Euroacademia Conferences
- Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers (9th Edition) April 24 - 25, 2020
- Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (9th Edition) June 12 - 13, 2020
- 8th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions Again January 24 - 25, 2020
- Re-Inventing Eastern Europe (7th Edition) December 13 - 14, 2019
- The European Union and the Politicization of Europe (8th Edition) October 25 - 26, 2019
- Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (8th Edition) June 28 - 29, 2019
- The European Union and the Politicization of Europe (7th Edition) January 25 - 26, 2019
- 7th Forum of Critical Studies: Asking Big Questions Again November 23 - 24, 2018
- Europe Inside-Out: Europe and Europeanness Exposed to Plural Observers (8th Edition) September 28 - 30, 2018
- Identities and Identifications: Politicized Uses of Collective Identities (7th Edition) June 14 - 15, 2018
Loss of Home and Loathing Nostalgia in the English Writings of Central and Eastern European Exiles
-
-
Presentation speakers
- Christoph Houswitschka, Bamberg University, Germany
- Download presentation
Abstract:
Writers who are forced into exile by a hostile government tend to suffer from the grievances of loss and deprivation. They look back in nostalgia. After 1989 leaving Central and Eastern European homes was not only a free decision, but even an act of liberation. Leaving had not been an easy option before the Iron Curtain had come down. Changing one’s language and writing in English represented this act of liberation. Creating a new memory (e. g. Eva Hoffman) and a literary persona in the language of globalization and cosmopolitanism meant to look back and to discover the new at the same time. The talk investigates this tension by reading writers who have published books about both their former home countries and their new English speaking environments. Loathing nostalgia in the creative process of writing has helped authors, such as Bulgarian Kapka Kassabova and Czech Jan Novak, to imagine new spaces of cosmopolitan belonging without being in denial about the places of their childhood thus redefining the concept of Eastern Europe altogether.
Related Presentations