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Jasmina Lukić  of the CEU Department of Gender Studies gave an extensive interview for a special issue of Balkanologie, Revue d’études pluridisciplinaires   (Vol. 18, No. 2, 2023), Créer et interpréter en féministes. Femmes et engagement dans les littératures et les arts des Balkans (xxe et xxie siècles). The interview, entitled “Entre Schéhérazade et Douniazad : une approche féministe et transnationale des littératures (post‑)yougoslaves. Entretien avec Jasmina Lukić” was conducted by and translated from the English by Naïma Berkane et Lola Sinoimeri. It discusses at length the situation of women writers in (post-)Yugoslav literatures, focusing on the recently departed Dubravka Ugrešić, but also some other relevant writers, such as Milica Mićić Dimovska, and the conceptual artist Sanja Iveković. Jasmina Lukić’s current project EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender in Transnational Perspective (101073012  EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project, 2022-26) is also addressed. https://journals.openedition.org/balkanologie/5197

Professor Rebecca L. Walkowitz   Barnard College  Susan Stanford Friedman MEMORIAL LECTURE September 11, 17:00 – 18:30, Central European University in Vienna, Auditorium Wine and cheese reception to follow This lecture pays tribute to the legacy of Susan Stanford Friedman as a scholar and mentor by reflecting on the concept of “reshuffling,” which she developed in her later work as a way of thinking about feminist collaboration across differences of generation, nationality, race, religion, and class.  Sewing together moments from Friedman’s scholarship across several decades, we see her persistent engagement with models of feminist collaboration and transnational solidarity she finds in the writings of Virginia Woolf, and with the models she finds in other readers and re-writers of Woolf’s writings.  Reshuffling is the methodology Friedman derives from this dynamic of reading and writing over generations.  It is a methodology she describes as well as performs, and in that sense it demonstrates her commitment to creativity as well as criticism, to building up ideas in the presence and on the shoulders of distant others and to making room for future generations to build up anew and to stand on her shoulders in turn.        Rebecca L. Walkowitz  is Claire Tow Professor of English and Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Barnard College. Her research and teaching consider aspects of cosmopolitanism, multilateralism, and multilingualism and their relationships to questions of idiom, narrative structure, typography, and media in modernist and contemporary literature. She is currently writing  The New Multilingualism: Knowing and Not Knowing Languages in Literature, Culture, and the Classroom  (forthcoming from Columbia University Press), which calls for new ways of counting, organizing, and valuing world languages both within and outside the university and traces the emergence of historically new examples of multilingual art and entertainment.  Walkowitz is the author of  Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature  (2015) and  Cosmopolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation  (2006) and the editor of 8 additional volumes, including  Bad Modernisms  (2006) and  A New Vocabulary for Global Modernism  (2016). She has also written several widely cited and field-defining articles, including “The New Modernist Studies” (2008), co-authored with Douglas Mao, which helped to describe and set a new agenda for the field of modernist studies and is one of the most-cited articles in the flagship journal  PMLA .  She served as President of the Modernist Studies Association in 2014-2015.

Professor Ato Quayson    Stanford University     Interdisciplinarity and Interpretation: Concepts, Boundaries, and Contradiction     September 10, 18:00 – 19:30, CEU Auditorium Wine and cheese reception to follow     At the core of the efforts at interdisciplinarity are two central principles, first, that of integrative epistemologies that might be applicable to all fields of learning, including the sciences, the social sciences, the humanities, and the arts. The second is unified or collaborative modes of knowledge that might be deployed for addressing real-world problems, such as environmental degradation, increasingly complex cities, water shortage and its management, public health crises, migration and refugees, international security, and the vagaries of globalization, to name just a few that have captured headlines since the Covid pandemic.  I will be arguing, however, that when we claim to be doing interdisciplinary work that we must specify as clearly as possible what kinds of concepts, methods, and propositional protocols we are carrying over from another discipline or disciplines and what this does to our configuration of interdisciplinarity.  Thus, to be truly interdisciplinary one must be able demonstrate conversance with the protocols of proposition-making in all the disciplines within the interdisciplinary mix.  The question of protocols of proposition-making raises serious questions about how scholars purporting to be interdisciplinary are trained, which also means a conscious self-awareness of the limits of their own primary disciplines and a humility in learning properly and not just as is convenient from the rigorous protocols of other disciplines.  I shall demonstrate the various dimensions and implications of the applications of protocols of proposition making from my own work, and with reference to the work of others in the humanities and social sciences, such as Hayden White, Christopher Norris, Gillian Beer, Edward Said, Karen Barad, and various others.    Ato Quayson  is the Jean G. and Morris M. Doyle Professor in Interdisciplinary Studies, Professor of English, and Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies at Stanford University. He holds a BA (Hons) from the University of Ghana, and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, where he also taught at the Faculty of English from 1995-2005. He has held professorships at the University of Toronto (2005-2017), NYU (2017-2019), and Stanford (2019--).  Professor Quayson has published 6 monographs and 10 edited volumes, including  Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism  (2014) which was co-winner of the Urban History Association's 2015 Best Book Prize (non-North America) and was named in The Guardian as one of the 10 Best Books on Cities in 2014. His most recent book is  Tragedy and Postcolonial Literature  (Cambridge University Press, 2021), winner of the Warren-Brooks Prize in Literary Criticism for 2022.  The Cambridge Companion to the City in World Literature  (with Jini Kim Watson), and  Decolonizing the English Literary Curriculum  (with Ankhi Mukherjee) were both published with CUP in 2023.  He is currently working on Interdisciplinarity and Interpretation for CUP and on Accra Chic: A Locational History of Fashion in Accra (with Grace Toleque) for Chicago UP/Intellect Press.   Professor Quayson curates Critic.Reading.Writing, a YouTube channel on which he discusses various topics in literature, urban studies and the humanities in general: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjoidh_R_bJCnXyKBkytP_g  and is also the host of Contours: The Cambridge Literary Studies Hour ( https://www.cambridge.org/core/browse-subjects/literature/contours-the-cambridge-literary-studies-hour ), where he holds dialogues with various scholars to address pressing issues, themes, and concepts in 21st century literary studies from medieval literature to the present day and from all areas of global literary studies from both the Northern and Southern hemispheres.  Professor Quayson has served as President of the African Studies Association (2019-2020) and is an elected Fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences (2006), the Royal Society of Canada (2013), the British Academy (2019), and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023).

sacrality, eco-feminism, performative poetry by Kinga Tóth September 6, 17:00 – 18:30, Central European University in Vienna, Auditorium Kinga Tóth  writer, visual and sound-poet, performer, teacher, translator writes in Hungarian, German and English languages and presents her work in performances, exhibitions, and international installations, festivals. She is also a philologist and a teacher, gives lectures and workshops international and also works as a journalist and copy editor of art magazines and as a cultural program organizer. She studied German Literature and Linguistic (MA) and Communication Theory and Praxis (MA) with specialisation of Printed Media, Online Media, Art and Communication, started her PhD research about Nun-art on the University of Debrecen and continues her artistic research on the Paris-London University at the Mozarteum in Salzburg by Art and Science. Her main focus is performative and experimental literature and recycled-art.

with Redi Koobak (Strathclyde),  Petra Bakos  (CEU), Adriana Qubaiova  (CEU), Jasmina Lukić  (CEU) in person, Nina Lykke (Linköping University), Swati Arora (Queen Mary University of London) , Kharnita Mohamed (University of Cape Town) online  September 12, 18:00 – 19:30, Central European University in Vienna, Auditorium This  edited volume brings transnational feminisms in conversation with intersectional and decolonial approaches. The conversation is pluriversal; it voices and reflects upon a plurality of geo- and corpopolitical as well as epistemic locations in specific Global South/East/North/West contexts. The aim is to explore analytical modes that encourage transgressing methodological nationalisms which sustain unequal global power relations and which are still ingrained in the disciplinary perspectives that define much social science and humanities research. A main focus of the volume is methodological. It asks how an engagement with transnational, intersectional, and decolonial feminisms can stimulate border crossings. Boundaries in academic knowledge-building, shaped by the limitations imposed by methodological nationalisms, are challenged in the book. The same applies to boundaries of conventional —disembodied and ethically unaffected— academic writing modes. The transgressive methodological aims are also pursued through mixing genres and shifting boundaries between academic and creative writing.

The EUTERPE Summer School 2024 has ended, but we're still excited about the incredible week we spent together in Vienna.     We're grateful to everyone who joined us for this year's summer school, including our participants, speakers, and organisers. Your energy, enthusiasm, and contributions were not just appreciated, but they were integral to making the week genuinely unforgettable.   An amazing lineup of speakers enriched us, each bringing their unique insights and expertise. From Sandra Ponzanesi 's thought-provoking discussion on "Postcolonial Europe and its intellectuals: feminist and transnational perspectives", which highlighted the need to rethink and reimagine the spaces and ideals of Europe, to Ato Quayson 's insightful exploration of "Interdisciplinarity and Interpretation: Concepts, Boundaries, and Contradiction", which emphasised the importance of specifying concepts, methods, and propositional protocols in interdisciplinary work, and Rebecca Walkowitz 's inspiring talk on "Reshuffling: Feminist Collaboration and Transnational Solidarity", which introduced the concept of "reshuffling" as a methodology for feminist collaboration across differences, we were broadened in our perspectives. The workshops, discussions, and networking sessions further fostered collaboration and connection among participants.   We celebrated the launch of "Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place", a book that brings together transnational feminisms in conversation with intersectional and decolonial approaches. The book launch, which featured editors Redi Koobak, Petra Bakos, Nina Lykke, Swati Arora, and Kharnita Mohamed , as well as contributors Adriana Qubaiova, and Jasmina Lukić was a highlight of the week, and we were grateful to have the opportunity to engage with the authors and their work.   We were also treated to a captivating performance by Kinga Tóth , a writer, visual and sound-poet, performer, and teacher, who presented her work "When the Word Comes Alive: Sacrality, Eco-Feminism, Performative Poetry".  We also had the pleasure of hearing from Olga Dimitrijević , a playwright, director, and dramaturg, who shared her insights on "Melodrama and Solitarity: (dr)a(ma)rtist talk". Her talk explored the intersection of melodrama, folk music, and the culture of memory, and we were grateful for the opportunity to engage with her work.   We would also like to extend our gratitude to the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University for their support in organising the wine and cheese receptions that accompanied the keynote lectures and book launch.