11
SEP
10:00
World Literature as World Crisis
September 11, 2025 at 10:00 to September 12, 2025 at 13:30
Gosposka Hall at ZM GIAM ZRC SAZU, Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana
Organizer: ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies, Slovenian Comparative Literature Association
On September 11 and 12, 2025, the Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies at ZRC SAZU and the Slovenian Comparative Literature Association will host the international conference “World Literature as World Crisis: Discussing World Literature to Change the World.” Devoted to historicizing the existing notions of world literature as so many reactions to anticipated or ongoing world-historical events, the conference will take place at the Gosposka Hall, ZM GIAM ZRC SAZU, at Gosposka ulica 16, Ljubljana. The program book includes a brief introduction, the speakers’ abstracts and bios, and the following program:
Thursday, September 11, 2025
10:00–10:30: Introduction
Blaž Zabel, Slovenian Comparative Literature Association
Jernej Habjan, ZRC SAZU Institute of Slovenian Literature and Literary Studies
10:30–12:00: Session I
Blaž Zabel (FF UL): Homer’s Weltliteratur: Goethe and the Local in World Literature
Sándor Hites (HUN-REN): World Literature from Perpetual War to Perpetual Peace (and Back)
Francesca Lazzarin (UNIUD): An Arc Stretched between East and West: World (or Universal?) Literature in an Early Soviet Publishing Utopia
12:00–12:30: Discussion
12:30–14:30: Lunch (“Šestica,” Slovenska cesta 40, Ljubljana)
14:30–16:00: Session II
Marko Juvan (ZRC SAZU): Small Nations, Big Debates: Empowering Slovenes as a Subject of World History in the Critical 1930s
Anna Björk Einarsdóttir (NTNU): Literature and Class Consciousness: The Proletarian Moment in World Literature
Simon During (UMelbourne): Auerbach: The World-literature Philologist as Ordo Liberal?
16:00–16:30: Discussion
16:30–17:00: Coffee break
19:00: Dinner (“Breg,” Breg 20, Ljubljana)
Friday, September 12, 2025
10:00–11:00: Session III
Lucija Mandić (ZRC SAZU, SAV): Milan Kundera as a Representative and a Theorist of World Literature
Laura Gerday (ULiège): New World Literature, or the “World” in a Semantic Crisis
11:00–11:30: Discussion
11:30–12:00: Coffee break
12:00–13:00: Session IV
Nesrin Değirmencioğlu (METU): World Literature and Uneven and Combined Development: Neoliberalism and Metamodernism in the Novels of Hasan Ali Toptaş and China Miéville
Jernej Habjan (ZRC SAZU): World Literature According to Its Poster Children
13:00–13:30 Discussion and concluding remarks
13:30: Lunch (“Šestica,” Slovenska cesta 40, Ljubljana)
The conference has been funded by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency in the framework of the research project World War Literature: Historicizing the Debate on World Literature as a Debate on World War (N6-0357), which has been hosted by the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Additional funding for the conference has been provided by the Slovenian Book Agency.