland (with special consideration of BKMS, Polish, and Russian): This research project is currently in the application phase (submission to the SNF). Using a triangulated data collection structure, linguistic data will be collected from speakers of various Slavic languages in German-speaking Switzerland, providing insights into the current state of vitality of the respective languages. In the first step, a broad-based sociolinguistic written survey will provide quantitative insight, which will be refined in subsequent steps by qualitatively collected language data. Qualitative methods will include the collection of linguistic biographical interviews and the telling of picture-based stories, supplemented by the collection of natural speech data in the final step. top

Sandra King-Savić

(Forced) migration, labor migration, diaspora, irregularized migration, and integrationism.
Partitipation in the Horizon funded project Protecting Irregular Migrants in Europe (PRIME, EUI in Florence). Since 2019 has researched the historical trajectory of the term integration in legal and social terms. For this,  I completed a Certificate of Advanced Studies (CAS) in Migration Law at the University of Bern, and continuously interview individuals who came to Switzerland from Southeastern Europe as labor / forced migrants as well as by way of family unification. The manuscript is due to be completed in 2026. top

Yasha Klots

1) Tamizdat: Banned Books from the Cold War to the Present
This topic deals with state censorship, exterritorial publishing, and clandestine circulation of manuscripts banned in their home countries across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War or nowadays, in the Internet era. By drawing lessons from the past, the talk will focus on their resonances in the present, when tamizdat - as a literary practice and political institution - is no longer history for many Russian-language authors, but again a reality.
2) Homo Migrans: Russian Emigration across (100 years)
The talk will discuss emigration from Russia across a century from an anthropological and philosophical perspective, rather than from a historical or political one. It will address five "waves," or periods, of Russian emigration and challenge the myths of exile that have been revitalized since 2022. top

Pavel Kolář

Czechoslovak Scholarly Emigration and the Reconceptualisation of Humanities during the Cold War. top

Kornelia Kończal

Towards a transnational history of sociology in the 20th century. top

Yvonne Pörzgen

Remembering what was left behind: mechanisms of preservation and  distortion (examples I recently worked on: Stefan Zweig's and Vladimir  Nabokov's autobiographies. top

Gabriela Romanová

Czech literary exile (and samizdat) of 1948-1989 period, article bibliography of literary material published in Czech exile (and samizdat) magazines, recently I've focused on Vienna underground - Czech based music, literature and arts club Nachtazyl, then literary magazine Paternoster founded and edited by Czech émigré Zbyněk Benýšek. top

Sylvia Sasse 

EXILE -MIGRATION - MULTILINGUALISM at the new Institute for East European Studies at the University of Zurich. top

Programm

Time Participant
10.00 Sylvia Sasse
10.10 Tomáš Glanc
10.25 Workday logistics
10.30-11.00 Petra James
11.00-11.30 Miriam Finkelstein
11.30-12.00 Anna Hodel
12.00-12.30 Patrick Flack
12.30-14.00 Lunch
14.00-14.30 Yasha Klots
14.30-15.00

Gabriela Romanová

15.00-15.30 Stéphanie Cirac
15.30-16.00 Yvonne Pörzgen
16.00-16.15 Break
16.15-16.45 Katrin Bente Karl
16.45-17.15 Sandra King-Savić
17.15-17.45 Kornelia Kończal
17.45-18.15 Pavel Kolář
18.15-18.45 Libuše Heczková
18.45-19.15 Conclusion
19.40 Dinner