Textual dialogues – dialogical textuality
Department of English Literature and Literary Linguistics, Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań
2-3 December 2016

In cooperation with:
Institute of German Studies
Institute of Romance Languages and Literatures
Institute of Russian Studies

A volume of poems collected by Carol Anne Duffy entitled Answering Back. Living poets reply to the poetry of the past (2007) illustrates how poetry is always a dialogue between past and present between different authors, between different cultures. Contrary to its acronym by bringing together specialists in such diverse fields as culture, literature, anthropology, sociology and history CLASH conference promoted and facilitated inter-cultural dialogues. The idea of dialogue as well as various forms of literary and media appropriations and rewritings will be the focus of CLASH 2016. Similarly to the coda of the poem "Humming-Bird" by D. H. Lawrence, which draws the reader's attention to the fact that we might be looking differently at different a: "We look at him through the wrong end of the long telescope of Time, Luckily for us" (2007: 20), we would like to search for an alternate lens to analyze the texts.
This year’s CLASH would also like to follow the idea of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus (1987: 3-4) who introduced the concept of a rhizome, which time and again works as a point of reference for the study of conflation of different language systems, media aspects, systems of signs and other. Contrary to the well – recognized intertextuality, rhizome appears to better illustrate the multiplicity of influences, the difficulty in tracing back their primordial meaning, or even the lack of one original text of culture, which would provide us with the initial source. Therefore, it well corresponds to the complexity of processes taking place in contemporary humanities.
Following the idea of the interdisciplinarity of the conference, 3rd CLASH proposes to look at culture, literature, anthropology, sociology and history from the point of view of textual interrelations within different branches of humanities, but being especially interested in those textual dialogues, which go beyond the established borders of disciplines mentioned above.
The Conference will be preceded by a one day medieval symposium MMESS (Medieval and Medievalist English Studies Symposium) dedicated to the memory of Seamus Heaney entitled "Courting Calliope and Clio, or on ”spear-Danes”, valiant knights and ”Fire - Thanes” in medieval and post-medieval English and Irish literature" which would begin our discussion of literature, poetry, dialogue, the dialogue between texts and authors from different epochs.

Our plenary speakers will be:
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen - profesor who specializes In mediewal literature. As a graduate from Harvard University, he works at George Washington University as the head of the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. His newest publication Elemental Ecocriticism: Thinking with Earth, Air, Water, and Fire focuses on the ecocritical aspects in medieval literature.

Władimir Sztokman – a Russian poet, a bard and a translator. He studied physics, Russian philology, and philosophy at the University in Rostov. His poems and translations have been published in acknowledged Russian and Polish journals „Иностранная литература”, „Литературная газета”, „Крещатик”, „Odra”, „Topos”. He lives in Cracow. The title of his lecture: Translation of contemporary Russian poetry and prose into Polish.

We welcome proposals for 20 minute papers on topics including (but not limited to) the following areas of study and interest connected with:
• The influence of the Middle Ages on literature, culture
• Medievalist rewritings
• The rewriting of texts, genres, motives
• Influences of different epochs, cultures on contemporary times
• Dialogues between texts/authors
• The reception of texts of art and ‘writing back’
• Adaptation and appropriation
• Experiments with narration
• Contemporary narrators and authors

Abstracts of 300 words should be sent to clashconference@gmail.com by 15th September 2016. Proposals should include the full name, institutional affiliation, and email address of the proposer. The abstracts will be subjects to blind peer review. We aim to inform those whose proposals have been accepted by the end of September. There will be a possibility to publish articles in our third volume of the collected monograph Interdisciplinary Studies Series (once the reviews are positive).

The working languages of the conference are: English, Polish, Spanish, French and Russian.
Conference fee:
300 zł – regular participants, 150 zł – PhD students and MA students (conference fee includes conference materials, coffee breaks, dinner during the first day of the conference, publication)

Organizing Committee:
English and Polish section:
Prof. zw. dr hab. Liliana Sikorska – head
dr Joanna Jarząb – assistant, jjarzab@wa.amu.edu.pl
dr Marta Frątczak – assistant, mfratczak@wa.amu.edu.pl

German section:
Prof. dr hab. Joanna Drynda - head

Russian section:
Prof. dr hab. Wawrzyniec Popiel-Machnicki – head
Dr Anna Stryjakowska – assistant

French, Spanish, Italian section:
Prof. dr hab. Mirosław Loba – head
dr Małgorzata Czubińska – assistant


References:
Duffy, Carol Ann. 2007. Answering Back. Living Poets Reply to the Poetry of the Past. London: Picador.
Deleuze Gilles and Felix Guattari. 1987. Thousand plateaus. Trans. Brian Massumi, London: Continuum.