Conference Program
THURSDAY, JUNE 1
10:00 – 10:15: Registration
10:15 – 10:30: Welcome
- Vera Faber (Oslo / Kirkenes)
- Christine Meklenborg Nilsen (Head of the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages at the University of Oslo)
10:30 – 12:00: Concrete and imagined Borders
Chair: Vera Faber (Oslo / Kirkenes)
- Tetiana Ostapchuk (London)
Crossing Borders of Chernobyl Exclusion Zone: from Real to Imaginary and Back - Marta Smolińska (Poznań) and Burcu Dogramaci (München)
Artistic Borderscaping of Migration and Economics: the Polish-German Border as a Phantom Border between East and West - Olha Polishchuk (Mykolaiv / Saarbrücken)
The real and mental Border in T. Antypovych‘s Novel “Pomyrana”
12:00 – 12:15: Break
12:15 – 13:15: Keynote
Moderator: Aileen A. Espíritu (Kirkenes)
Susanne Frank (Berlin)
1922-2022: Soviet “binary” Border Politics, monolingual Nation-building, and a fatal Legacy.
13:15 – 14:15: Lunch Break
14:15 – 15:45: Shifting Borders
Chair: Bjarge S. Fors (Kirkenes)
- Tetiana Shestopalova (Mykolaiv / Saarbrücken)
Borders of Memory and Identity of Donbas in the Novels of Olena Styazhkina and Volodymyr Rafeyenko - Elena Nikiforova (Helsinki / Athens)
“Narva that we lost and gained”: Cultural Rebordering of a Border City through the Means of documentary Theater - Irene Sywenky (Alberta)
Shifting eco-borders: Environmental Visual Art in Poland and Ukraine
15:45 – 16:00: Break
16:00 – 17:30: Border Transformations
Chair: Tuulikki Kurki (Joensuu)
- Aigi Heero (Talinn)
Going back to Ukraine. Dmitrij Kapitelman’s Novel “Eine Formalie in Kiew” (A Formality in Kyiv) - Even Teistung (Oslo)
East German non-identities. Jenny Erpenbeck’s “Aller Tage Abend” - Johan Schimanski (Oslo)
Towards a Border Poetics of European Borderlands
17:45: Reception
FRIDAY, JUNE 2
10:00 – 11:00: War, Memory, and Trauma
Chair: Aileen A. Espíritu (Kirkenes)
- Alina Mozolevska (Mykolaiv / Saarbrücken)
Discursive Power of Maps and Borders in Ukrainian Visual Arts: Narrating Russia’s War in Ukraine - Damjan Božinović (Oslo)
Reading Border Aesthetics in Kristian Novak’s “Dark Mother Earth” (Črna Mati Zemla) (2013) and “Gypsy, but Fairest of them All” (Ciganin, al’ Najljepši) (2016)
11:00 – 11:15: Break
11:15 – 12:45: Oppression, Memory, and Trauma
Chair: Susanne Frank (Berlin)
- Elizaveta Khachaturyan (Oslo)
How to narrate Silence and Fear: Children’s Books about the Thirties in the Soviet Union - Mónika Dánél (Budapest) and Stijn Vervaet (Oslo)
Transnational Memory, Border-Crossing, and Perpetrator Trauma in Post-Yugoslav Fiction: Zoltán Danyi and Faruk Šehić - Svitlana Kot (Mykolaiv / Saarbrücken)
“Perimeters of our Lives”: exploring Biopolitics of Borders in repressive Societies through the Lens of Dystopias
12:45 – 13:45: Lunch Break
13:45 – 14:45: Round Table – (Post-)repressive Spaces
Moderator: Johan Schimanski (Oslo)
- Tuulikki Kurki (Joensuu)
Short Keynote: After the Narrative: Vernacular Memory of Trauma in Borderlands - Vera Dubina (Bremen / Berlin)
Public History, Soviet Union, Putin‘s Russia - Bjarge S. Fors (Kirkenes)
Border Studies, Border Regions, Anthropology - Yngvar B. Steinholt (Tromsø)
Slavonic Studies, Cultural Studies, Popular Music Studies
14:45 – 15:45: Challenged Borders
Chair: Zhanna Guzenko (Kirkenes)
- Witold Kanicki (Poznań)
POLAROID. Cultural Contraband of the Cold War Era - Vera Faber (Oslo / Kirkenes)
Soviet Ellipses – Omission as Border Transgression in Photography of the Soviet Era
15:45 – 16:00: Break
16:00 – 17:30: (De-)Materialized Borders
Chair: Marta Smolińska (Poznań)
- Natalija Arlauskaite (Vilnius)
Stitching Political Body: Microsurgery, Geography, and Soviet Medical Imagery - Agnese Zviedre (Riga)
Overcoming Borders: Creating Accessibility in the Exhibition “Invisible Lives” - Fabian Heffermehl (Oslo)
Borders of Skin
18:00 – 19:00: Public Lecture (Sophus Lies Auditorium)
Moderator: Vera Faber (Oslo / Kirkenes)
Vera Dubina (Bremen / Berlin)
The Weapons of the Weak. Silent Protest in Russia
19:30: Dinner
The Public Lecture is open to the public without registration.
If you wish to attend the panels, you need to sign up:
https://nettskjema.no/a/334971
Location: Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages (ILOS), University of Oslo (UiO), Norway.
Panels: HF-12 Niels Treschow Hus, Niels Henrik Abels vei 36, UiO Blindern.
Public Lecture: Sophus Lies Auditorium at UiO, Moltke Moes vei 35, UiO Blindern.
The conference builds on the MSCA-project “Soviet Ellipses. Omissions as Techniques of Border Transgression in Photography, Literature, and Everyday Life” (SOVEL) at UiO.
Organizer: Vera Faber.
Contact: vera.faber@ilos.uio.no
With cooperation of the Barents Institute Kirkenes and Johan Schimanski.
Co-funded by The European Union, UiO:ILOS, The Barents Institute (UiT), UiO:demokrati, and Border Readings (UiO).
Student Assistant: Eleonora Mincheva.
co-funded by
Border Readings Research Group
