Abstract

The workshop’s aim is to deepen our understanding of the cultural and intellectual presence of the Central and Eastern European diasporas (Czech, Hungarian, Jewish, Polish, Romanian, Ukrainian, etc.) in North America. We seek to explore the historical backgrounds of the transatlantic migration, patterns, and dynamics of the “new” immigration to Canada and the USA; Central and Eastern European migratory experiences in the 20th century, and their literary (fictional/nonfictional) representations; histories of diasporic literatures, and their coexistence with the mainstream American and Canadian literatures. Young and experienced scholars are encouraged to submit papers addressing the following aspects:

-theoretical approaches to migratory processes, integration, assimilation, and the diasporas;
-histories and geographies of Central and Eastern European im/migration and re-emigration/return migration;
-preservation of ethnic identities vs. cultural assimilation, the Old Country vs. “the new home”;
-Central and Eastern European intellectual and cultural heritage in North America;
-literary and transmedia narratives about immigrants and immigration;
-narratives of trauma in diasporic literatures;
-individual, collective, and cultural memory, remembering and nostalgia in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry;
-ethnic and hybrid identities in diasporic literary narratives;
-contacts/non-contacts, silences/cultural dialogues of the diasporas in Canada and the USA with their countries of origin;
-translations of anglophone texts into Central and Eastern European languages (Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Ukrainian, etc.);
-readership and perception of diasporic literary texts in Central and Eastern Europe.

The program of the conference will be posted very soon. 

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This workshop is organized within the Sustaining Ukrainian Scholarship program supported by the VolkswagenStiftung (Germany).