Conference Documentation (in english)
Time Out of Joint: Literary (Re)Visions of Time in Eastern and Central Europe
EUTIM Jahreskonferenz
EUTIM Jahreskonferenz
From 15-17 September 2022, the second annual conference of the European Times (EUTIM) project took place at the University of Potsdam. Entitled “Time Out of Joint: Literary (Re)Visions of Time in Eastern and Central Europe”, the conference explored narratives of time and conceptualizations of history in the East and Central European literatures of the past several decades: from modern Crimean Tatar writing to Polish avant-garde and post-war literature, from dissident lyrical work to Czech and Ukrainian contemporary novels, from recent Belarusian poetry to up-to-the-minute poems from Ukraine.
How do epoch-making historic(al) events change our perceptions of time? How does literature represent and enact these changes? More specifically, how have the literatures of Eastern and Central Europe, a region that has experienced some of the most critical moments of the 20th and 21st centuries, responded to these experiences – conceptually and aesthetically?
These are some of the pregnant questions that were discussed by the participants, leading scholars from the USA, United Kingdom, Germany, and respective countries. While the conference focused on the innovative poetics and groundbreaking visions of time in some of the crucial literary works from the region, it has also had poignant relevance for the current historical moment, at the backdrop of contemporary events such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the suppression of the protest movement in Belarus in 2020, and Russia’s full-scale, ongoing war against Ukraine.
Conference Program
Thu 15 Sep 2022
Opening Remarks
Annette Werberger (EUTIM Director, European University Viadrina)
Alexander Wöll & Bohdan Tokarskyi (Conference conveners, both EUTIM and University of Potsdam)
A Time for Transcendence: Narrative Time after Postmodernism
Raoul Eshelman (University of Munich)
Ukrainian Chronoschisms: Subversive Temporalities in Sophia Andrukhovych’s Writing
Collective Present and Future in Belarusian Poetry: Before and After 2020
“Time Has Melted”: Poetic Articulations of Soviet Temporalities in the Brezhnev Era
Keynote Talk
Colonial Times: Literary Representations of the “Fountain of Tears” of Bağcasaray (Bakhchisarai)
Fri 16 Sep 2022
Models of “Vertical Time” in Recent Belarusian Literature
“Countries of Degraded Form”? How Witold Gombrowicz and Ziemowit Szczerek Play with Historical (Auto)Stereotypes
Televisual Deconstructions of Stalinist Totalitarianism and the Return of the Religious in Andrzej Wajda’s Film “Man of Marble”
Changes of Time in Selected Novels of Jáchym Topol (from City Sister Silver to A Sensitive Person)
Andrea Králíková (Charles University, Prague)
Belarusian Literature Evening
with Alhierd Bacharevič, Julia Cimafiejeva, Artur Klinaŭ, Thomas Weiler, moderated by Tatiana Klepikova (University of Potsdam)