Extended deadline - "Platonov revisited. Past and presen t views on the land of the philosophers" (Ghent Univer sity, May 26-27, 2011) - CfP

[Ben Dhooge]

CFP: “Platonov revisited. Past and present views on the land of the
philosophers” (Ghent University, May 26-27, 2011)

 

Extended deadline – November 30, 2010

 

 

The Department of Slavonic and East European Studies at Ghent University
(Belgium) is pleased to announce the international conference “Platonov
revisited. Past and present views on the land of the philosophers”.

 

The conference will be held at Ghent University (Ghent, Belgium) on
Thursday, May 26 and Friday, May 27, 2011

 

 

Keynote speakers:

Philip Bullock (University of Oxford, Oxford)

Hans Günther (Universität Bielefeld, Bielefeld)

Natal’ya V. Kornienko (Institute for World Literature, Moscow)

Thomas Seifrid (University of Southern California, Los Angeles) 
Yevgeny A. Yablokov (Moscow)





Abstracts are invited for presentations addressing the changes in the
perception of Platonov and his works over the last twenty-thirty years.


While in Europe and the United States Platonov’s Chevengur and Kotlovan
found their way to the public as early as in the 1960s and the 1970s, in
Russia these masterpieces were published only in the perestroika era. Of
course, Platonov’s works had already been known before, but often in an
incomplete form. The publication of the novel and the novella – with the
post scriptum of the author! – and the subsequent edition of other unknown
and forbidden works in enormous print numbers stimulated not only the
interest of the reading public, but also gave a strong impulse to the
existing scholarly study of Platonov’s work, both in Russia and abroad. Soon
letters, notes and unknown literary works of the writer-engineer, reactions
on the campaign against Vprok, reports of the writer’s appearances at the
Writers’ Union and much more were brought into the open. These newly
available materials, the new possibility to write about literature outside
of (the previously almost obligatory) ideological presumptions, the fruitful
contacts between Russian and non-Russian scholars, the publication of
translations of parts of Platonov’s oeuvre all contributed to the successful
development of Platonov studies and transformed it into the fully fledged
scholarship it is today.

Now, more than twenty years later – and even more than thirty years after
the appearance of the first studies on Platonov – it is a good moment to
stand still and to have a look at the past and the present (and maybe even
the future) of Platonov studies. It is the aim of the conference to reflect
on the changes in the perception of Platonov and his works over the last
twenty-thirty years in Russia and abroad. The aim of the conference is not
to disclose the newest discovery or analysis regarding Platonov, but to
reflect on the changes in the readers’ reception and the scholarly study of
Platonov’s oeuvre. The following questions take a central place:

 

1. have our views on Platonov (the man, the engineer, the writer, the
thinker) and his oeuvre changed since the first publications in Russia and
the West and the subsequent startup of Platonov scholarship?;

2. what effect has the publication of archive materials of the Stalin-era
had on the study of Platonov’s works?;

3. to what extent was and is the reception of Platonov’s work or aspects of
his work (mythopoetics, philosophy, metaphysics, 
) influenced by the
ideological context of the reader / scholar?;

4. has the dominance of politicized readings of Platonov’s oeuvre come to an
end or has the opposition between anticommunist and procommunist readings
been followed by other ideologically inspired readings?;

5. why should we read Platonov now? During the perestroika era and in the
first years after the collapse of the Soviet-Union one would read Platonov
to retrieve the exceptional legacy of a brilliant but repressed writer, but
what is the reason for reading him now?;

6. is it possible to read Platonov outside of his (more and more
historically distant) socio-political context?; 

7. how has the redefinition of the canon of 20th-century literature in
general and Soviet literature, in particular, affected our understanding of
Platonov?;

8. is the study of Platonov affected by revised concepts and terms and new
scholarly paradigms (cf. modernism vs. avant-garde)?;

9. what will the latest landmark in Platonov scholarship – the acquisition
of Platonov’s personal archive by the Institute for World literature – mean
for the current Platonov scholarship, and will – and if so, to what extent –
the disclosure of Platonov’s personal archive force scholars to reevaluate
the scholarly work written the past 40 years?;

10. what have been the effects of the publication of new works of the writer
and the “depoliticization” on the reception of Platonov’s works and how have
these elements affected translations, readers’ responses to the oeuvre and
its translation, reviews, discussions in the media, adaptations of the
oeuvre to other media, the popularity of Platonov’s works, the status of
Platonov’s work in the Russian canon and in the canon of world literature?

 

We welcome contributions from a variety of methodological approaches and on
any topic relating to this problem. 

 

 

Please submit an abstract (in English or in Russian, maximum 500 words) to
Thomas.Langerak at UGent.be or Ben.Dhooge at UGent.be. Please add your name,
departmental affiliation, email address and the title of your proposed
paper. 

 

The extended deadline for proposals is November 30, 2010. 

 

Abstracts will be peer-reviewed. Notification of acceptance of proposals
will be provided by January, 2011. All abstracts will be made available
prior to the conference through the conference website.

 

Presentations should be in English or Russian. Each presentation will be
allowed 20 minutes, followed by a 10-minute open discussion.



An edited volume with a selection of papers is planned.

 

 

 

Information on registration, transportation, accommodations, and the
conference venue will be forthcoming.



Please forward this call for papers to your colleagues and graduate students
who may be interested in presenting or attending.




Sincerely,

Thomas Langerak (Ghent University)

Ben Dhooge (Ghent University)

Department of Slavonic and East European Studies

Ghent University

Rozier 44

9000 Gent

Belgium

 

For details or questions, please contact the members of the Organizing
Committee: Thomas Langerak (Thomas.Langerak at UGent.be) or Ben Dhooge
(Ben.Dhooge at UGent.be).

 


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