Several fields are involved in this exploration: While memory studies point out the role of literature in the production of memories, identities and shared futures, recent phenomenological approaches of digital genres emphasize the participatory dimension in reading and writing as crucial to the understanding of literature as a collective resource. Contemporary approaches in the fields of ‘literature and medicine’ as well as ‘law and literature’ explore further the social relevance of literary genres and their affordances in the dealing with community life, social tensions, and traumatic events. The French literary scholar Alexandre Gefen speaks of a development in literary studies that could bring us to “renew both our objects of study and our methods of analysis by opening us to a new interdisciplinarity in which literature becomes closer to us by the recognition of its objects as ordinary.” (Gefen 2021).
Considering such traditions and tendencies, the workshop will explore literature’s ability to shape and reshape the social fabric by enabling new orientations and forms of attention. Participants are invited to share their on-going research while keeping in mind the following questions: How does literature, as a specific social resource, shape the way critical issues such as health, injustice, or sense of community can be grasped today in the various scholarly and national traditions we come from? How do we locate our own approaches in the broader field of literary and cultural studies today?
PROGRAM:
Tuesday 25.04:
9.15-9.45: Welcome and introduction
10.00- 11.00: Alexandre Gefen (University of Sorbonne): «Testimony as a form of care: the writings of the 2015 attacks».
11.00: 11:30: Discussion
11.30- 12.15: Silje Warberg and Ingvild Kjørholt (NTNU): «Caregiving and Literature as Remedium»
12.15-12.45: Discussion
12.45- 13.45: Lunch
13.45-14.15: Filippa Christina Widahl (PhD NTNU): «Children as Caregivers in Contemporary Literature».
14.15-14.35: Discussion
14.45-15.15: Ingeborg Helleberg (PhD University of Oslo): «Ruth Maier's place: A relational mnemohistory».
15.15-15.35: Discussion
15.35-16. 30: Discussion of the whole day
Wednesday 26.04:
9.15- 10.15: Isak Winkel Holm (University of Copenhagen): «Estrangement at Home: Aesthetic Experience and the Experience of Care».
l0.15-10.45: Discussion
11.00.-11.30: Sidsel Boysen-Dall (PhD NTNU): «Shattered Expectations in Caregiving Literature: Reflections on the Shared Reading of Schema-Disrupting Fiction».
11.30-11.50: Discussion
12.00-12.45: Lunch
12.45-13.15: Nina Pilz (PhD, University of Greifswald): «’No Masks Anywhere. The Swedish Carelessness’. Journalistic Narratives on Pandemic Strategies as a Collective Resource of Orientation».
13.15-13.35: Discussion
14.00-14.30: Ingvild Folkvord (NTNU) and Jean Lassègue (Centre Georg Simmel, EHESS): «Terrorist trials under literary scrutiny: Literature as counterterrorist respons».
14.30-15.00: Discussion
15.00-16.00: Concluding discussion.