In partnership with the Brazilian Society on Dostoevsky, the Center of Religion Studies on Dostoevsky and Tolstoy (NERDT/UFJF) invites the entire academic community–researchers and students of national and international competence in the fields of religion, philosophy and Russian literature, and all the scope of researchers interested in literary and philosophical discussion on religion–to the I International Seminar on Dostoevsky and Religion. The event will take place on August 30th and 31st, at the Institute of Humane Sciences in UFJF, in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais.

Connected to the Department of Religious Science and the Graduate Program in Religion Science at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, NERDT intends to bring together researchers and proponents of international reach around the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky and the texture of his dialogues with the religion. Therefore, we look at this meeting with a view to promoting this environment of reflection, debate and dissemination of the philosophical and religious universe present in the work and in the thought of this author.

There is a significant critical fortune that has focused on the religious dimensions of Dostoevsky’s life and work, ranging from classical commentators such as V. Ivanov and N. Berdiaev, to what Susan McReynolds has classified in the thematic dossier on “Dostoevsky and Christianity “of Dostoevsky Studies, as a global phenomenon of return of religion in the studies on Dostoevsky. In the context of Brazilian criticism, the works of Boris Schnaiderman and Otto Maria Carpeaux were the flowering ground of a critique on the relations between art and thought in Dostoevsky’s work. His work as a translator and critic, and his activity as a teacher and founder of the Department of Russian Literature and Literature of the University of São Paulo, was responsible for the formation of a generation of slavists who today carry out a fundamental activity of criticism and translation of Russian Literature in Brazil.

It is within this context of flourishing of studies on Dostoevsky in Brazil combined with the significant interest in the religious dimension of his work that we invite all those interested to participate in the I International Seminar on Dostoevsky and Religion.

Important names in contemporary research in Dostoevsky make up the lecturers board, such as Susan McReynolds (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Havard University, Professor of Russian Literature, Department of Slavic Languages ​​and Literatures at Northwestern University), Maxim Shrayer (PhD in Russian Literature at Yale University, Professor of Russian Literature and Jewish Studies at Boston College), Bruno Barreto Gomide (Doctor of Literary Theory and History at Unicamp, Visiting Researcher at the Górki Institute of World Literature (Moscow), University of Glasgow, Puchskyki Dom (S. Petersburg, Harvard and the University of London) Professor of Russian Literature at the University of São Paulo; Luiz Felipe Pondé (PhD in Modern Philosophy at the University of São Paulo, Professor of Religious Studies at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo) and Jimmy Sudário Cabral (Ph.D. in Theology at PUC-Rio and Université de Strasbourg; Professor of Religious Studies, Department of Religious Sciences at Federal University of Juiz de Fora).

In addition to the lectures, the event will have GTs (Working Groups), whose registrations are already open on the NERDT website (www.ufjf.br/nerdt). Entries for attendees are also available on the same website. Registration and proposals are due by July 31 2017.