CFPs

Call for Papers: The Cities and Towns of and in Dostoevsky (Istanbul, Oct 2020)

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The Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society is pleased to announce its Second International Symposium, to be held in Istanbul (Turkey), October 19-22, 2020.

The Symposium will be organized in collaboration with:

  • Institute of Literature of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
  • National Museum of Literature (Sofia)
  • The Community of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church in Istanbul (Bulgar Ortodoks Kilisesi Vakfi, Istanbul)

The topic of the Symposium is:

The Cities and Towns of and in Dostoevsky

The symposium’s program will be orientated toward the following problems:

  • The question of the space in Dostoevsky. The specificity of the town’s space in Dostoevsky.
  • Topics on topoi in the novels of Dostoevsky: the hierarchy of topoi, “privileged” topoi, and the typology of topoi.
  • Dostoevsky as a writer of the city/town. The phenomenology of the city/town in Dostoevsky: the street, the bridge, the square, houses, slums and cabins, taverns, hotels, and parks. The question of real and “imaginary” cities/towns.
  • The Russian cities/towns in Dostoevsky: Moscow, Omsk, Semipalatinsk, Novokuznetsk, Tver etc. and the Russian ways of Dostoevsky.
  • European cities/towns in Dostoevsky: Dresden, Geneva, Florence, Naples, London, Ems, etc. and the European ways of Dostoevsky.
  • St. Petersburg in Dostoevsky.
  • Constantinople and the Holy Land in Dostoevsky.
  • Topics on “Space and Time,” “On the threshold” and “On the eve,” and Dostoevsky on the eve of his 200-year anniversary.

Specialists of various fields are invited to participate in the Symposium: including literary scholars, linguists, philosophers, architects, anthropologists, theologians, psychologists, and others.

The official languages of the Symposium are Russian and English.

Presentations should last no more than 20 minutes and will be followed by 10 minutes of discussion.

Applications and abstracts (up to 2000 characters, including spaces) must be submitted to the following e-mail address: symposium2020@bod.bg

Deadline for the submission of applications: 31 December 2019.

The number of participants at the Symposium will be limited to 40.

The registration fee will be 130 Euros for participants and 80 Euros for guests, respectively. The registration fee includes: abstract publication, paper publication, coffee breaks, cultural program, and excursion.

The cultural program of the Symposium will include sightseeing in Istanbul as well as one-day-trip to the Princes’ Islands, concluding with a celebratory dinner.

Accommodation and travel expenses are to be borne by the participants.

Venue for the Symposium: The Building of the Bulgarian Exarchy (Istanbul – Şişli, 124 Abide-i Hürriet Caddesi Str.).

Organizing Committee of the Symposium: Emil Dimitrov (Sofia, Chair), Hulya Arslan (Istanbul, Vice Chair) Stoyan Assenov (Sofia), Philip Kumanov (Sofia), Basil Liase (Istanbul), Kader Hasanova (Istanbul), Ivan Zelev (Sofia), Rosanna Casari (Bergamo, Italy), Anastasia Gacheva (Moscow), Jordi Morillas (Barcelona, Spain), Pavel Fokin (Moscow).

Program Editing Committee: Emil Dimitrov, Philip Kumanov, Nina Dimitrova (Sofia), Аlessandra Elisa Visinoni (Bergamo, Italy), Alexander Kochetkov (Niznyi Novgorod, Russia).

The Social Board of the Symposium includes eminent and popular scientists and cultural activists in Bulgaria and Turkey.

The Program Committee will review the submissions and decisions will be announced by March 1, 2020.

All information about the symposium will be updated in a timely manner and available on the website of the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society: https://bod.bg/bg/

We look forward to seeing you in Istanbul!

This is the second International Symposium organized by the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society. A writeup of the first appears here on Bloggers Karamazov: ‘To Uncover the Secret of the Person, While Preserving the Secret as a Secret’ – A Review of the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society’s International Symposium “The Anthropology of Dostoevsky” – check it out!

Call for Papers: Havoc and Healing (Uppsala, March 2020)

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Call for Papers

Havoc and Healing: Insights into Human Action in Tolstoy and Dostoevsky

Conference at Uppsala University, 26–27 March 2020

In the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, human action is frequently destructive, leading collectively to war and individually to murder or other forms of social and familial disruption. Concomitantly these authors offer some of the most incisive psychosocial insights available in cultural discourse into the motivations and dynamics of such behavior.

Focusing on Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, this conference will examine the full complexity of these insights, explicit in philosophical statements and implicit in the embodied human experience of the fictional characters.

Keynote speakers:

Robin Feuer Miller, Brandeis University
Donna Tussing Orwin, University of Toronto

We welcome paper proposals on topics such as (but not limited to):

  • Depictions of war, crime and injustice
  • Depictions of family, domestic happiness and discord
  • Existential questions such as free will and the existence of God
  • The relation of these questions to such formal aspects as narratorial and textual structures
  • The question of “polyphony”: Without adducing the writer’s presumed position, does the novel in question privilege certain standpoints over others or do several standpoints remain equally valid?

The general format is a 20-minute presentation followed by 10 minutes for discussion. However, participants may propose another time-frame or format, e.g. a roundtable discussion on a particular topic. The conference will be held in English.

There will be no conference fee. Participants are expected to book their own accommodation and travel. Suggestions of hotels in Uppsala will be provided in due course.

Please send your paper title, an abstract (150–200 words) and a short bio (100 words) to the organizers Julie Hansen (julie.hansen@moderna.uu.se) and Torsten Pettersson (torsten.pettersson@littvet.uu.se) by January 10, 2020. Notification of acceptance will be given by the end of January.

This conference is organized with support from the Department of Modern Languages at Uppsala University (www.uu.se).

CFP: Dostoevsky Beyond Bakhtin Panel Stream at AATSEEL 2020

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This is a call for proposals to participate in the “Dostoevsky Beyond Bakhtin” stream at AATSEEL 2020 in San Diego. 

Since the 1980s, the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin have dominated approaches to Dostoevsky’s art and found productive applications in a vast variety of disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences.  Without questioning either the legacy of this impact or the originality of the theories themselves, it is arguable that the firm hold of Bakhtinian paradigms over Dostoevsky studies at this point in time leads mostly to rote readings that reach predictable conclusions.  This panel stream proposes that both Dostoevsky studies and the Slavic field more broadly stand to benefit from a more critical assessment of Bakhtin and a more robust, imaginative, and forward-looking debate about alternatives and future directions.

The stream seeks to initiate a vibrant scholarly conversation that would be structured around two specific questions.  First, for all the acuity of his theoretical modeling, how may Bakhtin have been wrong about Dostoevsky?  To what extent may Bakhtin’s influential readings of specific works by Dostoevsky be actually seen as misreadings?  Just how “unfinalized” are Dostoevsky’s novelistic discourses and how open-ended is his “polyglossia”?  To what extent may an implied reader that Bakhtin posits, and whose reading experience he claims to be reflecting, be too idiosyncratic to serve as a viable model of the reader of Dostoevsky’s fictions?

Second, what new vision of Dostoevsky’s art might emerge if we move beyond Bakhtin and no longer treat his exegeses as inviolable essential “truths” about the writer or an inescapable point of reference? What aspects of Dostoevsky’s fictional universe – neglected narrative, ethical, psychological, and ideological dimensions – might then come into view?  What new theoretical perspectives might productively assist us in this task?  How might Dostoevsky’s work be made relevant to current debates within the humanities?

For more information about this stream, please contact Edyta Bojanowska. Details about panel streams at AATSEEL 2020 can be found here. Proposals for “Dostoevsky Beyond Bakhtin” are due by May 1 (early deadline) via the AATSEEL membership portal – indicate that your proposal is for this stream in your abstract. For more information, please visit the AATSEEL website.

Approaches to Teaching Crime & Punishment

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We would like to invite all Dostoevsky scholars to complete a survey that is designed to gather information about instructors’ methods and materials for teaching Crime and Punishment. We will use these results for a new volume on the novel that we are proposing for the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature. Please answer the questions at https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5TJHPVC and click Done when you are finished. All respondents to the survey will be acknowledged in the published volume, and the editors may quote anonymously from your responses in their introduction. Please indicate in your answers if you do not give permission to be acknowledged or quoted.

We are also soliciting proposals for contributions to the volume. If you wish to submit an essay proposal (see item 12 for requirements), please send it by e-mail to mkatz@middlebury.edu or burry.7@osu.edu. You may also send queries, comments, or supplemental materials such as course descriptions, syllabi, assignments, and bibliographies as attachments (doc, docx, rtf or pdf required). Surface mail submissions may be sent to Professor Michael Katz, 1712 Sperry Road, Cornwall, VT 05753 or Professor Alexander Burry, 400 Hagerty Hall, 1775 College Road, Columbus OH 43210].

Proposals and survey responses are due by 1 August 2018, after which the survey will no longer be available online.

Michael R. Katz, Middlebury College

Alexander Burry, The Ohio State University

Image credit: Panda with Oar on Deviant Art

CFP: XVII International Dostoevsky Symposium

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The XVII International Dostoevsky Symposium
The XVII International Dostoevsky Symposium will be held at Boston University in the city of Boston (with the participation of Harvard University, Suffolk University, Wellesley College, Brown University, and the Harriman Institute, Columbia University), 15-19 July, 2019.
Abstracts: Proposals for papers on one of the Symposium themes will be accepted until July 1, 2018. Please send your proposal using the submission form at http://www.bu.edu/wll/dostoevsky-2019/. The Program Committee will review the submissions, and decisions will be announced on the IDS website by October 1, 2018. The Program will be announced on April 28, 2019.
The official languages of the Conference are Russian and English. Presentations should last about fifteen minutes, to be followed by 5 minutes of discussion.
Symposium participants will be limited to about 150 speakers. Membership in IDS is required before registration. Further information about membership can be found here: http://www.dostoevsky.org.

XVII Симпозиум международного общества Достоевского
XVII Симпозиум международного общества Достоевского состоится в Бостонском университете в Бостоне, США. Финансовую и организационную поддержку окажут Harvard University, Suffolk University, Wellesley College, Brown University и Harriman Institute, Columbia University. Симпозиум будет проходить с 15 по 19 июля 2019 года.
Заявки на участие в Симпозиуме будут приниматься до 1 июля 2018 года. Пожалуйста, присылайте тезисы докладов и регистрационные формы в электронном виде через портал hhttp://www.bu.edu/wll/dostoevsky-2019/. Отборочная комиссия рассмотрит ваши заявки и объявит состав участников на сайте Международного общества Достоевского к 1 октября 2018 года. Программа симпозиума будет сформирована и опубликована к 28 апреля 2019 года.
Официальные языки симпозиума – русский и английский. Каждому участнику выделяется 15 минут для доклада и дополнительно 5 минут для дискуссии.
Количество участников симпозиума с докладами – около 1 5 0-ти человек. До регистрации необходимо подтвердить членство в Международном обществе Достоевского (IDS). Дополнительная информацияо членстве в IDS размещена на сайте : http://www.dostoevsky.org.

Symposium Theme:
150 years of The Idiot
The Symposium will celebrate 150 years of The Idiot, with a focus on new and multidisciplinary approaches to the novel. Sessions will include:

  • The Idiot in its time and 150 years later
  • Digital Dostoevsky
  • Late Dostoevsky and The Life of a Great Sinner
  • Dostoevsky and the West
  • Dostoevsky and Translation
Cultural Program
The cultural program will include a visit to Walden Pond, a film screening at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and a tour of historical landmarks.
Housing and Meals
Participants will be housed in air-conditioned dormitories on the Charles River Campus of Boston University (in central Boston, right next to the St. Paul Street subway stop) at a price of $ 86 per person a night.
Buffet-style breakfast and lunch will be served each morning and noon, provided courtesy of a series of co-sponsors, including Boston University, Harvard University, Brown University and Wellesley College. Coffee and refreshments will be served throughout the day courtesy of the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.
The Symposium will end with a celebratory banquet overlooking the Boston Harbor.
Funding
Accommodation and travel expenses will be borne by the participants, but we are dedicated to developing a fund to help defray conference fees and the costs of travel and accommodations for those in need of financial assistance.
Conference Fee
The conference fee will be $150 for participants ($100 for spouses).
Visas
For participants from countries requiring visas to the US, letters of invitation will be issued by the International Students and Scholars Office at Boston University.
Airport and Transportation
Boston Logan Airport is located near downtown Boston. The average time on the subway from the airport to the Boston University campus is under one hour. The average taxi fare from the airport to campus is $35.

Тема симпозиума:
150 лет со дня публикации романа «Идиот»
Симпозиум отметит 150-летие романа «Идиот» и осветит новые и междисциплинарные подходы к изучению романа. Предполагаемые темы заседаний:

  • «Идиот» при жизни Достоевского и 150 лет спустя
  • Достоевский и информационные технологии ( Digital Dostoevsky )
  • Поздний Достоевский и «Житие великого грешника»
  • Достоевский и Запад
  • Достоевский в переводах
Культурная программа
В программу симпозиума будут включены поездка на Уолденский пруд, экскурсия по историческим местам Бостона, а также просмотр фильмов в Бостонском музее изобразительных искусств.
Проживание и питание
Участникам будет организовано проживание на кампусе Бостонского университета. Университет предоставляет кондиционированные комнаты в общежитии по цене 86 долларов в день на человека. Общежитие находится в центре города, на берегу реки Чарльз, недалеко от станции метро St. Paul Street.
Завтраки и обеды (шведский стол) в течение 4х дней будут обеспечены нашими спонсорами — Boston University, Harvard University, Brown University и Wellesley College. Кофе и легкие закуски обеспечит Harriman Institute. Симпозиум завершится «Пиром на пирсе» — банкетом в бостонской гавани.
Финансирование
Большинство участников должны будут сами оплатить проезд и проживание, но мы понимаем, что некоторым коллегам может понадобиться финансовая помощь. Мы постараемся найти средства и обеспечить поддержку тем, кто в ней нуждается.
Регистрационный взнос
Для участников с докладом взнос составит 150 долларов. Для гостей и членов семей – 100 долларов.
Визы
Всем участникам, кому требуется виза в США, будут высланы официальные приглашения из Бостонского университета.
Как добраться из аэропорта
Boston Logan Airport расположен недалеко от центра города. На метро Вы сможете добраться до университета меньше, чем за час. Средняя стоимость поездки на такси (20-25 минут) составляет 35 долларов.
Организаторы / Conference co-organizers:

  • Yuri Corrigan (Boston University)
  • Evgenia Cherkasova (Suffolk University)
  • William Mills Todd III (Harvard University)
  • Svetlana Evdokimova (Brown University)
  • Deborah Martinsen (Columbia University)
  • Carol Apollonio (Duke University)
  • Brian Armstrong (Augusta University)
Спонсоры / Sponsors :

  • The International Dostoevsky Society ( IDS )
  • The North American Dostoevsky Society (NADS)
  • Boston University Department of World Languages and Literatures
  • Harvard University Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures
  • Brown University Department of Slavic Studies
  • Wellesley College Department of Russian
  • Suffolk University College of Arts and Sciences
  • Harriman Institute, Columbia University
  • The North American Dostoevsky Society

For more details, please visit the symposium website.

 

CFP – First Symposium of the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society

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In collaboration with Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the National museum of Literature (Sofia), the Museum of Christian Art (Sofia), the Gorky Institute of World Literature (Moscow), the State Museum of the History of Russian Literature (Moscow), the Research Center of Vjacheslav Ivanov (Romе), and the Society of Akira Kurosawa (Japan), the Bulgarian Dostoevsky Society is organizing an interdisciplinary symposium focusing on the anthropology of Dostoevsky in reference to philosophical anthropology and European culture of the 20th century,  Russian religious-philosophical thinking and culture of the 20th century, and specifically on the novel “Idiot” (on occasion of the 150th anniversary of the publication of the novel). The symposium will take place in Sofia on October 23-26, 2018.

The invitation is addressed to specialists from various fields of knowledge and research such as philosophers, specialists in literary studies, linguists, theologists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, etc. The official languages of the symposium are Russian, English and Bulgarian. Presentations, which should last exactly 20 minutes, will be followed by 10 minutes for questions and discussion.

Prospective participants should submit abstracts (up to 250 words) by e-mail to symposium2018@bod.bg by 31 January 2018. The organizing committee will get back to you with their decision at the beginning of March. The formal call for papers (in Russian and English) can be found here (and includes more information), and the preliminary schedule can be found here.

All those who work on Dostoevsky are warmly invited to consider participating in this symposium!

CFP: Revolutionary Dostoevsky: Rethinking Radicalism

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20-21 October 2017
University College London – School of Slavonic and East European Studies
Convenor: Sarah J Young

Deadline for abstracts: 4 August 2017

Revolutionary-Dostoevsky.jpegFrom Notes from Underground to The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s work confronts the consequences of the socialist and materialist ideologies that were taking hold in Russia and beyond, and seeks alternatives in forms of spiritual renewal and ethical action that – however reactionary some of his later publicistic writing – are in many ways equally radical. Coinciding with the 100th anniversary of the Russian revolutions and celebrating the publication of a new translation of Crime and Punishment edited by Sarah Young, this conference will reassess Dostoevsky’s legendary status as ‘prophet’ of the revolution and its totalitarian aftermath. Bringing together humanities and social science scholars, it aims to build new understandings of the notion of ‘the radical’ in all senses in Dostoevsky’s writing, and foster interdisciplinary approaches to explore what his work has to contribute to a new era of social upheaval and political and religious extremism. Potential subjects for papers include:

  • Dostoevsky’s critique of terrorism, populism and revolution, in contemporary and historical perspectives
  • radical ethics and Christianity as Dostoevsky’s alternatives to revolutionary thinking
  • Dostoevsky as reactionary thinker and radical artist
  • Dostoevsky and dissidence
  • Radical approaches to researching and teaching Dostoevsky
  • transforming Dostoevsky – in the arts and criticism

Confirmed speakers include Carol Apollonio (Duke University), Stanley Bill (University of Cambridge), Artemy Magun (European University at St Petersburg) and George Pattison (University of Glasgow).

The conference will also feature an exhibition specially curated by the St Petersburg Dostoevsky Museum, and a round table and reception marking the launch of a new translation of Crime and Punishment published by Oxford University Press.

If you are interested in giving a paper, please send a title and short abstract (c. 250 words) to Sarah Young (s.young@ucl.ac.uk ) by 4 August 2017. For more details, see the original CFP at this link.

CFP: International Working Group on Dostoevsky and Religion

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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.