[ecrea] CFP: Contact Zones in Contemporary Eastern European Literature, Cinema and Visual Culture

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Call for Papers
Contact Zones — Transnational Encounters, Dialogues and 
Self-Representation in Contemporary Eastern European Literature, Cinema 
and Visual Cultures -- Conference on 28-30 September 2017, Eötvös Loránd 
University, the Institute of Hungarian Literature and Cultural Studies, 
Budapest, Hungary
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Since the fall of communist regimes, the geographical, political, and 
cultural concept of Eastern Europe has been continuously debated in 
various discursive and institutional contexts.Rather than engaging 
further in a discussion operating with exclusion, delimitation, setting 
borders and limits, we propose to envisage Eastern Europe as a “contact 
zone”, a place of cultural encounters performed by both social, everyday 
practices and aesthetical, ideological, discoursive strategies 
detectable in the literary and cinematic production.

The recurrent topics involving various types of mobility, 
(mis)communication, dialogue or translation often appear both as 
figurations of (national, sexual, individual) identity quests and as 
allegorical reflections upon the existing (post-colonial, national) 
discourses on identity and selfrepresentation. While we value the 
Eastern European context in terms of a more complex image of a troubled 
discoursive identity, we consider the case of Hungarian and Romanian 
literature and cinema as paradigmatic for contradictory transnational 
encounters. Although sharing a communist past and a post-communist 
present, the contemporary literature and cinema of the two countries 
presents big discrepancies when dealing with memory work, identity 
crisis and self-representation.

The different cinematic and literary paradigms they represent are, 
however, often reconciled and taken onto a metadiscursive level in 
co-productions and literary adaptations. Literary works and films 
themselves appear as “contact zone”, and co-productions produce 
heterotopia (Ewa Mazierska) where cultural encounters take place. 
Applying to contemporary Eastern European settings Hamid Naficy's term 
of “accented cinema”, equally referring to the languages, dialects, 
accents spoken in the film and to the irregularities of the film's 
production mode, the question arises whether the “accented” term can be 
used for literary works focusing on intercultural encounter. Arguably, 
the accented mode becomes a common denominator for those to whom Nicolas 
Bourriaud's concept of the “radicant” artist (directors, actors, 
writers), involved in a constant translation between cultures and media, 
also applies.

We encourage the participation of both scholars and artists eager to 
engage in an intercultural, interdisciplinary and intermedial dialogue 
on the (interrelated) discursive strategies of self-representation and 
transnational dialogue in both an Eastern European and a Hungarian 
Romanian context. We expect theoretical, conceptual approaches and 
in-depth analyses of works raising the issue of the applicability of 
postcolonial theories with regards to the East-West dichotomy, as well 
as the self-colonizing strategies thematized and performed by Eastern 
European artists.

The international conference will organize a special workshop, dedicated 
to the dialogue between Romanian and Hungarian cinemas, including 
academics and film makers. The main event will be joined by two of the 
most important representatives of the Romanian film industry, Oana 
Giurgiu and Marian Crișan who will be available for a round table 
discussion. This will be only one of the series of cultural events 
including film screenings and discussions with writers, film directors 
and critics from both countries.

The event is co-organized by the ongoing project Space-ing Otherness. 
Cultural Images of Space, Contact Zones in Contemporary Hungarian and 
Romanian Film and Literature (hosted by the Institute for Hungarian 
Literature and Cultural Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest) and 
the Ekphrasis Research Centre for Trans-disciplinary Studies 
(Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania)  with the extraordinary patronage of 
The Romanian Cultural Institute in Budapest. Other partners include: The 
Film, Photography and Media Department, Sapientia Hungarian University 
of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Keynote speakers:
Edit András, Senior Research Fellow, Research Institute for Art History 
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
Ágnes Pethő, Head of the Film, Photography and Media Department, 
Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Mihaela Ursa-Pop, Head of the Department of Comparative Literature, 
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

Submissions may include (but are not limited to) the following topics:

Representations of changes of régime and periods of transition
Travelling theoretical concepts and transnational encounters
Post-colonial theory in the Eastern-Western European context
Self-colonizing strategies
Historical, political, cultural background of literary and cinematic 
transnational encounters
Forms of mobility as figurations of self-representation
Imagined and imaginative geographies of self-representation
Historical-political allegories of transnational encounters
Intermediality as figuration of transnational dialogue
Medium specificity and (national, sexual, individual) identity
National and transnational narratives and changing points of view
Transnational literary adaptations - intercultural translations?
Narratives of neighborhood
Nation representation and identity formation in contemporary cinema
Gender roles in transition / transformation
Gender in the mirror of literary and cinematic genres
Memory of the past and the re-inventing of history through cinema
Trauma and dealing with the recent past in EE cinema
Nostalgia and melancholia as emotional/existential post-communist attitudes
“Border crossings”: subversive self-representations
Language (accent, dialect, grammatical, lexical aspects) and (national, 
sexual, individual) selfrepresentation
Linguistic diversity as figuration of transnational encounters
Eastern European “accented cinemas”: production modes, artistic strategies
Co-productions as productions of heterotopias
The possibility of an “accented literature”
The figure of the “radicant artist” in Eastern European, Eastern-Western 
European and HungarianRomanian
context
Re-configuration of a common Hungarian-Romanian past and future projections
Films as expressions of specific cultural experiences and their impact 
on society
Parallels between the film industries and film cultures in the region

Abstracts of max. 150 words are expected to be sent to 
(contactzones01 /at/ gmail.com) with 2-3 bibliographical references and a 
biographical note not exceeding 100 words. Pre-constituted panels are 
also welcome. The call is equally addressed to academic scholars, 
researchers and PhD or MA students.

Deadline of submissions: 31 May 2017. Notifications of acceptance will 
be sent by 15 June 2017.

Conference participation fee: 50 Euros The official language of the 
conference is English.

We are planning to publish the best articles resulting from the 
conference presentations in:
The peer reviewed journal Ekphrasis (ERIH/ EBSCO http://ekphrasisjournal.ro)
The Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies 
(http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/actafilm/film-main.htm)
The online journal Contact Zones. Studies in Eastern European Film and 
Literature (http://contactzones.elte.hu/journal)
and / or a separate volume.

Organizing committee: Mónika Dánél, Zsolt Gyenge, Zsolt Győri, Hajnal 
Király, Doru Pop, László Strausz, Teréz Szűcs, Balázs Varga, Ferenc Vincze.

http://contactzones.elte.hu
http://www.ubbcluj.ro
http://ekphrasisjournal.ro
http://film.sapientia.ro/en/


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