Conference: The Pain of Words: Narratives of Suffering in Slavic Cultures (May 9-11, 2008, Princeton)

[Olga Meerson]

Dear Narratives of Suffering Conference People,
I am responding to the SEELANGS announcement of the conference. I would like to present a paper titled "Two Strategies of Pain Narrative: Conspicuous Omission (Dostoevsky) and Re-Familiarization (Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, and Andrey Platonov)". I have been working on Platonov's language of pain since 1986 (my MA essay at Columbia), on both him and Dostoevsky, since 1991 (PhD Dissertation topic and defense, ibid., a book in Russian on Platonov in 1997 and, in English, on Dostoevsky, 1998), and on all four writers, forever, as a teacher, researcher, and translator or translation consultant. I have abundant written and published (as well as even more abundant unwritten and unpublished) material on Dostoevsky and Platonov but am also really interested in Pushkin's Captain's Daughter and "Travels to Arzerum" and Tolstoy's "Hadji-Murad".
I can prepare a short (20 minute) paper, or a plenary (50 min) one, as you tell me. The topic of your conference has been long overdue, for the purposes of Russia, the whole Eastern Europe and Eurasia region and, last but not least, its burning relevance for USA today. My gratitude and congratulations. Actually, I may talk more narrowly, say, about "Implicating the American Reader in Russians' Suffering: Why Do We Care?" Only, tell me what you prefer. I am very eager to participate in any serious forum on the matter. 
Please let me know what you need from me (by now, I am not exactly a junior scholar).

Awaiting reply,
o.m.

----- Original Message -----
From: Elena Gapova <e.gapova at WORLDNET.ATT.NET>
Date: Monday, October 29, 2007 0:29 am
Subject: [SEELANGS] Conference: The Pain of Words: Narratives of Suffering in Slavic Cultures (May 9-11, 2008, Princeton)

> Conference: The Pain of Words: Narratives of Suffering in Slavic 
> Cultures(May 9-11, 2007, Princeton)
> Call for Conference Papers
> THE PAIN OF WORDS:
> 
> Narratives of Suffering in Slavic Cultures
> 
> Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
> 
> Princeton University
> 
> May 9-11, 2008
> 
> 
> Recent studies of emotions have pointed to a particular role of 
> pain in
> shaping identities and narratives. Regardless of their disciplinary
> affiliations, scholars seem to agree that verbal expressions of 
> pain first
> of all draw attention to the suffering individual instead of 
> describing the
> actual experience of pain. Narratives of suffering provide the 
> individualwith a powerful symbolic presence. They create 
> emotionally charged
> communities. Such narratives also lay the foundation for larger 
> social,political or moral claims.
> 
> This link between pain, representation, and subjectivity is well 
> documentedin Slavic cultures, where vivid depictions of suffering 
> saturate popular and
> elite cultures alike.  As the young Mayakovski put it, "I am with 
> pain,everywhere." However, this conference wants to move beyond the 
> documentingof omnipresence of pain in Slavic cultures. Instead, we 
> want to explore how
> social, linguistic, aesthetic, moral, gender, etc. conventions 
> determinespecific contents of pain in different historical periods 
> and different
> geographical locations. What are the symbolic contexts in which 
> experiencesof pain are recognized? To what extent do available 
> cultural practices
> constrain or encourage certain narrative versions of pain? What 
> gets lost in
> the process of translating traumatic experience into narratives of
> suffering? How is the phenomenon of pain used to galvanize 
> individual and
> group identities, to justify social values, to motivate artistic 
> projectsor, in some cases, to undermine (or generate) political 
> movements? In short,
> what are those discourses through which Slavic cultures acquire and 
> expresstheir concepts of pain?
> 
> We seek to address these problems by bringing together an 
> interdisciplinaryand international group of people interested in 
> exploring the value of pain
> in such diverse fields as history, literature, film, music, 
> performing arts,
> everyday life, religion, ideology, politics, law, psychology, and 
> history of
> medicine. We invite papers to reflect upon the diverse vocabulary of
> expressions of pain that have been constructed across Slavic space 
> and time.
> We are also interested in comparative studies that could place Slavic
> narratives of suffering in larger cultural, historical, or 
> geographicalcontexts.
> 
> We especially encourage submissions that approach concrete textual or
> ethnographic materials in a theoretically informed way, without 
> reiteratingthe alleged masochistic fascination of Slavic cultures 
> with pain and
> suffering.
> 
> Please send your abstract (300 words) and CV to 
> <oushakin at princeton.edu> by
> February 1, 2008.
> 
> We might be able to offer a limited number of travel subsidies for 
> severalforeign presenters.
> Finalists will be contacted in the middle of February, 2008.
> 
> 
> 
> Program committee:
> 
> 
> 
> Serguei Oushakine (Princeton), Devin Fore (Princeton), Petre Petrov
> (Princeton),
> 
> Alexander Etkind (Cambridge/Princeton), Nancy Ries (Institute for 
> AdvancedStudy).
> 
> http://slavic.princeton.edu/events/calendar/detail.php?ID=1628
> 
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