JU Comparative Literature Student Society is pleased to invite you to an international, student-doctoral conference 'ABOUT US'. The organisers aim at creating a space for discussions around the construction and annihilation of communities in literature / by literature, and comparative studies’ role in researching those processes. The conference will be held on 9-10 May 2024 and is planned as a hybrid event.

'It is not taken into sufficient consideration that Polish culture and literature of the Polish people were only a part of an inherently present, multicultural and multidimensional context'.
Kwiryna Ziemba, A Project of Internal Comparative Studies

'You will leave nowhere out of Poland, Poland is already everywhere!'
Jacek Dehnel, But With Our Dead Ones

We encourage all the participants to reflect on the following topics:

• How do literatures create communities? Do they – and if, how – exclude from communities?
• What is chosen in literatures as demarcation lines between identities?
• What is comparative studies’ role at exploring the community-building processes represented in literatures?
• How is the need of cultural belonging used in literatures?
• To what extent do literatures create languages, and to what extent do languages create literatures?
• Can the voice of minority be heard in the language of majority?
• Extending the horizon of the centre from the perspective of the peripheries – enriching or dispossessing?
• Categorial identities (labels) – freeing or delimiting?
• To what extent do literatures represent interconnections between different types of marginalisation?
• What is the role of geographical context of a literary text?
• Do literatures reproduce stereotypes – or do they deconstruct them?

Please send abstracts in Polish and English via the registration form until 29 March 2024. Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes.