March 10, 2025, 10:00-16:00
ITAT Recherchierraum, UR 33.1.102 (Merangasse 70/1st floor, 8010 Graz)
Please RSVP by March 7 to lisa.schantl(at)uni-graz.at
Speakers: Marianna Deganutti & Johanna Domokos
Description:
As a mirror and sensorium for processes of cultural transformation, literature with its possibilities for artistic manifestations of multilingualism represents an important resource for theoretical and applied research. Multilingualism acts as a rhetorical and poetic device, and as such enables a variety of nuanced readings of literary texts. In addition, plurilingual authors offer a differentiated understanding of creativity across geographical, political and linguistic boundaries.
Researchers Marianna Deganutti (Slovak Academy of Sciences) and Johanna Domokos (Bielefeld University and Károli University, Budapest) have dedicated their research to the field of literary multilingualism. At this event of the core topic Multilingualism, Migration and Cultural Transformation, they will give researchers and students an insight into theory and practice of this rapidly expanding domain.
The first lecture, “Introduction to Literary Multilingualism,” will give the attendees a first insight into existing research activities and theoretical concepts. In the second lecture, “Examples of Literary Multilingualism,” the theoretical concepts will be applied, discussed and illustrated using examples from contemporary literature. After a joint lunch break (refreshments and snacks will be provided), participants are invited to engage in a discussion with the researchers, critically reflect on the presented content, and apply the learned methods in a workshop.
Biographies:
Marianna Deganutti (Slovak Academy of Sciences) studied in Italy, the UK and Slovenia. She holds a DPhil in Modern Languages from the University of Oxford. From 2016 to 2018 she was a Research Associate at the University of Bath, where she worked for the Horizon 2020-funded project “Unsettling remembering and social cohesion in transnational Europe” (UNREST). She is the author of several articles on borderland studies, literary multilingualism and exile in leading international academic journals. Her new monograph on literary multilingualism in borderlands was published by Routledge in 2023. Together with Johanna Domokos she wrote Literary Code-switching and beyond.
She is co-editor (with Michela Baldo) of the Special Issue “Code-switching as a Narrative Resource” (Forum for Modern Language Studies 2024) and (with Sandra Vlasta) of the Special Issue “Trauma and Multilingualism in Literature” (The Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies 2024).
Johanna Domokos is an expert on Finno-Ugric languages and cultures. She has published several works on multilingual literature in North and Central Europe. Originally from Transylvania, Prof. Domokos has worked and lived in various countries and now teaches at universities in Hungary and Germany. She is also a writer, translator and editor of multilingual poetry.