Institute of History and Literary Theory “G. Călinescu” of the Romanian Academy invites you to participate, on the 7th and 8th of December 2018, at the International Conference „Borders of Romanian Literature: Linguistic, History, Geography” organized within the Project „Preserving and Capitalizing on Romanian Literary Heritage Using Intelligent Digital Solutions for Knowledge Extraction and Systematisation” (INTELLIT), PN-III-P1-1.2-PCCDI-2017-0821 / Nr 54PCCDI / 2018.

The Conference aims through its papers at debating how literary history and lexicography have confronted with methodological and epistemological issues (but also political, ideological, economic) from the middle of the last century to the present. In this sense, our team of researchers developed, under the auspices of the Romanian Academy, the General Dictionary of Romanian Literature, its second edition being in the finalizing process, the Chronology of Romanian Literary Life – post-war (1944-1967) and post-communist periods (1990- 2000), which represents the materialization, in 28 volumes, of the most important events in the cultural-literary press of the past 75 years, as well as numerous critical editions dedicated to the Romanian representative writers.

The revolution of communication technologies has helped all national cultures to enter the „digital era”. We live, as it is often said, in the century of transculturality, in a globalized context, with a real profit in terms of systematization of knowledge, thanks to intelligent solutions offered by ICI Bucharest and Polytechnic University of Bucharest, along with „Lucian Blaga” University of Sibiu, our project partners.

However, the discipline of literary history must go further from the reality of the facts it describes, from the reality of more or less „natural” borders (language, space, history, identity). How can this paradox be solved in practice? How can we harmonize, in the space of narrations of lexicography and literary history, the reality of belonging to a common European space and the desideratum on any literature has been built, namely the formulation of some specific differences in relation to other literatures? In other words, how can we harmonize openness to the exterior and preserve a recognizable identity? How can we effectively recover seemingly „peripheral” phenomena that have traditionally been left out of the interest of literary historians (such as the Latin, Slavic or Greek roots of the Romanian literature)? How can we effectively recover literature written by Romanians – not always in Romanian – on other territories? Or how can we become more aware of literatures in languages other than Romanian (Hungarian, German, Yiddish) written on Romanian territory? How can we broaden the concept of aesthetics by including apparently (apparently) non-aesthetic phenomena?

Equally open to interpretations and interrogations remain the almost five decades of literary life, recorded by our cultural press during the period of communist-type totalitarianism and later in its long literary and social transition to democracy. Despite many recent contributions, many of what has been done during this time can be the colloquial support of the thematic suggestions below. These are just a few of the questions that our conference proposes to meditate and invite you to respond on 7-8 December this year at the announced Conference.

The organizers of this conference propose the following themes of reflection:

• The roots of the old Romanian literature
• National literature and shaping the identity consciousness
• National literature and the challenges of globalization
• Diaspora, exile, migrant literature
• Representations of the Romanian literary exile in the press before and after 1989
• Cartography of Romanian literature in literary histories from Europe
• Chronology of Romanian literary life – frequented literary genres and emerging themes (debates, polemics, forms of opportunism, forms of resistance, mistifications etc.)
• Judicial / moral discourse versus critical / aesthetic discourse in the literary period 1944-2000
• Structures and manifestations of „political field” versus „cultural field” in the literary press
• Reconfiguration of the Romanian literary relief in the cultural press after 1989
• The emergence of the „New World” (Virtual Space) and its consequences on the evolution of the literary phenomenon, between analog and digital
• Conventional media, digital media of literary history information and meta-literacy narratives

Papers presented at the Conference will be selected for publication by the members of the Scientific Committee.

We would be honored to respond to our invitation and to include your name in the list of participants. We await your proposals and your registrations, indicating the title of the communication and a brief summary thereof, by 15 November 2018.