Ricercatrice (RTD B) / Assistant professor, Dipartimento di Lingue e Culture Moderne, Scuola di Scienze Umanistiche, Università di Genova (current position)
Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna: Professoressa a contratto (adjunct professor) a.a. 2021/22
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz: Researcher (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin 2020-2021); Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Fellow (2017-2020)
Project: European Travel Writing in Context, https://travelwriting.uni-mainz.de
Pressemitteilung JGU: http://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/9653_DEU_HTML.php
Press release JGU in English: http://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/9653_ENG_HTML.php
2008 PhD in Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Vienna, Austria; Title of PhD-dissertation: „A comparison of literature in the context of migration in German and English“
2002 First Degree (Magister Artium) in Comparative Literature and English, University of Vienna, Austria; Title of MA-dissertation: “The Reception of Salman Rushdie in the German-speaking countries”
Supervisors: Bachleitner, Norbert and Eckel, Winfried
Address: Dipartimento di Lingue e Culture Moderne
Università di Genova
piazza S. Sabina 2
16124 Genova
ITALY
Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna: Professoressa a contratto (adjunct professor) a.a. 2021/22
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz: Researcher (wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin 2020-2021); Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Fellow (2017-2020)
Project: European Travel Writing in Context, https://travelwriting.uni-mainz.de
Pressemitteilung JGU: http://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/9653_DEU_HTML.php
Press release JGU in English: http://www.uni-mainz.de/presse/aktuell/9653_ENG_HTML.php
2008 PhD in Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, University of Vienna, Austria; Title of PhD-dissertation: „A comparison of literature in the context of migration in German and English“
2002 First Degree (Magister Artium) in Comparative Literature and English, University of Vienna, Austria; Title of MA-dissertation: “The Reception of Salman Rushdie in the German-speaking countries”
Supervisors: Bachleitner, Norbert and Eckel, Winfried
Address: Dipartimento di Lingue e Culture Moderne
Università di Genova
piazza S. Sabina 2
16124 Genova
ITALY
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Books by Sandra Vlasta
Literarische (Mehr)Sprachreflexionen positioniert sich an der Schnittstelle von Wissenschaft und Kunst und legt den Schwerpunkt auf die Verbindung von Texten zeitgenössischer mehrsprachiger AutorInnen und wissenschaftlichen Beiträgen zu ihrem Werk: SchriftstellerInnen denken in poetologischen Texten sowie in Gesprächen über ihr Verhältnis zu ihren Sprachen nach, LiteraturwissenschaftlerInnen antworten darauf und beleuchten literarische Mehrsprachigkeit aus theoretischer Perspektive.
Mit (Original-)Beiträgen von Bachtyar Ali, Marica Bodrožić, Anne Cotten, Tomer Gardi, Olga Grjasnowa, Barbi Marković, José F. A. Oliver, Katja Petrowskaja, Dragica Rajčić, Ilma Rakusa, Saša Stanišić, Michael Stavarić, Sina Tahayori und der Künstlerin Himani Gupta.
Mit wissenschaftlichen Analysen von Natalia Blum-Barth (Mainz), Monika L. Behravesh (Kassel), Deirdre Byrnes (Galway), Núria Codina Solà (Leuven), Renata Cornejo (Ustí nad Labem), Anne Fleig (Berlin), Walter Schmitz (Dresden), Silke Schwaiger (Wien), Barbara Siller (Cork), Johann Strutz (Klagenfurt), Masahiko Tsuchiya (Nagoya), Sandra Vlasta (Mainz) und Stefan Weidner (Köln).
Barbara Siller ist Lecturer am Department of German/University College Cork.
Sandra Vlasta ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Gutenberg-Institut für Weltliteratur und schriftorientierte Medien, Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft/Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
The book titled Literarische (Mehr)Sprachreflexionen (publishing house praesens / Vienna) positions itself between academia and literary arts and focuses on the connection between texts by contemporary multilingual writers and scholarly works. While the writers reflect on their relationship with their languages, literary scholars respond to their work and debate literary multilingualism from a theoretical standpoint.
The book features original works from prominent multilingual authors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland such as Bachtyar Ali, Marica Bodrožić, Anne Cotten, Tomer Gardi, Olga Grjasnowa, Barbi Marković, José F. A. Oliver, Katja Petrowskaja, Dragica Rajčić, Ilma Rakusa, Saša Stanišić, Michael Stavarić, Sina Tahayori and of the artist Himani Gupta (cover).
The responses to the literary work include contributions by Natalia Blum-Barth (Mainz), Monika L. Behravesh (Kassel), Deirdre Byrnes (Galway), Núria Codina Solà (Leuven), Renata Cornejo (Ustí nad Labem), Anne Fleig (Berlin), Walter Schmitz (Dresden), Silke Schwaiger (Wien), Barbara Siller (Cork), Johann Strutz (Klagenfurt), Masahiko Tsuchiya (Nagoya), Sandra Vlasta (Mainz) and Stefan Weidner (Köln).
Barbara Siller is Lecturer in the Department of German/University College Cork and is the Director of the MA Applied Linguistics Programme.
Sandra Vlasta is a Research Fellow at the Gutenberg-Institut für Weltliteratur und schriftorientierte Medien, Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft/Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
http://www.praesens.at/praesens2013/?p=7121
2020, ISBN 978-3-7069-1003-3, 384 Seiten, brosch.
€ [A] 34,90 / € [D] 33,90
der Avantgarde und von Schriftstellerinnen mit Migrationshintergrund, die diese Unterbrechungen von Kontinuität repräsentieren, aber auch Brüche bewirken: Die Avantgarde bricht stilistisch mit konventionellen
narrativen Formen und Ausdrucksweisen; der Wechsel von bedrucktem Papier zu Bildschirmen und digitaler Programmierung verändert das Schreiben und Lesen. Exophone Schriftsteller mit Migrationshintergrund
schreiben anders als Autorinnen, die sich in ihrer Heimatkultur bewegen und ihre Erstsprache verwenden; sie stellen damit eindeutige kulturelle Zuschreibungen in Frage.
Die Herausgeber
Prof. Dr. Norbert Bachleitner lehrt Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Wien. Prof. Dr. Ina Hein ist Japanologin mit kulturwissenschaftlichem Schwerpunkt an der Universität Wien. Dr. Károly Kókai ist Privatdozent am Institut für europäische und vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, Abteilung
Finno-Ugristik, der Universität Wien. Dr. Sandra Vlasta forscht derzeit als Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Fellow an der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
Articles & Book Chapters by Sandra Vlasta
The whole volume, edited by Jana-Katharina Mende (Halle/Saale), is available OA here: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110778656/html?lang=de
By contrast, in Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane islands are present not in a strictly geographical sense, but on a metaphorical level. Also here, the title refers to an ‘island’ within the city of London: Brick Lane is a street which is and, in particular in the 1980s and 1990s, when the main part of the plot is set, was a centre for immigrants from Bangladesh. The main protagonist Nazneen and her family live in Tower Hamlets, the district where also Brick Lane is located. Especially for Nazneen as a woman the buildings where her apartment is situated become islands during the first years of her stay in Great Britain. She experiences the outside only by looking through the windows, hardly ever leaves the flat. Also in this novel, the home left behind is depicted as an island, even though it is the landlocked country of East Pakistan/later Bangladesh. This island stands for the protagonists’ past (and future) and is the place where Nazneen’s sister sends her letters from. In Ali’s text too the metaphorical situation of an island is reflected in its structure: In the course of the plot, Nazneen leaves the house, i.e. the ‘island’, more regularly all the time and eventually manages a ride to the very centre of London by herself. – Here again, we observe a movement away from the island.
In all three texts, leaving the island has both the meaning of crises and new beginnings: Whereas for the female protagonists, leaving the island is difficult at first, in the end it is the starting point for a process of emancipation. Only leaving the island enables them to start a life of their own, to develop independent personalities. The male characters, on the other hand, are left behind in this process. Although leaving the island often was their idea in the first place (Chanu in Brick Lane had already lived in London for some time before marrying Nazneen and taking her to the UK; Gilbert in Small Island had already been to the UK as a soldier during WW II), they get stuck between the old and the new home, the old and the new island – shipwrecked in between, so to say. The women’s slow process of emancipation at first is unnoticed by them and later cannot be caught up. They seem unable to take up the movements on the ‘new island’ which for the female protagonists are part of the emancipation process: The search for new places to live, the exploration of the surroundings, the appropriation of space on the ‘new island’.
The proposed article will explore the various meanings and functions of ‘island’ in the proposed postcolonial texts by looking at them in a comparative way. Furthermore, it will show in what way the movement away from, towards and on an island can depict and be perceived as a process of emancipation. As mentioned above, in the course of the analysis quite a few shipwrecks will have to be dealt with too.
Abstract English
This article is a case study of the aspects of power and attention in literature, and examines both in the context of the German Book Price. This prize has become a powerful marketing tool in the German-speaking world during the last ten years. The creators and organizers of the German Book Prize recognise the importance of attention in literature and have tried to get as many actors as possible involved in prize-related attention: publishers, authors, retailers, the Börsenverein [Book Publishers and Retailers Association] itself, and the many kinds of literary critics. The problem remains that this attention is maximized within certain power structures. So who draws attention in this process and how does it happen? Who has the opportunity, within the framework of the hierarchies of the field, to use this attention or to participate in it?
Dabei ist das Buch auf mehreren Ebenen mehrsprachig, so zum Beispiel (1) in der Figur des (streckenweisen Ich-)Erzählers, dessen Erstsprache offensichtlich nicht Deutsch ist, (2) im broken German als Kunstsprache, als artifizieller/ästhetisierter/literarisierter Varietät des Deutschen, (3) in der expliziten Mehrsprachigkeit – im Text sind neben dem Deutschen auch andere Sprachen und deren Sprecher präsent, (4) im Metadiskurs über Sprache (sowie über Literatur und Erzählen) etc.
Der vorgeschlagene Beitrag analysiert, wie auf Grundlage dieser Mehrsprachigkeit die Affektivität von Sprache (und die besondere Affektivität, die in mehrsprachigen Kontexten entstehen kann) bei Gardi auf der inhaltlichen Ebene narrativ dargestellt, auf der formalen Ebene performiert und damit auf der poetologischen Ebene reflektiert wird. Nicht zuletzt ist zu fragen, wie der Text gleichzeitig die Emotionen der (deutschsprachigen) LeserInnen anspricht (und zum Teil affektive Prozesse in der Rezeption vorwegnimmt), wie schon die Jury-Diskussion beim Bachmann-Preis gezeigt hat.
http://www.ieg-ego.eu/vlastas-2020-de
Der Artikel beschäftigt sich mit Daniel Zipfels Roman "Eine Handvoll Rosinen" (2015), einer zeitgenössischen literarischen Reaktion auf die Themen Flucht und Migration in Europa und Österreich. Der Fokus des Beitrags liegt auf der Darstellung des Flüchtlingslagers Traiskirchen und der literarischen Verarbeitung von Asylgesetzen und juristischer Diktion im Buch – Aspekte, mit denen Zipfel einen innovativen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Literatur über Flucht und Migration leistet und sich gleichzeitig in eine lange österreichische Tradition der literarischen Verhandlung von Recht und seiner Sprache einschreibt. Damit bietet der Roman eine höchst aktuelle Auseinandersetzung mit der österreichischen Bürokratie und Rechtsprechung im Asylbereich.
Literarische (Mehr)Sprachreflexionen positioniert sich an der Schnittstelle von Wissenschaft und Kunst und legt den Schwerpunkt auf die Verbindung von Texten zeitgenössischer mehrsprachiger AutorInnen und wissenschaftlichen Beiträgen zu ihrem Werk: SchriftstellerInnen denken in poetologischen Texten sowie in Gesprächen über ihr Verhältnis zu ihren Sprachen nach, LiteraturwissenschaftlerInnen antworten darauf und beleuchten literarische Mehrsprachigkeit aus theoretischer Perspektive.
Mit (Original-)Beiträgen von Bachtyar Ali, Marica Bodrožić, Anne Cotten, Tomer Gardi, Olga Grjasnowa, Barbi Marković, José F. A. Oliver, Katja Petrowskaja, Dragica Rajčić, Ilma Rakusa, Saša Stanišić, Michael Stavarić, Sina Tahayori und der Künstlerin Himani Gupta.
Mit wissenschaftlichen Analysen von Natalia Blum-Barth (Mainz), Monika L. Behravesh (Kassel), Deirdre Byrnes (Galway), Núria Codina Solà (Leuven), Renata Cornejo (Ustí nad Labem), Anne Fleig (Berlin), Walter Schmitz (Dresden), Silke Schwaiger (Wien), Barbara Siller (Cork), Johann Strutz (Klagenfurt), Masahiko Tsuchiya (Nagoya), Sandra Vlasta (Mainz) und Stefan Weidner (Köln).
Barbara Siller ist Lecturer am Department of German/University College Cork.
Sandra Vlasta ist wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin am Gutenberg-Institut für Weltliteratur und schriftorientierte Medien, Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft/Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
The book titled Literarische (Mehr)Sprachreflexionen (publishing house praesens / Vienna) positions itself between academia and literary arts and focuses on the connection between texts by contemporary multilingual writers and scholarly works. While the writers reflect on their relationship with their languages, literary scholars respond to their work and debate literary multilingualism from a theoretical standpoint.
The book features original works from prominent multilingual authors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland such as Bachtyar Ali, Marica Bodrožić, Anne Cotten, Tomer Gardi, Olga Grjasnowa, Barbi Marković, José F. A. Oliver, Katja Petrowskaja, Dragica Rajčić, Ilma Rakusa, Saša Stanišić, Michael Stavarić, Sina Tahayori and of the artist Himani Gupta (cover).
The responses to the literary work include contributions by Natalia Blum-Barth (Mainz), Monika L. Behravesh (Kassel), Deirdre Byrnes (Galway), Núria Codina Solà (Leuven), Renata Cornejo (Ustí nad Labem), Anne Fleig (Berlin), Walter Schmitz (Dresden), Silke Schwaiger (Wien), Barbara Siller (Cork), Johann Strutz (Klagenfurt), Masahiko Tsuchiya (Nagoya), Sandra Vlasta (Mainz) and Stefan Weidner (Köln).
Barbara Siller is Lecturer in the Department of German/University College Cork and is the Director of the MA Applied Linguistics Programme.
Sandra Vlasta is a Research Fellow at the Gutenberg-Institut für Weltliteratur und schriftorientierte Medien, Allgemeine und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft/Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
http://www.praesens.at/praesens2013/?p=7121
2020, ISBN 978-3-7069-1003-3, 384 Seiten, brosch.
€ [A] 34,90 / € [D] 33,90
der Avantgarde und von Schriftstellerinnen mit Migrationshintergrund, die diese Unterbrechungen von Kontinuität repräsentieren, aber auch Brüche bewirken: Die Avantgarde bricht stilistisch mit konventionellen
narrativen Formen und Ausdrucksweisen; der Wechsel von bedrucktem Papier zu Bildschirmen und digitaler Programmierung verändert das Schreiben und Lesen. Exophone Schriftsteller mit Migrationshintergrund
schreiben anders als Autorinnen, die sich in ihrer Heimatkultur bewegen und ihre Erstsprache verwenden; sie stellen damit eindeutige kulturelle Zuschreibungen in Frage.
Die Herausgeber
Prof. Dr. Norbert Bachleitner lehrt Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft an der Universität Wien. Prof. Dr. Ina Hein ist Japanologin mit kulturwissenschaftlichem Schwerpunkt an der Universität Wien. Dr. Károly Kókai ist Privatdozent am Institut für europäische und vergleichende Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, Abteilung
Finno-Ugristik, der Universität Wien. Dr. Sandra Vlasta forscht derzeit als Marie-Skłodowska-Curie-Fellow an der Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
The whole volume, edited by Jana-Katharina Mende (Halle/Saale), is available OA here: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110778656/html?lang=de
By contrast, in Monica Ali’s novel Brick Lane islands are present not in a strictly geographical sense, but on a metaphorical level. Also here, the title refers to an ‘island’ within the city of London: Brick Lane is a street which is and, in particular in the 1980s and 1990s, when the main part of the plot is set, was a centre for immigrants from Bangladesh. The main protagonist Nazneen and her family live in Tower Hamlets, the district where also Brick Lane is located. Especially for Nazneen as a woman the buildings where her apartment is situated become islands during the first years of her stay in Great Britain. She experiences the outside only by looking through the windows, hardly ever leaves the flat. Also in this novel, the home left behind is depicted as an island, even though it is the landlocked country of East Pakistan/later Bangladesh. This island stands for the protagonists’ past (and future) and is the place where Nazneen’s sister sends her letters from. In Ali’s text too the metaphorical situation of an island is reflected in its structure: In the course of the plot, Nazneen leaves the house, i.e. the ‘island’, more regularly all the time and eventually manages a ride to the very centre of London by herself. – Here again, we observe a movement away from the island.
In all three texts, leaving the island has both the meaning of crises and new beginnings: Whereas for the female protagonists, leaving the island is difficult at first, in the end it is the starting point for a process of emancipation. Only leaving the island enables them to start a life of their own, to develop independent personalities. The male characters, on the other hand, are left behind in this process. Although leaving the island often was their idea in the first place (Chanu in Brick Lane had already lived in London for some time before marrying Nazneen and taking her to the UK; Gilbert in Small Island had already been to the UK as a soldier during WW II), they get stuck between the old and the new home, the old and the new island – shipwrecked in between, so to say. The women’s slow process of emancipation at first is unnoticed by them and later cannot be caught up. They seem unable to take up the movements on the ‘new island’ which for the female protagonists are part of the emancipation process: The search for new places to live, the exploration of the surroundings, the appropriation of space on the ‘new island’.
The proposed article will explore the various meanings and functions of ‘island’ in the proposed postcolonial texts by looking at them in a comparative way. Furthermore, it will show in what way the movement away from, towards and on an island can depict and be perceived as a process of emancipation. As mentioned above, in the course of the analysis quite a few shipwrecks will have to be dealt with too.
Abstract English
This article is a case study of the aspects of power and attention in literature, and examines both in the context of the German Book Price. This prize has become a powerful marketing tool in the German-speaking world during the last ten years. The creators and organizers of the German Book Prize recognise the importance of attention in literature and have tried to get as many actors as possible involved in prize-related attention: publishers, authors, retailers, the Börsenverein [Book Publishers and Retailers Association] itself, and the many kinds of literary critics. The problem remains that this attention is maximized within certain power structures. So who draws attention in this process and how does it happen? Who has the opportunity, within the framework of the hierarchies of the field, to use this attention or to participate in it?
Dabei ist das Buch auf mehreren Ebenen mehrsprachig, so zum Beispiel (1) in der Figur des (streckenweisen Ich-)Erzählers, dessen Erstsprache offensichtlich nicht Deutsch ist, (2) im broken German als Kunstsprache, als artifizieller/ästhetisierter/literarisierter Varietät des Deutschen, (3) in der expliziten Mehrsprachigkeit – im Text sind neben dem Deutschen auch andere Sprachen und deren Sprecher präsent, (4) im Metadiskurs über Sprache (sowie über Literatur und Erzählen) etc.
Der vorgeschlagene Beitrag analysiert, wie auf Grundlage dieser Mehrsprachigkeit die Affektivität von Sprache (und die besondere Affektivität, die in mehrsprachigen Kontexten entstehen kann) bei Gardi auf der inhaltlichen Ebene narrativ dargestellt, auf der formalen Ebene performiert und damit auf der poetologischen Ebene reflektiert wird. Nicht zuletzt ist zu fragen, wie der Text gleichzeitig die Emotionen der (deutschsprachigen) LeserInnen anspricht (und zum Teil affektive Prozesse in der Rezeption vorwegnimmt), wie schon die Jury-Diskussion beim Bachmann-Preis gezeigt hat.
http://www.ieg-ego.eu/vlastas-2020-de
Der Artikel beschäftigt sich mit Daniel Zipfels Roman "Eine Handvoll Rosinen" (2015), einer zeitgenössischen literarischen Reaktion auf die Themen Flucht und Migration in Europa und Österreich. Der Fokus des Beitrags liegt auf der Darstellung des Flüchtlingslagers Traiskirchen und der literarischen Verarbeitung von Asylgesetzen und juristischer Diktion im Buch – Aspekte, mit denen Zipfel einen innovativen Beitrag zur gegenwärtigen Literatur über Flucht und Migration leistet und sich gleichzeitig in eine lange österreichische Tradition der literarischen Verhandlung von Recht und seiner Sprache einschreibt. Damit bietet der Roman eine höchst aktuelle Auseinandersetzung mit der österreichischen Bürokratie und Rechtsprechung im Asylbereich.
Open access: https://unipub.uni-graz.at/mcsj/periodical/titleinfo/6011478
'To travel is to see', writes Bernard McGrane (1989: 116), and writing about travelling is thus an attempt to grasp what has been seen-in words and/or visually. Accordingly, travel literature deals not only with written texts but with visual elements, whether maps, pictures, drawings, photographs, sketches, (out)looks, viewpoints, or other media, regardless of whether they are displayed visually or drawn with words. An arbitrary list of travelogue (and travel blog) titles reveals the intrinsic relationship between text and image: Pictures from Italy; Italienisches Bilderbuch; Sketches of Spain; Impressions de voyage; Reiseaufnahmen; Blickgewinkelt (cf. Alù and Hill 2018: 6). Illustrations produced on the road, as well as visual material added later, have long been an integral part of travel writing. Visual material can convey information that cannot be verbalized. The visual can also lend authenticity to what was experienced and narrated , underscoring the credibility of the traveller/narrator. At the same time, the visual guides the reader's perspective and tends to strengthen certain viewpoints even more than texts do. Nevertheless, visual depictions only seem to be more realistic, as Giorgia Alù and Sarah Patricia Hill remind us: '[visual representation] distorts rather than reflects social reality' (2018: 1). Illustrations in travel writing thus partake in the construction of difference, of images of the self and the other, and consequently in the emergence of stereotypes and clichés. This special issue of Mobile Culture Studies-The Journal is dedicated to this complex relation between text and the visual in travel writing. It grew out of two transdisciplinary workshops held at the University of Vienna within the framework of the research platform Mobile Cultures and Societies: Interdisciplinary Studies on Transnational Formations and the Marie-Skłodowska-Curie project European Travel Writing in Context. 1 The workshops were dedicated, first, to the intersection of travel writing (studies) and mobility (studies) more generally , and second, to the present focus on the relation between text and images in travel writing.
Although most migrants are not writers, thousands of writers find themselves adjusting to lives as strangers in strange lands. A crucial and formidable part of that adjustment often requires adopting a new language. A rich body of literature by or about migrants is translingual; it is written in a language other than its author’s first language. And much of the literature of migration records the convergence – sometimes conflict – of different languages.
This special issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism brings together studies of how the experience of dislocation has been represented in literature and the role that literary multilingualism plays in this.
It would be impossible for one issue of one journal to encompass the full range of global migration, even just within the contemporary period. The essays we have gathered here study texts whose narrators or protagonists begin in Afghanistan, Bolivia, Bosnia, Hungary, Korea, Poland, Puerto Rico, and Romania and end up in Brazil, Finland, France, Germany, Norway, and the United States. Because global migration is a leading cause in the mingling and collision of languages, it is a fitting topic for this special issue of the Journal of Literary Multilingualism.
All contributions are available open access at: https://unipub.uni-graz.at/mcsj/periodical/titleinfo/6011478
Die vorliegende 16. Ausgabe der Aussiger Beiträge widmet sich unter in insgesamt 12 Beiträgen Darstellungen und Interpretationen von Reisen in der zeitgenössischen deutschsprachigen Literatur seit 1945. Reisen wird hier in einem weiten Sinn verstanden, von tatsächlich stattgefundenen Reisen bis zu fiktionalen Reisebeschreibungen. Ebenfalls berücksichtigt werden Reisen in das vermeintlich Bekannte sowie auch Reisen von Autoren und deren Auswirkungen auf die Entstehung von Texten. Das Panorama reicht von der Art der Darstellung, die sich zwischen Fiktionalität und Faktualität bewegen kann, bis hin zu einer kritischen Auseinandersetzung mit der Reise als Thema und Motiv. Es geht dabei aber auch immer wieder um das Thema der Grenzen und deren Überschreitung und der Auseinandersetzung mit dem Anderen. Ebenfalls von Interesse erwies sich die Frage, wie die Reisenden sich selbst – unterwegs und in der Konfrontation mit dem Anderen – reflektieren.
Beiträger/innen: Ben Dittmann, Eleni Georgopoulou, Naděžda Heinrichová, Annabelle Jänchen, Ursula Klingenböck, Nicola Kopf, Nishant K. Narayanan, Ramona Pellegrino, Isabell Schirra, Melanie Schneider, Vincenza Scuderi, Eliza Szymańska
Travel writing describes, negotiates and feeds identity constructions on various levels – individual identities, cultural identities, national identities, social identities etc. Cultural transfer plays a crucial role in these processes as the intercultural context of travel writing predestines it for the negotiation of what is supposedly one’s own identity. These texts, our argument goes, have thus had a substantial relation with society particularly in historically crucial periods when questions of identity were an issue: for instance, in any time of conflicts and expeditions, starting from antiquity and continuing up to our age, or in the process of the formation of the nation states particularly in the 19th century, or in the aftermath of the breakdown of communism in Europe in the 20th Century.
The contributions in this special issue of CompLit: Journal of European Literature, Arts and Society investigate how these processes of identity construction take place in travel writing. The aim is to identify such strategies from different periods and linguistic and cultural contexts and thus to look at travel writing as a genre. The focus is on travelogues about journeys that have actually been undertaken but also analyses of other forms of travel writing (i.e. fictional travelogues) are included.
Travel writing – on the interplay between text and the visual
Guest editors: Sandra Vlasta und Birgit Englert
“To travel is to see” notes Bernard McGrane, and writing about travels is thus the attempt to grasp what was seen – in words and/or in visual form. Accordingly “travel literature” not only deals with written texts, but also with visual elements, be it images, drawings, sketches, (out)looks, view points, or others, regardless whether they are drawn with words or also displayed visually. An arbitrary listing of some titles of travel writings (and travel blogs) underlines this: Pictures from Italy/Italienisches Bilderbuch/Sketches of Spain/ Impressions de voyage/ Reiseaufnahmen/ Blickgewinkelt. Illustrations like maps, sketches, drawings, photographs, and film which were produced on the road, as well as visual materials which were added later on, has been part of travel writing since the beginning of the genre. Visual material can serve to convey information that cannot be verbalised. The visual further may give authenticity to what was experienced and narrated and underlines the credibility of the traveller/narrator. At the same time, the visual guides the view of the reader and tends to strengthen certain viewpoints even more than texts do, although visual depictions only seem to be more realistic, as Giorgia Alù und Sarah Patricia Hill remind us: “[visual representation] distorts rather than reflects social reality”] . Illustrations in travel writing thus partake in the construction of difference, of images of the self and the other and consequently in the emergence of stereotypes and clichés.
This thematic issue of Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal >mcsj> is dedicated to the relation between text and the visual in travel writing. The latter is defined as narratives about travels which the narrators/authors have actually undertaken. We understand travel as a specific form of mobility which is characterised by certain elements and thus distinguishable from other forms of mobility – even though the exact delimitation may sometimes be blurred. In the context of Mobility Studies we are therefore also interested in the question how travel can be distinguished from other forms of mobility and how this is realised in the writings about it. Structural categories such as gender, generation, class, race and others have an impact on any form of mobility, thus also on travel. We look forward to analyses which deal with the repercussions of these categories on the experiences of travelling and their descriptions and draw on the historical as well as contemporary political, economic and social contexts of the respective cases.
Narratives about travel can take very different forms. We welcome contributions which focus on printed forms of travel writing that have generally also been edited (for example classic travelogues, graphic novels or illustrated books). Furthermore, we are also looking for analyses of formats such as the travel diary which in the last two decades has often been published in the format of blogs. Often, these are available instantaneously to a broad readership and have been authorised only by their writers. These examples also illustrate the broad timeframe of this issue which reaches up to the present.
We have a comprehensive understanding of “text” and “visual” – the focus is on the interplay between what is verbally formulated (text) and visually presented (e.g. sketches, drawings, images, maps, photos, films etc.) in travel writing. These two elements can obviously also overlap, for example in the form of ekphrasis or of texts which are inscribed into images such as in comics and graphic novels.
With contributions by:
Ana de Almeida
Birgit Englert
Holger Helm
Tanja Kapp
Jan-Hendrik Müller
Mirja Riggert
Anna Karina Sennefelder
Sigrid Thomsen
Erika Unterpertinger
Sandra Vlasta
Rhian Waller
Daniel Winkler
Christian Wimplinger
Tuesday, 15 June 2021, 5 pm (Vienna time) in Zoom
INPUTS BY
Flo Kasearu (Tallinn), artist, and Sara Bédard-Goulet (Tartu), literary scholar, who will read from their pocket book „(Dis)covering …. Mountains“. Tallinn and Marseille: Routes to Roots, 2020
and
Manuel João Ramos (Lisbon), anthropologist, travel writer and sketcher, author of “Of Hairy Kings and Saintly Slaves. An Ethiopian Travelogue”. Canon Pyon: Sean Kingston Publishing, 2018
FOLLOWED BY DISCUSSION.
An online event on the occasion of the publication of »Travel Writing: On the Interplay between Text and the Visual | Reisebilder – Bilderreisen: Zum Zusammenspiel von Text und Bild im Reisebericht« Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal Vol. (2020), Issue 6, 270 pages edited by Sandra Vlasta and Birgit Englert,
with contributions by Ana de Almeida, Birgit Englert, Holger Helm, Tanja Kapp, Jan-Hendrik Müller, Mirja Riggert, Anna Karina Sennefelder, Sigrid Thomsen, Erika Unterpertinger, Sandra Vlasta, Rhian Waller, Daniel Winkler, Christian Wimplinger
All articles, essays and reviews – partly in English, partly in German – are available fully open access on the website of: Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal https://unipub.uni-graz.at/mcsj/periodical/titleinfo/6011478
Please use this link to access the Zoom-meeting:
https://univienna.zoom.us/j/98696933448?pwd=UjJLOW1ScXpPVFpDZFU1VVdmUjlnQT09
Meeting-ID: 986 9693 3448
Kenncode: 278191
An event hosted by
the Research Platform Mobile Cultures and Societies,
the Department of African Studies at the University of Vienna,
the MSCA project European Travel Writing in Context (Mainz/Nottingham),
and Mobile Culture Studies – The Journal at the University of Graz,
organised by Birgit Englert (Vienna) and Sandra Vlasta (Mainz/Rome).
Besprechung von Elise von Hohenhausen / Klaus Gruhn: Reisebeschreibungen.
Aisthesis Verlag, Bielefeld 2020.
109 Seiten, 12,00 EUR.
ISBN-13: 9783849817053
Rezension von
Ali Smith: Winter.
Aus dem Englischen von Silvia Morawetz.
Luchterhand Literaturverlag, München 2020.
300 Seiten, 22,00 EUR.
ISBN-13: 9783630875798