The objective of the workshop is to examine the literary representations of Jewishness in Georgian and European literatures from 1850 until the present. Drawing upon a transnational and intermedial perspective, the aim is to explore artistic, literary, musical and cinematographic examples in the context of the politico-racial anti-Semitism that emerged during the 19th century, the Dreyfus Affair and its resonance in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, followed by the rise of fascisms, Nazism and the rupture introduced by the Shoah, as well as the state anti-Semitism of the Soviet Stalinist regime.
The fundamental question that this workshop seeks to address pertains to the manner in which literature, in its broadest sense, encompassing its manifold forms of representation, portrays Jewishness within diverse social and national contexts. This raises the question of the response or capability of writing to respond to the rise of anti-Semitism through diverse historical circumstances, including our contemporary world. The objective of this workshop is to (re)examine questions on a vast subject that is still very under-explored in certain areas and from particular perspectives, such as minor literature and forgotten writers.
The primary research topics encompass, but are not limited to, the following:
- Jewishness in literary history: an examination of both national and transnational contexts;
- The body in the marginalised space;
- Spaces of exclusion;
- Representation of Jewishness in an intermedial perspective;
- (Co)inhabiting common spaces;
- Examination of alternative forms of exclusion and marginalisation (for example, racial, social and gender-based) and their literary and artistic manifestations.
Working Languages: Georgian, English
Format: Hybrid
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Organising committee
Ilia State University: Atinati Mamatsashvili, Bela Tsipuria
Vrije Universiteit Brussel: Arvi Sepp
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Scientific committee
Mzaro Dokhtourishvili (Ilia State University)
Atinati Mamatsashvili (Ilia State University)
Arvi Sepp (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Nino Pirtskhalava (Ilia State University)
Bela Tsipuria (Ilia State University)
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Programme
09 :40 – 09 :45 Opening
Bela Tsipuria (Ilia State University)
Atinati Mamatsashvili (Ilia State University)
Arvi Sepp (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
09 :45 – 11 :45 Session 1 – Georgian and Jewish Writers at the End of the 19th and the Beginning of the 20th Centuries : Social and Literary Space
Moderator: Lali Guledani (Ilia State University)
From "Maccabean" to "Petkhaini": Dynamics of Jewish Identity Narrative in the 1920s–1930s
Ketevan Kakitelashvili (Tbilisi State University)
The Role of Jewish Intellecutals in the Cultural Life of Georgia (First Half of the XXth Century)
Nino Pirtskhalava (Ilia State University)
The Jewish Community and the 'Great Purge': Texts and Biographies of Gerzel Baazov and Faina Baazova
Bela Tsipuria (Ilia State University)
The process of discrimination against Jews and the fact of "advocacy of Jews" by Georgian society reflected in the materials of the "Caucasus Censorship Committee"
Tamar Sharabidze, Tamar Tsitsishvili (Tbilisi State University, Shota Rustaveli Institute of Georgian Literature)
11:45 – 12:00 Coffee Break
12:00 – 13:30 Session 2 – Jewishness in European Literature : Experience of Exile and Nazism
Moderator: Bela Tsipuria (Ilia State University)
Transnational Reimagining of Jewishness in Olga Grjasnowa’s Der Russe ist einer, der Birken liebt
Arvi Sepp (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
Walking the Margins: Jewish Flâneuses and the Urban Memory of Exclusion
Alice Lacoue-Labarthe (Université de Picardie Jules Verne and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
How not to see Jewishness in European Jewish writers (Franz Kafka and Paul Celan)?
Alexis Nuselovici (Aix-Marseille Université)
13:30 – 13:45 Break
13:45 – 14:45 Session 3 – Jewish Religious, Social Motives in Georgian Literature
Moderator: Nino Pirtskhalava (Ilia State University)
Jewish religious and social motives in the œuvre of Georgian writers
Lali Guledani (Ilia State University)
Jewish Characters and Biblical–Kabbalistic Cognitive Models in Contemporary Georgian War Literature
Tsira Kilanava (Ilia State University)
14:45 – 16:00 Break
16:00 – 17:30 Session 4 – Jewishness in French and Francophone Literatures
Moderator: Tsira Kilanava
Jewishness in the works of Patrick Modiano and Albert Memmi
Mzaro Dokhtourichvili (Ilia State University)
The Voice of Lost Childhood: Reconstruction of Holocaust Memory, Fragmented Narrative, and Psychological Dimension in Contemporary Francophone Literature
Mariam Glonti, Giorgi Kurdadze (Ilia State University)
The Book, the archive, and lived experience
Atinati Mamatsashvili (Ilia State University)
17:30 – 17:45 Coffee Break
17:45 – 18:00 Book Presentation
Luba Jurgenson & Atinati Mamatsashvili (eds.), Le proscrit, le banni, l’émigré. Les représentations littéraires et artistiques sous les régimes nazi et soviétique, Themed issue, Franges, 3/2025. Open access: https://liej.hypotheses.org/revue/numero-3-le-proscrit-le-banni-lemigre
18:00 – 19:00 Session 5 – Ongoing Projects
Moderator: Atinati Mamatsashvili (Ilia State University)
Literary Odesa: Cosmopolitanism and its Aftermath
Mirja Lecke (Universität Regensburg)
Presentation of the CHLEL (Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages) project Representing Jewishness in European Literatures (2024-2029).
Arvi Sepp (VUB) and Atinati Mamatsashvili (Iliauni)