Campus Fryslân

This study proposes a new approach to the task of classifying Russian dialects using the method of multidimensional scaling (MDS). The work is based on the data of the Dialectological Atlas of the Russian Language in its entirety: four classifications on the basis of individual linguistic levels (morphology, phonetics, syntax, lexis) are constructed, as well as a general classification that takes into account all the language features reflected in the atlas.

The growing interest "world literature" as the transnational circulation of literary texts enabled scholars to study the ways in which literary works get translated and distributed across different (national and linguistic) borders. Most contributions to the field place Europe's major languages in the centre, with English often in a hypercentral position (De Swaan, 2001). Thus, these languages become the unmarked standard or centre of a world literary system against which other languages and literatures are measured and judged. Recently, however, scholars have started to question the field's biases and implicit norms by pointing out its Eurocentrism. This has led to calls to, for instance, "forget English" (Mufti 2016) and to study literatures coming from the "multilingual local" that have so far remained under the radar (Orsini 2015).

In marked contrast to earlier discussions, theorists have now started to acknowledge and explore the limitations of the concept "world literature". Rather than a description of universal value and potency, the term becomes a normative marker that privileges certain spatialities, traditions and types of writing (Allan 2016, Beecroft 2015). One such limitation lies in a preference for works arising out of monolingual traditions, pointing to an embedding of world literature in (idealized) notions of the nation-state. Because of these predispositions, not all works that circulate beyond their original site of production – world literature in the Damroschian (2003) sense – are marked and understood as such.

For this seminar, we propose to look at literature that emerges from "minoritized" (Tally, 2017) and multilingual spaces and traditions. Not all world literature emerges through Europe's major languages; in other words, it is not only by virtue of translation into English, German, French or other languages of the world literary system's supposed "centre" that literature becomes world literature. Some literature does circulate beyond its original context of production, but remains "peripheral". We are interested in those works that may be called " minor " world literature from worlds/contexts that for one reason or another have not easily featured in by now traditional discussions in the field – whether historically or in the present, and across the globe. We therefore welcome papers on all aspects of minor world literature, including works emerging from multilingual local settings.

Contributions on the following and other relevant topics are invited:
• to trace connections and transnational networks of relations among "peripheral  , ignored or otherwise invisible writers and texts; or
• to bring into focus the circulation of texts in the so-called periphery; or
• to explore aesthetic strategies of mediation of multilingual minority or minoritized writers; or
• to discuss sociological-institutional explanations for literature's (in)visibility.

E-mail Jesse van Amelsvoort (j.d.van.amelsvoort@rug.nl) for more information.

This article interprets Zadie Smith's novel NW (2012) as an attempt to connect E. M. Forster's famous dictum " only connect " with Paul Gilroy's concept of " conviviality. " NW's representation of two friends who are constituted by boundaries instilled by class, race and ethnicity, but who also contest those limits, points to the difficulties faced by many contemporary European minorities. In NW, the idea of race collaborates with that of ethnicity and class to form a strongly racialized logic through which the immigrant's upward mobility is subtly yet decisively affected. NW suggests that Gilroy's convivial society is only possible with Forsterian, interpersonal connections. Only after Leah and Natalie, the novel's central characters, rekindle their friendship, can they set in motion the novel's closing act of justice.

As the representation of Western modernity’s dark undercurrent, the Gothic novel has since its inception in the 1760s developed and transformed alongside that modernity. This paper looks at two contemporary Gothic novels from the Low Countries, Herman Franke’s Wolfstonen (2003) and Saskia de Coster’s Wat alleen wij horen (2015), which are occupied with contemporary globalisation and immigration to the Netherlands and Belgium. Both novels cast the apartment buildings that are central to their plots as Gothic spaces fraught with images of modern, globalised society, as well as widespread anxiety over societal cohesion in ethnically and culturally diverse cities. An interdisciplinary reading constituted by gothic and postcolonial reading practices brings to the fore new elements of the Dutch and Flemish cultural imaginary. It reveals the continuous renewal of the gothic itself, but also into the changes brought to the Low Countries as a result of globalisation and immigration. These have their effect on the construction of community, a process that is articulated in both the form and the content of the novels’ narratives. Ultimately, I argue, the gothic is put to work in these novels as a way of dealing with the anxieties about and uncertainties of a postcolonial world.

In this meeting of the Platform for Postcolonial Readings, we take a cue from Orsini to consider the production of world literature from the perspective of multilingual locals and significant geographies. We interrogate how these new approaches problematize and reinvigorate the concept of world literature, and examine its applicability to postcolonial studies, globalisation studies, migration and minority studies, and other fields.

This paper engages with Zadie Smith’s The Embassy of Cambodia and Najat El Hachmi’s L’últim patriarca, which thematise what Stuart Hall has called being “in but not of” Europe. These narratives capture the changes brought to Europe by migration and globalization, embodied by the young female protagonists. As literary works, they capture in narrative form the difficulties of carving out a space for migrant women in contemporary Europe and suggest that engaging with the major challenges coming to Europe today through narrative is one way to stake a position. Only after rewriting the story can female migrants embrace Europe.