Mutual cultural, literary and linguistic traumas of Slavic people in the Modern Era
The Institute of Slavic and Baltic Philology of the Eötvös Loránd University and Studia Slavica (AK-Journal) announce the international conference
Mutual cultural, literary and linguistic traumas of Slavic people in the Modern Era
on 16th-17th October 2025
in Budapest, at Eötvös Loránd University Faculty of Arts (1088 Budapest, Múzeum krt. 4-6.)
The modern Slavic national development gave rise to numerous social and ethnic contradictions in the modern era. These contradictions also took on linguistic, literary or cultural forms. The recording and narration of these created collective traumas in national communities (J. C. Alexander). The discourse related to the represented traumas contributed to the construction of collective identity and its continuous reinterpretation during the 19th and 20th centuries. Due to collective memory, the given communities also were able to draw the appropriate lessons from the traumas (J. Assmann).
The conference focuses on the mutual traumas of Slavic nations, primarily from the perspective of how culture, literature and language have preserved imprints of them and how the narration of these traumas has shaped the identity of the national communities in question. The cultural and linguistic analysis of Slavic-Slavic traumas can also help to process them. Building resilience, through communal rituals and storytelling, can contribute to the collective healing process.
In this regard, we therefore prioritise papers that explore what traumas the Slavic peoples inflicted upon one another in the past and present, how these experiences can be narrated, and what imprints they have left in their languages, cultures and literatures.
The conference offers opportunities for papers in the following fields and topics:
- traumas, cultural and linguistic consequences of the process of becoming a modern nation
- cultural, linguistic and literary reflection of Slavic historical cataclysms
- cultural imprints and linguistic consequences of the South Slavic war(s)
- Ukrainian-Russian war as a trauma in Slavic cultures and languages
- the impact of traumas on the formation of Slavistics as a discipline in the past and present.
- Slavic integration and disintegration traumas (e.g., Czech-Slovak, Polish-Russian, Serbian-Croatian, Croatian-Slovenian, Bulgarian-Macedonian, Russian-Ukrainian, etc.)
- (post)colonial relations of Slavic languages and cultures after the Soviet, Czechoslovak and Yugoslav eras
Among the possible methodological approaches, we warmly welcome classical and modern linguistic, philological and postmodern cultural perspectives. At the same time, we also encourage methods exploring the functioning of cultural memory. Additionally, we welcome review approaches rooted in comparatistics and postcolonial cultural criticism.
Languages of the conference presentations are English and all Slavic languages.
Application deadline: May 31, 2025.
Please send the application form (download here) to the email address studiasl@btk.elte.hu.
There is no participation fee for the conference, but all costs related to the conference (travel, accommodation, meals, etc.) are the responsibility of the applicant.
The papers of the conference will be published in the academic journal Studia Slavica (according to the rules of the journal).
The organizing committee of the conference
Róbert Kiss Szemán - president
Krisztina Menyhárt
Péter Pátrovics
András Zoltán
Kata Juracsek
Sarolta Tóthpál – secretary
Artur Grottger: Mournful Tidings (Żałobne wieści) 1863
(Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts)