History
2006-2015 activities
In 2006, a series of seminars on the topic of Narrative Identity was organized in several stages, mainly organized by doc. dr. R. Bruzgienė (LLTI), separate seminars were supervised by doctoral student A. Juzefovič (KFMI), doc. dr. A. Jurgutienė (LLTI), and others; VU organized seminar Screening of literature (supervisor doc. dr. N. Arlauskaitė).
In order to intensify comparative studies and individual interdisciplinary research, two open seminars were organized in 2005 for the wider academic community: Creative Psychology (supervisor Assoc. Prof. Dr. L. Jekentaitė, VU); Literature and cinema (Supervisor doc. Dr. N. Arlauskaitė, VU).
In 2007, a seminar “Poetry and Art: Interactions, Exchanges, Overcoming” was organized (leader Dr. G. Bernotienė, LLTI), and an interdisciplinary seminar “Chaos” was held (leader R. Bruzgienė, LLTI).
In November of the same year. an international conference on modern literature and art was held in Barbara, attended by 36 scholars from 10 countries. Two new notebooks were published after this event. Acta litteraria comparativa is included in the LMT-approved international database CSA: Linguistic and Language Behavior Abstracts.
In 2007-2008, LLLA participated in the VPU research project “European Cultures dialogues in Lithuanian literature of the end of the 20th century ”(project manager doc. dr. V. Martinkus). As many as twelve members of the association delivered presentations at the two-year project seminars.
2008 in April VU hosted an international conference Vilnius: Cultural-Literary Reflection (supervisor A. Peluritytė-Tikuišienė), for which LLLA (Dr. Ž. Kolevinskienė) was responsible.
The biggest test for the young association was the 2009 European Congress in Vilnius, Transforming the European Landscape: Meetings of Owners and Strangers. The Lithuanian Association of Comparative Literature appeared as an active member of the European Network of Comparative Literature Studies, which organized the 3rd Congress of this network in Vilnius in 2009. September 11-13.
Preparations for this important international forum took place from the beginning of the year until the autumn. Žydronė Kolevinskienė, the manager of the association's affairs, was especially active. She was assisted by the members of the organizing committee: Natalija Arlauskaitė, Genovaitė Dručkutė, Aušra Jurgutienė, Nijolė Kašelionienė, Loreta Mačianskaitė, Vytautas Martinkus, Vilija Salienė and foreign members of the committee: professors Alain Montandon, Juri Talvet, dr. Lucia Boldrini. The Congress was supported by the Lithuanian State Science and Studies Foundation.
The association participated in the project of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore "European Identity: The Junction of the Center and the Periphery". Project manager - director of the institute dr. Mindaugas Kvietkauskas; funding source - Lithuanian MSF. Doc. dr. Aušra Jurgutienė and the chairperson of the college doc. dr. Nijolė Kašelionienė. The project covered the costs of organizing the congress.
After preparing a project on the theme of the congress, the association received funding for a special publication of Acta litteraria comparativa (funding source - Lithuanian MSF). The congress was also assisted by the permanent sponsor of the LLLA, the Faculty of Lithuanian Studies of the VPU (dean Vilija Salienė, PhD).
The Congress on the Transformation of the European Landscape: Meetings of Owners and Strangers from 22 countries on the European and American continents. For the first time, the event organized by the association was dominated by foreigners. However, all 15 members of the LLLA who took part in the presentations were very active: raising questions, organizing discussions, interpreting (Assoc. Prof. Dr. G. Dručkutė), some chairing plenary sessions and sections.
During the Congress, an open meeting of the European Network was attended, where the activities of the comparative and the guidelines of the Fourth Congress were discussed. Professor Karl Zieger, the new head of the network, who was elected during the round table discussion on the last day of the forum, thanked the LLLA on behalf of all those who had arrived. organization of the Congress.
After the Vilnius Congress, letters of thanks and articles based on the reports were sent to the headquarters of the association. They are published in a special issue of Acta litteraria comparativa.
The year 2010 was dedicated to the preparation of the congress publication. Doc. Dalia Kaladinskiene.
2011 December 2 LLLA together with Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences (LEU) and LLTI organized an international scientific conference Identity of the Baltic Region: Comparative Literature Research. The conference was supported by the Lithuanian Science Council and LEU.
Sixteen speakers (including five foreigners), chairmen of meetings, other active members of the LLLA and a large number of lecturers, students, literary scholars in one day hotly discussed the topics of the conference. The concept of European, national and regional identity was explored, changes in historical experience in the literature of the Baltic States were discussed, the space of deportation and emigration literature, paraliterary factors, motives of the Baltic Sea and its resorts, and current migration problems were highlighted.
A publication of the conference proceedings was published after the event. The articles prepared and selected on the basis of the reports will be published in the Association's continuing publication Acta litteraria comparativa .
Conference for a letter in culture and literature.
2014 September. On 26-27 May, LLLA, together with LEU, organized an international conference "Letter in Literature and Culture", which was attended by over 60 Lithuanian and foreign researchers from Hungary, Greece, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, USA and kitur.
The event, dedicated to the tradition of epistemology, a letter as an instrument of communication and intercultural communication, letter novels, letters of celebrities, a letter as a cultural-textual construction and letter metamorphosis in electronic space, featured renowned professors of comparative literature: Emeritus of New Sorbonne, New Sorbonne dr. Heidi Toelle, lecturer at the University of Athens dr. Peggy Karpouzou, professor at Sokhumi State University, dr. Olga Petriashvili, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Rzeszów dr. Oksana Weretiuk et al.
Conference abstracts can be found here . Photo album: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.957095104306448.1073741998.244503068898992&type=1
The seventh issue of the LLLA publication Acta litteraria comparativa was published: “Letter in Literature and Culture. Research Papers 7 / 2014–2015 ”(Vilnius: Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences Publishing House, 2014 - p. 358)
In the late autumn of 2014, three LLLA members, phonophonists: Genovaitė Dručkutė, Dainius Vaitiekūnas and Nijolė Kašelionienė, returned from a trip to France under the Žiliberas (exchange and cooperation) program. The National University Library of Strasbourg was shown to us by Dr. Julien Gueslin.
The association celebrated its 10th anniversary and elected a new college.
Since 1999, when the Department of General Literature of the Faculty of Lithuanian Studies of Vilnius Pedagogical University started organizing international conferences on comparative studies, the idea to establish the Lithuanian Association of Comparative Literature (LLLA) was born here. 2005 January 13 registered in the Register of Legal Entities, in 2015 it celebrates its 10th anniversary.
Since the establishment of the Association, Professor Nijolė Vaičiulėnaitė-Kašelionienė has been an honorary chairwoman of the LLLA College. December 4 The LLLA College (Prof. Dr. Nijolė Vaičiulėnaitė-Kašelionienė, Prof. Dr. Genovaitė Dručkutė, Prof. Dr. Aušra Jurgutienė, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Žydronė Kolevinskienė, Dr. Manfredas Žvirgž. Dr. Dalia Cidzikaitė) elected Associate Professor Žydronė Kolevinskienė as the Chairperson. An exhibition dedicated to the LLLA was prepared at the LEU Humanities Library on the occasion of the anniversary.
Prof. of the Association College. dr. The report of Nijolė Vaičiulėnaitė-Kašelionienė can be found here .
The first year (2005-2006) of the LLLA
It should be noted that it was the supporters of academically non-traditional intermedial and interdisciplinary comparative studies that were the most proactive in the first years of the association.
With the help of colleagues from the Association, Pedagogical University and the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, Rūta Brūzgienė December 3, 2005 organized a conference Interaction of Literature and Other Arts: Problems of Theoretical Comparative Studies.
2005 Natalija Arlauskaitė started conducting a series of seminars "Screening of Literature". The first seminar “Screenings: Meaningful Issues” was held in May at Vilnius University. According to his manager, the seminar was conceived as an attempt to grasp the fruitful directions of screening studies. The three reports he read presented three strategies for reading / watching screenings. In his report “The Meaning of Structure and the Structure of Meaning: Virginia Woolf and Sally Potter‘ Orlando ’,” Jūratė Levina presented a way of juxtaposing literary and cinematic text based on the concept of plot proposed by Russian formalists. According to formalists, the plot is perceived as a motivation for the dissemination of discursive means different from cinema and literature. Natalija Arlauskaitė's report “Installation Games of Kurosawa with an Idiot” suggested examining the structure of the narrator and the character in Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot and the adaptation of this novel by Akira Kurosawa. The analysis was based on Gerard Genette’s conception of the installation levels, the application of which showed that the meaning of the two texts differed primarily because the metadiegetic narratives of the novel become the intradiegetic narrative of the film. Andrej Oriško read the report "Dracula's Diaries in Browning and Coppola Screenings". Second Workshop on "Contempt for Albert Moravia and Jean-Luc Godard: The Limits of Multiple Translation." Arlauskaitė hosted it on December 6 at Vilnius University. After the screening of the film, presentations were given, and literary and musicologists took part in the discussions.
2005 On September 30, LLTI Leonarda Jekentaitė and Rūta Brūzgienė organized a seminar “Creative Psychology”. As many as six reports were read in it. The greatest interest was aroused by the experimentation of scientists, comparing various creative forms and research methodologies, their exclusive attention to today's cultural life and its unpopular but significant margins. The young doctoral students of the Vilnius Academy of Arts (Salomėja Jastrumskytė, Kęstutis Šapoka) expressed their originality in the seminars, and the necessary dialogue between the generations of scientists took place. Harder or more creative messages managed to provoke fun discussions and even more fun provocations for the listeners (Dr. Stasys Mostauskis). At the seminar, psychologist Jūratė Bajarūnienė introduced her method of psychotherapeutic work. The first intermediate seminars showed that researchers, philosophers, artists, philologists and psychologists from all over the world have something to say, find common ground for discussion, and unexpected comments from other colleagues help to broaden and revitalize their academic research.
Implementing the strategic goal of the association - to knit international relations, in 2005 Dainius Vaitiekūnas went to the international conference in Tartu, where he delivered a presentation on "The Reception of Postmodernism: the Reception of the Literary Conservation of Lithuania". Nijolė Kašelionienė delivered a speech at the international congress "Tribal Dialects" in Florence on September 15-17. The Concept of the Gap in European Literature. On the second day of the congress, a meeting of representatives of European comparative literature associations took place, during which the chairwoman of the LLLA initiated the admission of the Lithuanian Association of Comparative Literature to the European Network of Comparative Literature. Upon joining, LLLA members have good opportunities to expand and maintain contacts with comparative literature centers and organizations in other European countries. Thanks to the coordinator, Lucia Boldrini, various information was obtained on the activities of this European network. Paradoxically, and perhaps not at all, one of the first calls of the International Association struck us from the heights of scientific plans into the reality of the capitalist market. We were invited to show solidarity with all members of the International Association in supporting and writing petitions to prevent the closure of the Institute of Comparative Literature at the University of Innsbruck. The practice of such activities shows that the concentration of researchers in associations, and the latter in international associations, is important not only as a guarantor of scientific but also professional guarantee.
However, the biggest work of the Association in the first year should be the International Conference on Comparative Culturalism, which took place on October 14-15, 2006. Many researchers of the Pedagogical University and the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, who assisted the association, undoubtedly contributed to its success. The conference was attended by 65 researchers from 11 countries (Latvia, Estonia, Austria, Germany, Finland, Spain, the USA, Ukraine, Russia, Australia and Lithuania). At the beginning of the conference, Gertas Mattennklott, Antanas Andrijauskas, Violeta Kelertienė and Vytautas Martinkus read the plenary presentations, later the researchers worked in separate sections, and at the end of the conference they gathered for a general discussion led by Kęstutis Nastopka. The papers read were published in the journal of the same name as the conference and were accessible to the wider academic community. The ritual of the end of comparative conferences has already become the trip of its participants to Trakai, elegantly bohemized contact with the great history of Lithuania's dukes and the beauties of autumn nature. They already have their own historical corners adorned with Talvet's rows.
The first impressions of the LLLA conference can be summarized in several thoughts. The first thought is festive: researchers need such conferences, they show and check the results of their latest work, find new contacts. The closing discussion asked for the conference to be extended to three days so that participants could listen to more presentations. Letters of thanks and suggestions for joint activities to the conference organizers have been flowing for a long time from the researchers who have returned home. The second idea is problematic: how to improve international conferences so that they do not resemble the catastrophe of multilingualism caused by the collapse of the Tower of Babel. After all, it is not possible to choose the standard path of academic communication - English, nor to spend it in a non-communicative swarm of various languages. Ideas have already emerged on how to improve future conferences by structuring them more in different language profiles. The third thought is perspective: it is very important and fun that a lot of young people, both doctoral students studying in Lithuania and those who went to study at Western universities, took part in the conference (Eglė Kačkutė, Laurynas Katkus, Rimas Žilinskas, Jurga Katkuvienė, Jūratė Butkutė, Agnieška Juzefovič, Salom .). In the final discussion, Professor Christina Parnell from Germany did not spare the praise for the high professional qualification of the young generation of Lithuanian philologists. The young colleagues sincerely shared their experiences, as well as translated and mediated for the other participants of the conference. Such researchers are particularly needed and welcome for future comparative conferences and the scientific activities of the association in general. The immediate goal of the association is to actively participate in various research project competitions announced by the EU and the state and to create the most favorable working conditions for its members and especially for colleagues who have completed their doctoral studies. The last thought is geopolitical: it is the association established in Vilnius and the scientific projects it organizes that may have a great prospect. The experience of personal communication with the conference participants shows that a scientist who comes from the West or the East, from Northern or Southern Europe in Vilnius discovers something familiar and close to him, everyone feels good and safe enough. Therefore, one would like to believe that the Lithuanian Association of Comparative Literature and its conferences, which bring together philologists from all universities in the country, can be a place for important and constant international scientific contacts.
Prehistory
The origins of the association should be sought at the Department of General Literature of Vilnius Pedagogical University, which has been organizing international conferences on comparative studies since 1999. Already during the first intelligence conference "Comparative Studies Today: Theory and Practice" (a collection of her reports was published in 2000), there was considerable interest in scholarly comparative literature research, a desire to break the Soviet isolation of the humanities and seek new contacts with colleagues in other countries. The initiator of the conference, Nijolė Kašelionienė, the head of the department, began to negotiate more and more with the lecturers of her department Sigute Radzevičienė, Reda Pabarčienė, Aušra Jurgutienė, Undine Uogintaitė, etc., feeling dissatisfied with the stagnant work system at the university. Therefore, the second The conference “Comparative Studies and Self-Understanding of Culture” (published in 2004) was already much more focused and determined. Its organizers were expected to discuss further the methodological renewal of comparative studies and to invite guests who could give specific advice and help to establish the association. Professors Bertrand Wesphal from the University of Limoges, Phiophore Fyodorov from the University of Daugavpils and Yuri Talvet from the University of Tartu, an excellent specialist in contemporary comparative studies and an active organizer and participant of international conferences, provided a lot of valuable information and support. The discussions of the second conference and the desire of many scholars to gather for joint work, the friendly support of colleagues from the nearby Department of Lithuanian Literature headed by Vytautas Martinkus, and the modest but sincere patronage of the Dean of the Faculty of Lithuanian Studies led to the association.
Before the Association was established, two more meetings had to be organized. 2004 On January 28, a memorable meeting of the initiative group for the establishment of the association took place at the VPU. Lecturers from various Lithuanian universities came to it. It is very important that the director of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore Algis Kalėda and the head of the Academy of Baltoscandia Silvestras Gaižiūnas took part in it, who not only supported the initiative of the association, but also became its official founders, Indrė Žekevičiūtė Center for Comparative Studies initiated by Bronius Vaškelis. The activities and structure of the future association were discussed at the meeting. The remarks and opinions expressed by senior authoritative colleagues - the “father” of Lithuanian comparative studies, now Professor of Bright Memory Vytautas Kubilius, as well as honorary professors Kęstutis Nastopka, Juozas Girdzijauskas, Stasys Skrodenis - were very significant. It was decided to organize the Lithuanian Association of Comparative Literature, the aim of which would be to become a member of the International Association of Comparative Literature and a participant in research projects.
2004 The actual inaugural meeting was convened on December 28, 2006, at which the established agreement establishing the association and the main activities were presented and discussed. Thus, from the initiative to establish the association to its legal registration, it has been a difficult path for a couple of years.
The purpose of the establishment of the Association led to the convening of the first meeting of its members on December 3, 2004, at which the statutes of the Association would be approved, and the directions of activities were discussed again. It was hoped that the Association would enable post-Soviet scholars to express individual initiatives and develop a new style of democratic communication that required to reconcile personal interests with common projects. It has developed as a counterweight to inertly stagnant academic institutions and as an open space for a variety of proactive and non-standard-minded researchers in the literature. It is a real happiness that she immediately received such people. Already at the first meeting of the members, there was a rather heated and undoubtedly important debate. Initially, the main direction of the work - comparative literature research - was supplemented by an equally important direction of intermediate, interdisciplinary, and cultural research.