Ghent University, Belgium | 14 – 15 September 2023

en francais

Call for Papers

In partnership with Antwerp University (Belgium), Gothenburg University (Sweden), Leuven University (Belgium) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) (Belgium)

The history of feminism and the history of feminist literature are often studied in separate disciplines, though in reality they are closely entwined. To explore the connections and intersections between these two disciplines, this conference looks at the development of feminism through the lens of the media, and more specifically, the national, international, and transnational modes of public outreach which women’s rights activists, journalists, editors, and writers have resorted to from the early nineteenth century to the second part of the twentieth century. This conference thus seeks to engage in a discussion about the cultural and ideological transformations of the concept of feminism over time and across geographical and language boundaries.

The conference is organised as part of a Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) funded project on transnational perspectives on feminism affiliated to Ghent University (Belgium). It will take place in Ghent. Although we invite proposals for papers on the full range of topics related to the conference theme, we particularly welcome transnational, cross-cultural, multilingual, and global approaches to encourage a more comprehensive outlook on feminism(s).

Topics can include, but are not limited to:

• Pioneering feminist activists with careers as journalists and/or literary authors
• Women’s periodicals, their development and exchanges
• International women’s rights congresses
• Programmatic feminist novels linked to political history
• Feminist/anti-feminist propaganda
• Campaigning for “difference” feminism, or different interpretations of feminism
• Morality debates and the development of national feminisms
• Advertisement campaigns on feminist/anti-feminist themes
• Feminism and trans-imperialism: India, African colonies…
• Feminist exhibitions
• Suffragette movements
• Women and the film and television industry: feminism and popular culture
• Theoretical approaches linked to feminism in the media

We are honoured to receive as keynote speakers for the event Prof. Catherine Clay (Nottingham Trent University) and Prof. Lucy Delap (Cambridge University).

The working language of the conference is English. We welcome proposals from researchers at all stages of their careers. The conference will be an in-person event. Travel and accommodation costs will have to be covered by the participants. A small registration fee may be requested.

Proposals of around 250 words (references not included) for 15 to 20-minute papers and a short CV (no more than 200 words) should be sent to Dr. Eloïse Forestier (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) by 15 November 2022. We invite individual case studies as well as comparative, theoretical or methodological approaches. We also welcome proposals for joint panels of three papers. Please include a brief rationale for the panel along with an abstract and CV for each presenter.

For more info, please visit the conference website at www.femed.ugent.be.

The third ESPRit online seminar series takes as its general theme ‘sources beyond the periodical text’. It launches on 8 April 2022 with an opening lecture by Filippos Tsiboglou, Director General of the National Library of Greece, followed by two research presentations (by Zsuzsa Török and Levente T. Szabó) on 13 May. The third session, to be held on 17 June 2022 at 3 PM CET, featured the following contributions: 

Nora Ramtke (Ruhr-Universität Bochum), ‘August Lewalds Europa (1835-1844) and its Supplements: Archiving the Abundance’

The most basic question of what belongs to a periodical when it comes to archiving practices is not always an easy one. Whether periodical scholars work with digitised periodicals or with archived material, we know that we don’t examine them in the state in which they were published originally but bound in a more or less book-like form and then again converted to digital copies. August Lewald’s Europa, a popular magazine published in the 1830s and 1840s, came out with a whole bunch of supplements, fashion plates, lithographs, steel engravings, and music sheets. I will discuss this periodical as a fascinating example in terms of material diversity that reveals traces not only of various archiving practices but of notions of bookishness and periodical formats.

Hannah Connell (King’s College London and British Library), ‘Uncovering the relationships between periodicals through editorial correspondence: Networks of Russian-language emigre periodicals in interwar Paris’

 Sovremennye zapiski (Contemporary Notes) is the preeminent Russian-language literary and socio-political journal published between 1920 and 1940 in Paris. Smaller periodicals targeting specific communities appear and disappear with great regularity in the Russian-language publishing landscape of interwar Paris. Sovremennye zapiski’s editors kept a close eye on developing trends in interwar periodical publishing. Their editorial correspondence reveals more than simply the procedures behind a single journal. Significant aspects of SZ’s collaboration and competition with newspapers and magazines are visible through these editorial discussions. In addition, there is relatively little substantial editorial correspondence for other Russian-language émigré periodicals. It is possible, however, to recover certain aspects of the editorial procedures of other periodicals from the editorial archive of SZ. Understanding the relationships between these periodicals reveals how the place of this thick journal in émigré society changed over its publishing life.

For the first time in East-Central Europe, the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit) convenes its 2022 (10th) international conference in Budapest, Hungary, to focus on the following theme: Periodicals beyond Hierarchies: Challenging Geopolitical and Social “Centres” and “Peripheries” through the Press.

Date: 7–9 September 2022

Venue: Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) – Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest and online (Zoom)

Conference programme and abstracts are available here. 

Registration for offline and online participants is open via this link. 

In conjunction with the conference, a hybrid postgraduate workshop will be held. 

Date: 7 September 2022

Venue: Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) – Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest

Workshop programme and abstracts are available here. 

The hybrid event is co-organized by the Museum of Fine Arts – Central European Research Institute for Art History (KEMKI) – Artpool Art Research Center, Budapest, the European Society for Periodical Research (ESPRit), and Petőfi Literary Museum (PIM) – Kassák Museum.

This Budapest ESPRit Conference was streamed in real time through our Youtube Channel. Please click here to watch the recordings of the conference presentations.

The third ESPRit online seminar series takes as its general theme ‘sources beyond the periodical text’. It launched on 8 April 2022 with an opening lecture by Filippos Tsiboglou, Director General of the National Library of Greece. The second session, held on 13 May 2022 at 3 PM CET, featured two research presentations: 

Zsuzsa Török, Research Centre for the Humanities, Institute for Literary Studies, Budapest, ‘Sources for Anonymous Contributors to Periodicals: The Case of the Hungarian Stephanie Wohl and The Scotsman’

Stephanie Wohl, a Hungarian writer and journalist from Budapest, contributed a series of thirty-two letters between 1875 and 1881 to The Scotsman, Scotland’s iconic Edinburgh-based national newspaper. Wohl reported on Hungarian life and manners and covered a range of topical events usually associated with special correspondents. Her articles followed the tradition of journalistic anonymity and carried the by-line ‛From an Occasional Correspondent’, ‛By an Occasional Correspondent’, ‛From a Hungarian Correspondent’, or ‛From our own Correspondent’. Relying on digital resources and archival research, this paper proposes a transnational approach to periodicals and periodical contributors. It provides a methodological case study using the example of Stephanie Wohl’s contribution to The Scotsman, focusing on the challenge of establishing her authorship. In doing so, it will introduce a research procedure that consists of identifying a corpus of articles supposedly authored by Wohl. This corpus has been delineated relying on Hungarian short news items testifying for Wohl’s engagement with foreign media. Benefitting of the ProQuest’s British Periodicals multidisciplinary database, it was possible to identify this body of texts as publications that came out in The Scotsman. Finally, making use of The Scotsman’s business records preserved in the National Library of Scotland, there is a strong possibility to certify that Wohl had indeed authored these texts. Though the articles have not been signed by Wohl, yet, the archival material contains information pointing to her undeniable authorship. The paper concludes that sources beyond the periodical text are crucial in determining the identity of anonymous periodical contributors. These sources, moreover, may open up new, unexpected avenues for the study of international communication networks, and, in Wohl’s case, of strategic collaboration between émigrés and their homeland contacts.

Levente T. SZABÓ (Ph.D. habil.), Babeș-Bolyai University, ‘Reconstructing the Entangled History of the First International Journal of Comparative Literary Studies’

The multilingual Acta Comparationis Litterarum Universarum (1877-1888) is one of early comparative literature's most fascinating and puzzling phenomena. Founded by two Eastern European polyglots, edited in Kolozsvár/Cluj/Klausenburg and London, the first review specialized in the emerging comparative literary discipline succeeded in attracting around 120 collaborators worldwide. This broad linguistic and cultural appeal made the journal the perfect frame for the most diverse and radical methodological questions, experiments, and opinions.

Despite the high interest for the pioneering journal, its extreme multilingualism and the diversity of its collaborators made it almost impossible to track the wide-ranging history of this crucial little periodical. Based on continued efforts of archival research of more than a decade, my paper attempts to survey the role archival materials could play in reconstructing the entangled visions of comparative literature standing behind this important early institution of comparative literary studies.