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Team Granada Adelina Sánchez Espinosa Principal Investigator Adelina Sánchez Espinosa is senior Lecturer at the University of Granada and Scientific Coordinator of GEMMA: Erasmus Mundus Master and Consortium in Women's and Gender Studies; PI for the "Reception, modes and gender" Andalusian Research Group and the "Gender Responsible Lecturing Labs: Interfacing cultural and visual cultures Andalusian Research Project of Excellence, UGR PI for H2020 MSCA EUTERPE Project (EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender in Transnational Perspective") and a Horizon Chanse project: DIGISCREENS Identities and Democratic values on European digital screens: Distribution, reception and representation. She is Series Editor of the Researching with GEMMA collection (Peter Lang) She was the Vice-President of AOIFE (Association of Institutions for Feminist Research and Education in Europe): Director of International Relations for the UGR, Executive Secretary of the UGR Women's Studies Research Institute and Series Editor for the UGR "FEMINAE" Book collection. Some of her latest publications are: "Feminist Counter-Cinema and Decolonial Countervisuality. Un'ora sola ti vorrei and Pays Barbare (with Calderón Sandoval, Studies in Documentary Film, 2021); Seeking Eccentricity, Special Issue for Sociology and Technoscience Journal and Feminist Research Alliances: Affective Convergences (Peter Lang, 2022). Angela Harris Sánchez Researcher Angela Harris Sánchez holds a BA in Art history (Granada University), an MPhil in Art Therapy (Complutense University), the GEMMA double Erasmus Mundus Master and a double International PhD in Women's Studies, Discourses and Gender Practices (UGR) and Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (University of Bologna). She has been a National Research Fellow (FPU) and is now UGR-Postdoc and lecturer in the Archaeology Department. Recent publications are "Artherapy, Queer Failure and Horizontal Learning Experience in Students' Postmemory Family Narratives" (co-author). "Beyond Being: Dissident (ificatory) Responses towards a Heritage of Becoming" and "Contesting power in public art spaces. Liminal p(l)aces, diverting methodologies and observant participation in Valor y Cambio". Beatriz Revelles-Benavente Researcher Beatriz Revelles-Benavente is Permanent Lecturer at the Faculty of Translation and Interpretation and the local coordinator for the GEMMA: Erasmus Mundus Master in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Granada. She is co-editor of one section in the journal Matter: Journal of New Materialist Research. She has also co-edited the collection Teaching Gender: Feminist Responsibility and Politics in Times of Crisis and is the author of Feminist Literature as Everyday Use: A New Materialist Methodology for Critical Thinking. Before, she was granted a postdoctoral fellowship "Juan de la Cierva" at the University of Barcelona (UB) at the department of Cultural Pedagogies. She was also part of the board committee of the European Association Atgender: The European Association for Gender Research, Education and Documentation. Orianna Calderón-Sandoval Researcher Orianna Calderón-Sandoval is Junior Lecturer in Gender Studies and English Cultures at the University of Granada (UGR). She is also affiliated to the Women’s and Gender Studies Research Institute of UGR. Her research interests are located at the intersections of gender/feminist studies and film/audiovisual/transmedia studies. Among her recent publications are “Implementing Gender Equality Policies in the Spanish Film Industry”, International Journal of Cultural Policy (2021); “Debating Sexual Consent in the Teen Series The Hockey Girls: Reactions of Instagram Audiences”, co-written with Isabel Villegas-Simón and Pilar Medina-Bravo, Sex Education (2023); “Entanglements of feminist activism and gender equality policy in the Spanish and Swedish film industries: between convergence and critique”, co-written with Maria Jansson, Journal of Gender Studies (2024); and “Race-ing Masculinity: An Intersectional Analysis of the Spanish Public Platform Series Riders", co-written with Ángela Rivera-Izquierdo and Adelina Sánchez Espinosa, Feminist Media Histories (2024). https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9113-9010 She completed her PhD at the universities of Granada and Bologna, with a research project that focuses on feminist practices in documentary cinema. She was an Early Stage Researcher for GRACE “Gender and Cultures of Equality in Europe”, Horizon 2020, Marie Curie Research Project (ESR 13: Visualising Gender Equality in Europe through Art and Screen).

Ninutsa Nadirashvili Ninutsa Nadirashvili is a Georgian-American gender studies scholar, editor, and translator. She earned her bachelor’s degree in International Studies at Boston College and completed a dual master’s program in Gender Studies at the Universities of Utrecht and York. Since 2020, Ninutsa has been actively involved in NGO initiatives based in Georgia, collaborating with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, Women’s Fund in Georgia, and the Equality Movement. In 2019, she spent a year working as an English teaching assistant through a program facilitated by Fulbright Austria. In 2022, she completed a Fulbright research fellowship in Tbilisi, focusing on an intersectional analysis of Georgian literature and language textbooks. This year, as a doctoral student joining the Centre for Global Learning at Coventry University in the U.K., Ninutsa will explore how transnational texts have influenced the decolonization of Women’s and Gender Studies programs across Europe. Her research will involve interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including curricula case studies, textual analysis of syllabi, interviews, and participant observation. Vision Statement I am a first-generation Georgian-American. This background has informed my undergraduate and graduate work in comparative literature and film analysis, which I paired with theories on anti-colonialism, nationalism, social reproduction, and representations of humanness. I intend to maintain this perspective as I begin my PhD studies at the Centre for Global Learning. Research topic “The role of transnational literatures in the decolonisation of understanding of gender within the European academe” Drawing on interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including pedagogical and textual content analyses, curricula case studies, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with educators, students and transnational intellectuals in cross-European contexts, this research will investigate the ways in which transnational literatures (including text, novels, poetry, play texts, digital literary media) have influenced processes of pedagogical decolonisation within the teaching of Women’s and Gender Studies. The research asks to what extent transnational intellectuals and literatures that challenge thinking about European gender identities have been deployed to develop, extend, and decolonise theoretical frameworks for rethinking politics of identity within interdisciplinary gender studies. Research interest list Feminist storytelling; contemporary cultural theory; relationalities; anti-colonialism; migration and nationalism; film studies; poetry; queer theory; literary and critical theory. Previous Next

Review of 'Rosso come una sposa' by Anilda Ibrahimi Ibrahimi writes in swift sentences that mirror the simple, yet tortured, living of her characters, whilst giving voice to the complexities of human relationships – a fine balancing act between the innocence of young voices and the weight of words passed down through bodies that carry their pasts. by Alice Flinta 4 April 2025 Review: Ibrahimi, Anilda. Rosso come una sposa. (Torino: Einaudi, 2008) What do we make of the memories and stories we gather throughout generations, passed down so many times that not only truth becomes undiscernible from the inevitable pepping up, but that the distinction itself loses importance? Well, a good pen weaves stories and opens portals onto lives that aren’t our own; a compelling pen crafts narratives that trap their readers in the weaving, and the lives that aren’t theirs, magically, could be so. Rosso come una sposa , meaning “Red as a Bride” or, I may suggest, “Bride Red”, is Albanian-born writer Anilda Ibrahimi’s debut novel. Originally published in Italian in 2008, the book is available in French (La mariée était en rouge , translated by Maïra Muchnik, 2013) and German (Rot wie eine Braut , translated by Franziska Kristen, 2011). It tells the story of an Albanian family through the lives of four generations of women, as narrated by the youngest, Dora, who is the amplifier for the polyphony of voices that came before her. The novel, chronologically set, is divided into two sections, and further into brief chapters: in the first part, narrated in the third person, we meet the older representatives of the family, Dora’s great-grandmother Meliha and grandmother Seba; while the second part is narrated in the first person and revolves around Klementina, the narrator’s mother, and Dora herself. The title refers to the novel’s opening sequence where a fourteen-year-old Seba is being helped dismounting a horse, wearing a red wedding dress, “come il sangue. Come un sacrificio umano dato in dono agli dèi per propiziare la pioggia. Come una sposa” [like blood. Like a human sacrifice to the gods for some rain. Like a bride].[1]In striking opposition, the second part opens with a much different wedding image: “il giorno del suo matrimonio mia madre indossava un tailleur beige dal taglio semplice e nei capelli non portava nessun velo” [the day of her wedding, my mother was wearing a simple-cut, beige suit, and no veil was covering her head].[2]It is through these parallelisms and a certain circularity in the book’s structure that the story is kept together and turned into a seamless fireside tale. Ibrahimi’s narrative weaving is itself a reflection of the weaving of lives the women of Kaltra, a village among the Albanian mountains, enact. Older women are here the weavers of destinies, entrusted with the task of marriage arrangement, that is the orchestration of the continuation of the family lineage, as well as with establishing and repairing, where necessary, fruitful relationships among the village’s families. This is seen as a true “potere che si acquisiva diventando suocere” [power one would acquire through becoming a mother-in-law] and therefore “spesso le donne passavano la vita aspettando con gioia di invecchiare” [women would often spend their lives excitedly waiting to get older].[3]This role would also give them authority over their daughters in law, and their journeys through motherhood. In the novel, women are presented first and foremost as mothers, a role that gives meaning to both their lives and their marriage: “Che felicità trova una donna dal marito se non i figli?” [What happiness can women get from their husbands, if not their children?]. Motherhood becomes not just a social imperative, but a defining characteristic of womanhood, in that “una donna senza prole è come un tronco senza rami” [a woman without children is like a tree without branches].[4]As mothers, women weave their children’s destinies not only by arranging their marriages, but also because tradition and popular belief sees them as bearers of their daughters’ moral rightfulness, passed down through generations: in fact, women’s actions and any morally reproachable act is believed to curse the daughters to come. For instance, when one of Seba’s sisters gets wrongfully accused of kurveria [adultery], the family gets concerned not only about their reputation, but also about the marriage possibilities of the daughters to come as kurveria , like a genetic predisposition, will run through their veins too. Gender has then an important, even deterministic, role since birth. As it is to be expected, the birth of a boy is collectively celebrated, whilst that of a girl is close to be seen as a tragedy: just like in Vergine giurata [Sworn Virgin , trans. Clarissa Botsford], a 2007 novel written in Italian by Swiss-Albanian author Elvira Dones, Ibrahimi reminds us of the tradition, upheld by Albanian villagers, of shooting in the air when a boy is born and of the almost mournful silence that follows the birth of a girl. The birth of a girl, in fact, stands not only for the continuation of the mother’s lineage, but also for all the sins and dooms that her body carries. Up until Dora’s times (1980s-1990s) it is believed that girls take their traits from their mothers, therefore the mothers and their bodies are solely responsible for the passing on of morals and vices. Women’s social role, however, is not exclusively to safeguard future generations, but also to ensure a continuation between the dead and the living: Meliha first and Saba after spend long afternoons in either cemeteries or burial places mourning, chanting, telling their ancestors about how life is unravelling, thus weaving life with the afterlife. Dora herself is brought into this ritual, as she will take over from her grandmother and continue her work. Similarly, on the metanarrative level, Dora’s enterprise of recounting the family narratives is an act of weaving of the oral histories that have been passed down onto her. Women’s bodies thus become bridges, through their voices, their chants, their mourning, and their writing. The undisputable protagonism of women should not, however, trick us into thinking that a society run by matriarchs would necessarily foster safe and enriching relationships among the women involved – rather the contrary, as Dora remarks: “le donne possono essere di grande aiuto nella scoperta del mondo dei grandi, ma possono anche rovinarti. Chi ha vissuto in grandi tribù di donne sicuramente sa di cosa parlo” [women can be of great help when it comes to exploring the world of the grownups, but they can also ruin you. Those of you who have been brought up in large women’s tribes will understand what I am talking about].[5]We are drawn into a narrative where even if the order may seem of matriarchal nature at first, it is soaked in patriarchal values. Ibrahimi shows us that patriarchy survives because it is all encompassing and all-invasive, to the point of absorbing women into self-annihilating hierarchical orders. These women cast their own needs and wills aside, conforming instead to a set of expectations and roles to ensure the continuation of the family, the tribe, the village, or the state. Allowed to leave their parental house only to join their husbands’, women are expected to comply to established roles and are strictly monitored. Entering the husband’s house also means being entrusted to the care of the mother in law, who not only arranges and orchestrates marriages, but also takes it to heart to ensure that the dignity and honour of the family are preserved: they intervene in their sons’ marital life, give them advice on how to gain and maintain respect and submission from their wives, and also keep an eye on whether the marriage is fruitful, and therefore the lineage continues. Yet, even if the setting of the novel is deeply patriarchal, in this novel men take the backseat, often portrayed as inept, incompetent, drunkards and violent with little possibility for redeption, but also lonely and emotionally stunted creatures, who represent the flipside of patriarchy. These are unstable, emotionally immature men, unable to fully express themselves in a social setting that requires them to comply to harsh standards of virility. Overall, they appear as peripheral, suggesting they had equally peripheral roles in the running of their very family and the public life of the village. Within this context, they are (too) often forgiven for their behaviours, for which women are made responsible: “si sa che gli uomini ci provano tutti, è dovere delle donne dire di no” [it’s renown that all men hit on women, so it is a woman’s duty to say no].[6]Within this women-run patriarchal order, the women must be tamed young so they do the taming of other women later on in their life. Along with the personal narratives, family- and village-centred, readers witness the development of yet another character that becomes more and more prominent – one might even say “invasive” – as we read on: Albania. The book opens in the immediate pre-World War II, with occasional flashbacks to the 1920s, and closes in post-communist and post-socialist times, when the country is just about to open up to the liberal freedom America was marketing as the staple of the “modern West” in 1992. The village of Kaltra is not spared the repercussions of national and international events – from soldiers’ recruitment and the arrival of the Germans during the war, to the process of urbanisation that sees villagers like Dora’s father moving to bigger cities like Valona or Tirana and setting up their families there, to the opening up of borders to both immigration and emigration. Following the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha (1946-1985), Albania sees, in fact, the coming of a global outlook, with the import of denim jeans, the arrival of migrant workers and an exodus towards other lands. Albania’s presence is ever so invasive during those sections of the novel that take place during communist times when, for the motherland’s sake, its citizens were allotted to different roles, often interfering with, and clashing against, their true ambitions and desires. Notable is the example of the narrator’s aunt Adelina, who is prevented from studying because the Party already agreed to her siblings going to university, and a family cannot serve the country when all its members “are sitting on their arses.”[7]Ibrahimi thus reproposes a larger-scale power dynamic evoking the first part of the novel where, within the small reality of the village, women were subjected to calculated marriage arrangements and roles to ensure the wellbeing of the families involved and the village at large. Ibrahimi writes in swift sentences that mirror the simple, yet tortured, living of her characters, whilst giving voice to the complexities of human relationships – a fine balancing act between the innocence of young voices and the weight of words passed down through bodies that carry their pasts. It is a story full of poetic glimpses and love, often contradictory and violent – such as when Seba gets punished by her mother Meliha, who after forgetting her outside hanging upside down from the branch of a tress in the cold, spends the night cuddling her daughter, cursing herself for being a terrible mother, and Seba wishes she could get punished more often, if it means it would be followed by such unequivocal outbursts of affection. These voices are also languages that we see failing from generation to generation, that produce mistranslations of love, and that make up for an extraordinary choral narrative, a work of true craft[wo]manship. [1] Anilda Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa (Torino: Einaudi, 2008), p.5, my translation. [2] Ibid., p.123. [3] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.42. [4] Ibid., p.58. [5] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.188. [6] Ibid., p.127. [7] Ibrahimi, Rosso come una sposa , p.169.

Doctoral Candidate 1 Host Institution: CEU PU Mobility Institution: University of Oviedo WP 1: Transnational turn in literary studies: Looking from Central and Eastern Europe Objectives: This individual research project belongs to the overarching research area Transnational women’s literature and its travels: points of entry and pathways, which brings together WP1 and WP2. In this framework DC1 will engage with larger questions of transnational feminist literary theory with an aim to explore impacts of transnational turn upon methods of literary interpretation (narrative methods, close and distant reading, content analyses). The research will focus in particular on specific problems of traveling concepts and traveling theories; problems of studying identities in literary texts; questions of multilingualism and literary translations. Doctoral Candidate 2 Host Institution: University of Oviedo Mobility Institution: CEU PU WP 2: Mapping the "strangeness of Europe" in transnational women's writing Objectives: DC2 will be researching the ways in which women’s writing in Europe, especially those following the routes of migration from Africa and the Caribbean (and, to a lesser extent Asia), produce transnational writing and offer an alternative, gendered and sometimes multilingual map of European cities and conviviality. Applying a framework adapted from postcolonial theory, gender studies and neo- cosmopolitan studies, and embracing the performative theories of literature as a world-making activity, the research will approach diasporic women’s texts and explore the extent to which migrants, refugees and “post-multicultural” writers may constitute today’s cosmopolitans and provide a “hinge” between national cultures and transnational perspectives (Sneja Gunew 2017). It will focus on how literatures produced in the territory of what Chris Rumford (2016) terms “the strangeness of Europe”, the multiple Europes in their “disconnected contiguity”, may create a new narrative of Europe and innovative genres and linguistic practices. Doctoral Candidate 3 Host Institution: University of Bologna Mobility Institution: University of York WP 3: Narratives of connections and complicities in women's transnational minor literary genres Objectives: Employing a diachronic perspective, the researcher will investigate repetitive patterns in women’s transnational culture(s). Moving from this approach, he/she will take into consideration minor genres, which have often become for women and marginal subjects narratives of connections, complicities, negotiations, practices of resistance and changes. These narratives will enable geographies of identity transgressing the traditional boundaries (individual, national and collective). DC3 will focus on minorities’ literatures, and hybrid genres such as utopia, dystopia, science fiction, and/as collective autobiography and intertextual connections between transnational women. Doctoral Candidate 4 Host Institution: University of Bologna Mobility Institution: University of Granada WP 4: Transnational genres: genre/gender crossings in translation and creative practice Objectives: DC4 will select a diverse range of primary texts and transmedia works that cross borders between cultural discourses and cultures but also between genres, genders, and forms. This will be supported by the Centre for Utopian Studies and stakeholders, creative industries outside UNIBO, ERT-national theatre Emilia Romagna, and the Gender Bender Festival for visual art and dance. Doctoral Candidate 5 Host Institution: University of Utrecht Mobility Institution: Coventry University WP 5: Moving perspective: the role of transnational literary intellectuals in shaping public debate around European belonging Objectives: DC5 will investigate the contribution of women-identified, transnational intellectuals and writers into shaping public reception and debate around European belonging and identification. The project will focus on transnational literature as multilingual literature informed by migrant and postcolonial experience. Through this lens, using literary methodology (reception analysis, discourse analysis, archival research methods, combinations of close and distant reading, comparative analysis) and drawing on feminist theory, intellectual history, postcolonial studies, migration literature, media studies and critical theory, ESR5 will cartograph the diverse literary production by established, but especially also minor transnational European writers based in the Netherlands, the UK and Italy. It will analyse how these works contribute to public debate, and how they operate across national borders, gender identities and languages in these three different contexts. Specifically, it will investigate through which media and public platforms (festivals, prizes, publishing industry) they impact, seeking to combine prominent and minor literary figures to assess the diversity of gendered transnational voices. How do these voices challenge geographical and temporal methodological nationalism and create a transnational and translocal sense of European belonging? How do they contribute to rewriting and expanding the European literary canon and to developing a new understanding of the politics of belonging in Europe? Doctoral Candidate 6 Host Institution: University of Oviedo Mobility Institution: University of Utrecht WP 6: The role of transnational literatures in the decolonisation of understanding of gender within the European academe Objectives: Drawing on interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including pedagogical and textual content analyses, curricula case studies, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with educators, students and transnational intellectuals in cross-European contexts, DC6 will investigate the ways in which transnational literatures (including text, novels, poetry, play texts, digital literary media) have influenced processes of pedagogical decolonisation within the teaching of Women’s and Gender Studies. The research asks to what extent transnational intellectuals and literatures that challenge thinking about European gender identities have been deployed to develop, extend and decolonise theoretical frameworks for rethinking politics of identity within interdisciplinary gender studies. Doctoral Candidate 7 Host Institution: University of Granada Mobility Institution: University of Lodz WP 7: Transnational literatures in the making: dialogues with film, social media, streaming platforms, performative arts and new literary genres Objectives: DC7 will be researching on the ways in which transnational narratives (and experiences) resonate, interpelate or enter into dialogue with other discursive forms of expression such as film, performative arts, social media initiatives, streaming platforms, electronic literature or slam literature. This involves translations across literatures and these different media as well as across different national contexts. Such processes are partly enabled by the broad accessibility of different technologies of communication (including film, social media or streaming platforms) as well as new literary genres and literary experiments (electronic literature, slam literature). These socio-cultural transformations facilitate transnational circulation of literary narratives, or of the content of literature, often creatively reworking them in the process. Doctoral Candidate 8 Host Institution: University of Lodz Mobility Institution: University of Granada WP 8: Intermedial diffusions: creative interfaces of transnational women's literature and the arts Objectives: The individual research project will focus on the inter- and transmedial diffusions of the experiences and narratives conveyed by the selected examples of transnational women’s literature and how these transformations are shaped by the shifts of national/cultural/social contexts. The special attention will be paid to the interfaces of literature and the arts. Taking a new materialist approach, the DC9 will focus on the complex intra-action between the form and content, exploring how the change of the medium affects the content of the narrative and vice versa—how the narrative co-constitutes the operations of the medium. The research will focus on how—through trans- and intermediality—the selected narratives of transnational women’s literature reach out to and engage broader audiences, and how they are reshaped once placed in new situations of communications and new national locations. This will contribute to developing a more thorough reflection on European identities and how they are negotiated on everyday basis in and across different national contexts. Doctoral Candidate 9 Host Institution: CEU PU Mobility Institution: University of Lodz WP 1: Transnational turn in literary studies: Looking from Central and Eastern Europe Objectives: DC9 will be researching on points of entry and pathways of transnational literature in the region of Central and Eastern Europe. A space where languages and literatures of numerous small nations traditionally coexisted and mixed in rich variety, CEE is an ideal laboratory to examine transnational encounters, transculturalism, questions of identity and border-crossing. The cultural specificities and symbolic significance of CEE as a specific cultural toponym in Europe have been widely addressed from the 1970s on. However, this scholarship is traditionally leaving out majority of women-identifies writers, being focused on canonical male authors. At the same time, the cultural position and the role of CEE in post-socialist times, and in particular in times of EU enlargement, with shifting geographic and symbolic borders, requires transnational perspective in addressing critically literary production in the region. Doctoral Candidate 10 Host Institution: University of York Mobility Institution: University of Bologna WP 4: Transnational genres: genre/gender crossings in translation and creative practice Objectives: DC10 (externally funded, recruited by partner YORK) will have three main objectives: 1. To build on Walkowitz’s notion of the “born-translated” novel and Preciado’s blending of gender and sexuality studies with migrant/multilingual literary studies in order to interrogate and reimagine the definition of translingual, border-crossing writing not merely as an aesthetic effect in transnational literatures but as a genre in its own right; 2. To deepen understandings of how multilingual and migrant writing shapes and is shaped by nuanced intersections of gender, language, culture, race, class, sexuality, and disability; 3. To experiment with practice-led research methods, using translation and various forms of creative practice (e.g. creative writing, performance, mixed-media artforms), alongside social science methods (e.g. interviews, focus groups), in order to develop innovative interdisciplinary methods for approaching border-crossing artworks that challenge and question existing conventions in literary scholarship. Externally funded ESR10 will select a diverse range of primary texts and mixed-media artworks that cross borders not only between languages and cultures but also between genres, genders, and form. They will be supported by YORK’s interdisciplinary expertise, networks, and facilities for the study and practice of social science and artistic research methods. Furthermore, the Department of English & Related Literature will provide networks and training in translation, creative writing, and the creative industries. Doctoral Candidate 11 Host Institution: Coventry University Mobility Institution: University of Utrecht WP 6: The role of transnational literatures in the decolonisation of understanding of gender within the European academe Objectives: Drawing on interdisciplinary feminist methods and methodologies, including pedagogical and textual content analyses, curricula case studies, participant observation and semi-structured interviews with educators, students and transnational intellectuals in cross-European contexts, externally funded DC11 will investigate the ways in which transnational literatures (including text, novels, poetry, play texts, digital literary media) have influenced processes of pedagogical decolonisation within the teaching of Women’s and Gender Studies. The research asks to what extent transnational intellectuals and literatures that challenge thinking about European gender identities have been deployed to develop, extend and decolonise theoretical frameworks for rethinking politics of identity within interdisciplinary gender studies.

Carla Rodríguez González University of Oviedo Researcher Carla Rodríguez González is Senior lecturer in English at the University of Oviedo, Spain, where she teaches in the Erasmus Mundus GEMMA and in the Gender and Diversity Master’s Degrees. Her research focuses on contemporary Scottish literature, as well as on postcolonial, gender, space and cultural studies. She is co-PI (with Isabel Carrera Suárez) of the research project “World-travelling: Narratives of Solidarity and Coalition in Contemporary Writing and Performance” (2022-2025), funded by the Spanish National R&D Programme. She was the coordinator of the Gender and Diversity Master’s Degree at the University of Oviedo, Spain (2019-2023). Publications: "Liz Lochhead and Jackie Kay" In A Companion to Scottish Literature . First edition. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2024. Durán-Almarza, Emilia María, Carla Rodríguez González, and Suzanne Clisby. Performing Cultures of Equality. Routledge, 2022.

Adelina Sánchez Espinosa University of Granada Principal Investigator Adelina Sánchez Espinosa is senior Lecturer at the University of Granada and Scientific Coordinator of GEMMA: Erasmus Mundus Master and Consortium in Women's and Gender Studies; PI for the "Reception, modes and gender" Andalusian Research Group and the "Gender Responsible Lecturing Labs: Interfacing cultural and visual cultures Andalusian Research Project of Excellence, UGR PI for H2020 MSCA EUTERPE Project (EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender in Transnational Perspective") and a Horizon Chanse project: DIGISCREENS Identities and Democratic values on European digital screens: Distribution, reception and representation. She is Series Editor of the Researching with GEMMA collection (Peter Lang) She was the Vice-President of AOIFE (Association of Institutions for Feminist Research and Education in Europe): Director of International Relations for the UGR, Executive Secretary of the UGR Women's Studies Research Institute and Series Editor for the UGR "FEMINAE" Book collection. Publications: Calderón-Sandoval, Orianna, and Adelina Sánchez-Espinosa. 2020. “Feminist Counter-Cinema and Decolonial Countervisuality: Subversions of Audiovisual Archives in Un’ora Sola Ti Vorrei (2002) and Pays Barbare (2013).” Studies in Documentary Film 15 (3): 187–202. Calderon-Sandoval, Orianna, and Adelina Sánchez-Espinosa. 2024. “Queerfeminist Strategies for the Reconstruction of Spanish Memories of the Civil War and Franco’s Dictatorship in El Cuarto de Atrás (1978) and Cartas a María (2015).” Bulletin of Spanish Studies 101 (4): 569–93. Sánchez-Espinosa, Adelina, and Séamus O’Kane. "Interpreting “Translanguages” in Transnational Women’s Literature: Socially Situated Perspectives and Feminist Close-Readings." Social Sciences 14, no. 7 (2025): 414.

Justyna Stępień University of Lodz Researcher Justyna Stępień is an assistant professor in the Department of British Literature and Culture and the co-founder of the Posthumanities Research Centre, University of Lodz (Poland). Her research engages with ways of conceiving ethical and political actions in contemporary art, analysed from the methodological perspective of feminist theories, new materialisms, and critical posthumanism. She belongs to an international research group/collective, The Posthuman Art and Research Group (aka Dori. O), which comprises artists and researchers from Europe and Canada. Publications: Stępień, Justyna. 2023. “Augmented (Re)wilding of Urban Entanglements in Jakob Kudsk Steensen’s AR Project the Deep Listener.” Przegląd Kulturoznawczy 58: 503–20. Posthuman and Nonhuman Entanglements in Contemporary Art and the Body (Routledge, 2022).

Decolonisation and Caste: Untold Hierarchies In this episode of the EUTERPE Podcast, doctoral candidate Uthara Geetha (University of Oviedo) speaks with Dr. Malavika Binny (Kannur University) and Dr. Tintu Joseph (Mahatma Gandhi University) about the long history of caste as a system of hierarchy and exclusion. Beginning with B.R. Ambedkar’s seminal insights, the conversation traces caste from its Vedic origins and the Aryan migrations to its intersections with patriarchy, slavery, colonialism, and Christianity in Kerala. The episode examines how caste was reinforced under British rule, compares it with racial apartheid and white supremacy, and shows how it continues to structure oppression today. Listeners are invited to rethink caste as central to both colonial histories and decolonial futures. The episode transcript can be accessed here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:394e091c-b94f-4c65-a5d7-138da9a0e450 . This episode is part of the EUTERPE podcast Library on European Literatures and Genders from a Transnational Perspective. The podcast is powered by the European Union, UKRI, and the Central European University Library. Grant Agreement: 101073012 EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project. For more information about the EUTERPE project please refer to the official project webpage https://www.euterpeproject.eu/ , or follow us on Instagram @euterpe_project_ or Facebook at EUTERPE Doctoral Network Project . This episode was produced and edited by: Uthara Geetha . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Podcast Library Decolonisation and Caste: Untold Hierarchies In this episode of the EUTERPE Podcast, doctoral candidate Uthara Geetha (University of Oviedo) speaks with Dr. Malavika Binny (Kannur University) and Dr. Tintu Joseph (Mahatma Gandhi University) about the long history of caste as a system of hierarchy and exclusion. Beginning with B.R. Ambedkar’s seminal insights, the conversation traces caste from its Vedic origins and the Aryan migrations to its intersections with patriarchy, slavery, colonialism, and Christianity in Kerala. The episode examines how caste was reinforced under British rule, compares it with racial apartheid and white supremacy, and shows how it continues to structure oppression today. Listeners are invited to rethink caste as central to both colonial histories and decolonial futures. Georgia, Caucasus and Beyond: A Conversation with Author Nana Abuladze When Nana Abuladze – Georgian author of novels such as "Akumi" and "The New Perception", who has received many prestigious awards for their work exploring the themes of gender, sexuality, identity and spirituality – visited the United States, Ninutsa Nadirashvili (EUTERPE doctoral candidate) was privileged enough to record a conversation with the writer about all things Georgia, Caucasus and beyond. In this podcast, they talk about isolation, Georgia’s history and how it’s been shaped by imperialism as well as internal strife. Additionally, they discuss transnational experiences and the merging of global and local life. We hope this podcast will encourage you to learn more about Nana’s work and Georgian literature. Minal Sukumar on Performance Poetry In this podcast, doctoral candidate Evangeline Scarpulla speaks with performance poet and PhD researcher Minal Sukumar. Minal’s humorous and engaging poetry explores themes of identity, selfhood, and coming of age. In this episode, she gives a reading of some of her poems including #OOTD, If History Catches Up and The Women I House. These readings are followed by a conversation about the origins and inspiration for her work, the meaning of transnationalism in her life and writing, and some of the specific imagery and themes found in her poetry. A Conversation with Author Alejandra Ortiz In this podcast episode, doctoral candidate Maria Auxiliadora Castillo Soto and transnational author Alejandra Ortiz took a walking tour around different places in Amsterdam that are important to the author. Ortiz is the author of the book De Waarheid zal me Bevrijden , published in 2022 by Lebowski Publishers. In her book, Ortiz recounts her migratory experience from Mexico to the United States and Netherlands and her varied experiences in these countries as a trans migrant woman. Multi-layered Approaches: A Conversation with Filmmaker Zuza Banasińska This podcast is a conversation between EUTERPE doctoral candidates Ninutsa Nadirashvili and Olga Fenoll Martínez and the transnational filmmaker Zuza Banasińska. Interested in the reproduction of images, systems, subjects and bodies, Zuza looks for ways to embody and queer existing archives. In this interview, they discussed their essay films, installations, multi-layered approaches that incorporate found and recorded footage, intricate ecosystems, and how they strive to interrogate and de-stabilise entrenched notions of identity, gender, and representation. Interdisciplinarity and Interpretation: Concepts, Boundaries, and Contradiction with Ato Quayson This episode of the EUTERPE podcast features a lecture by Ato Quayson, 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. The lecture was delivered at the third biannual EUTERPE Doctoral School, held at Central European University in Vienna, Austria. Kimberly Campanello: "I don't want to be the poet who never thought about the meanwhile" On overlapping chronologies, intersecting geographies, translation and how writing can bring this all together. Kimberly Campanello - poet, performer, writer and professor at the University of Leeds - converses with Alice Flinta about her transnational belongings between the US, the UK and the south of Italy, and how this all comes together in her most recent project, a rewriting of the Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri.

Overview of the research and training program Based upon a truly interdisciplinary gendered approach to knowledge production, EUTERPE offers a new and innovative quality of PhD training characterized by synergy between research, training, and supervision. Within a broader area of research that focuses on transnational literature on a European level, EUTERPE creates a considerable added value compared to standard PhD or research programs through its carefully planned collaborative approach that includes several major components: training at the host university; training at the secondment university; consortium-wide specialized intensive training via summer and winter schools; bespoke employability enhancement with the support of an individually assigned Employability Mentor; skills development through periods of two-month internships with an Associated Partner organization; hands-on training in open science research methods, academic publication and alternative forms of content dissemination within the EUTERPE Transnational Literary Research Laboratory while working on the project’s main impact outputs: the Dictionary of Transnational Women’s Literature in Europe, the Digital Catalogue and the Podcast Library. The EUTERPE Transnational Literary Research Laboratory as an essential eminent of EUTERPE research across eight universities will represent the project’s central research hub responsible for the conceptualization, investigation, and intellectual design necessary for the project’s overarching impact outputs, the Dictionary of Transnational Women’s Literature in Europe, the Digital Catalogue, and the Podcast Library. The Laboratory will rely on the interdisciplinary expertise of the consortium members as well as on the practical know-how concentrated amongst our Associate Partners, but just as importantly, all DCs are expected to be active members of the Laboratory, within which they will have a chance to get hands-on experience with the process of designing, researching, shaping, and launching a top-notch open access academic and literary publication and website, as well as receive training in open science methodology, and learn how to apply it in their own research work.

Nino Haratischvili’s 'The Eighth Life': An Intergenerational Tale of Sisters, Sunflower Seeds and Cherry Liqueur Haratischvili’s novel joins a tradition of feminist authors who give voice to the unique ways in which war, famine, dictatorship, and revolution are experienced by caregivers and women. by Evangeline Scarpulla 25 February 2025 Review: Haratischvili, Nino. The Eighth Life: (for Brilka). Translated by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin. (London: Scribe Publications, 2019). [1] Can reconstructing the stories of our ancestors help us to better understand ourselves? What stories do people share and what secrets do they keep? How far do family ties stretch? How does one survive when social and political circumstances carry them down unforeseen paths? These are some of the questions author Nino Haratischvili grapples with in her epic 935-page novel about the multi-generational Jashi family, an upper-class Georgian family from a small town outside of Tbilisi. At once a novel of mis-adventure, love, and tragedy, Haratischvili frames the century-long story through the eyes of Niza, who is recording the stories of her family for her young niece and friend Brilka. As the reader, we follow Niza as she recounts the tales that her great-grandmother Stasia told her about the past five generations of Jashis. As each section of the seven-part novel progresses, we eagerly anticipate the introduction of new characters, and yearn for happy endings for those we have grown attached to. Amidst these stories, Haratischvili expertly weaves an informed historical account of life in Georgia during the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, as experienced by an extensive cast of children, grandmothers, soldiers, academics, KGB officers, activists, poets, rebels, and dancers. The novel is framed as a collection of stories passed down through over five generations of women. Narrated by Niza and addressed to Brilka, the book is intended as a gift of family history for the youngest Jashi woman. Through this complex narrative framing, Haratischvili emphasises the importance of family ties, the value of sisterhood, and the significance of inherited knowledge. The frequent asides in which Niza directly addresses Brilka, and the use of second-person narration, encourages readers to see through Brilka’s eyes and to feel as though they too are part of the Jashi family’s history. When Brilka enters the story as a primary character towards the end of the novel, the narration shifts to third-person, and the novel’s addressee – a girl of fourteen with a passion for dancing and an intense desire to know where she comes from – begins to take on a personality and voice of her own. Through these subtle narrative techniques, Haratischvili accomplishes the task of drawing in the reader and eliciting an emotional investment in the characters’ stories. In many ways, the novel reads as a long and liberating gossip session exchanged between sisters over a glass of cherry liqueur. The openness and vulnerability with which Niza invites her niece Brilka to explore her family’s past, which includes tales of trauma and loss, shows the mutual trust and affection that form between these two women as a result of their shared history. At times, one questions whether the young Brilka will be able to process the often violent stories which her aunt recounts. However, by the end of the novel, it is clear that Brilka has a right to these histories, because they are the ones that ferried the other women in her family through the currents of their lives to the point of her conception. Many reviewers have drawn comparisons between Haratischvili’s novel and Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1867). These connections have been drawn because of the novel’s emphasis on the political and historical context of the character’s lives, the polyphonic narrative style, and the internal references to Tolstoy’s novels. However, the thoughtful reader should consider the problematic implications of comparing or equating a distinctly Georgian narrative – which critically reflects on the history of Georgia’s subjugation under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union – to a classic Russian novel. Furthermore, Haratischvili’s novel focalises women’s voices and their perspectives on war, family, and nation, contrasting significantly with the largely male perspectives through which Tolstoy’s narrative, one firmly rooted in the patriarchal canon, is told. Indeed, Haratischvili’s playful and imaginative language, the fantastical elements of the novel, and the specific focus on the lives and experiences of the women in the Jashi family is perhaps more reminiscent of Isabel Allende’s multigenerational magical realist novel The House of the Spirits (1982), or Laura Esquivel’s novella Like Water for Chocolate (1989), in which the main character has the ability to imbue her cooking with her desires and intentions, giving the dishes mystical properties similar to those of the hot chocolate that appears as a mysterious thread linking the tragedies and events that occur in The Eighth Life . Haratischvili’s novel joins a tradition of feminist authors who give voice to the unique ways in which war, famine, dictatorship, and revolution are experienced by caregivers and women. Despite the graphic nature of the more traumatic moments in the novel, the reader is bolstered by the undeniable hope and support that permeates the relationships between the Jashi women and provides them with the strength to endure their social and political circumstances. This is most acutely illustrated by the account of Kitty’s return home after she endures brutal and violent questioning at the hands of the NKVD. Afterwards, Kitty finds solidarity and understanding in her relationship with her aunt, Christine, who is a survivor herself. While sharing her story, Kitty runs her hands over Christine’s face, a face scarred by an acid attack, ‘in the hope that by studying Christine’s map she would be able to create her own. A map of her own that would show her how to go on living. A survival map.’ [2] By telling these stories the narrator provides Brilka with her own survival map, one made up of the lifelines belonging to the women of her past. Another parallel between Haratischvili’s novel and the work of feminist writers like Isabel Allende is the undercurrent of unexplained, magical, and uncanny elements. As mentioned earlier, the family’s tantalising and indulgent hot chocolate recipe, invented by Stasia’s father in the early 20th century, is more than just the secret to his success. It becomes a part of the Jashi family lore, made by those seeking comfort in times of strife, and feared for its tendency to ‘bring about calamity’ in the lives of those who taste it.[3] This curse, coupled with the fact that much of the novel’s plot is triggered by events that occur at a Gatsby-esque masquerade ball in the lively and colourful hills of Tbilisi, lends the narrative a carnivalesque tone, foregrounding the absurd, surreal and humorous in the tale. These fantastical elements are particularly present in the characterisation of the family’s matriarch, Niza’s great-grandmother Stasia. For example, Stasia’s introduction in the story is framed as a mythologised incident of birth: She came into the world – so I was told – in the coldest winter at the dawn of the twentieth century. She had a headful of hair; you could have plaited it, they said. And with her first cry she was, in fact, already dancing. They said she laughed as she cried, as if she were crying more to reassure the adults, her parents, the midwives, the country doctor, not because she had to. And they said that with her first steps she was already describing a pas de deux. And that she loved chocolate, always. And that before she could say ‘Father’ she was babbling Madame Butterfly. [4] Stasia’s eccentric nature grows throughout the century long narrative, reflected by the magical and anthropomorphic wildness of the fairy-tale dwellings she inhabits. She seems to grow younger and younger with each passing year, is known for her lucidity and her quick tongue, and is eager to react with stubbornness and profanity to her son’s controlling nature and the events of the world. Stasia’s clarity and youthful spirit are offset by the strange power she develops to see and talk to the dead, which grows as, one-by-one, her loved ones join the ranks of the ghosts. Because of the way that Haratischvili lightly dances back and forth across the line of magical storytelling and realism, by the end of the novel the reader is left wondering if hot chocolate can really kill and whether they will one day see the dead playing cards in their garden. The Eighth Life is a masterful mixing of fact and fiction and a window into Georgian history and culture – complete with images of Tbilisi, sunflower seeds, chacha, and horses native to the Georgian steppe. It is approachable for readers unacquainted with the history of the Soviet Union, the Caucasus, and the Cold War, but offers unique insight for others with greater familiarity. The references and accounts of real-life figures such as ‘The Generalissimus’, and ‘The Little Big Man,’ are integrated with the stories of fictional characters, such as Giorgi Alania and Konstantin Jashi, who in the novel also occupy significant government positions in the Soviet Union. Additionally, each chapter begins with a quote, taken from a variety of historical sources including Vladimir Lenin, Soviet poster slogans, Anton Chekhov, David Bowie, and The Taming of the Shrew. The attentive reader will notice the occasional instances when Haratischvili attributes one of these epigraphs to a fictional character in the novel, such as the exiled Patti Smith-esque singer songwriter Kitty Jashi. Through this intertextuality, the author seamlessly integrates her fictional characters into the cultural and political history of the 20th-century, and leaves the reader wondering where the history ends, and the fiction begins. The final page of this seven-part story contains only one line: the chapter title ‘Book VIII: Brilka.’ [5] This open-ended conclusion invites the young Brilka to continue the saga of the Jashi family with her own ongoing story. Thus, Haratischvili’s novel, so often about pain and loss, ends as one full of hope and love, leaving the reader with the intense desire to explore their own family history, and a deeper understanding of Georgian history and culture. [1] This translation is translated from the original German. Readers should note that there are some phonetic inconsistencies between the English spellings and the Georgian names and terms. [2] Nino Haratischvili, The Eighth Life: (for Brilka) , trans. by Charlotte Collins and Ruth Martin (London: Scribe Publications, 2019), p. 227. [3] Haratischvili, p. 49. [4] Haratischvili, pp. 16-17. [5] Haratischvili, p. 935.

Medea, Medes, Marjane and Me: Reflections on colonialism, war, and migration in Marjane Satrapi’s 'Persepolis' While reading Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, three major questions emerge. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? by Ninutsa Nadirashvili 23 July 2025 Medea, Medes, Marjane and Me: Reflections on colonialism, war, and migration in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Between the years of 2000 and 2003, Marjane Satrapi published a quartet of autobiographical comics about growing up in Iran, experiencing the 1979 revolution and dealing with its aftermath. Once translated into English and combined into a two-volume work, it became Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . Centuries earlier, in 431 B.C., Euripides – tragedian of classical Athens – produced a trilogy of plays.[1] Medea – the only surviving work – is often summarized simply as the story of a woman who murdered her two children to make her husband suffer.[2] Yet, like all women, Medea had a complex history of her own before, during and after her marriage to Jason, a prominent hero in Greek mythology. In some ways, just like Marjane’s protagonist, Medea presents a fascinating case study of how conquest, war, and migration can affect an individual; how they can erase our comfortable notions of home, belonging and safety. In Euripides’ text, Medea laments: Let it go! What profit in staying alive? No country, no home, no way to turn from evil. I made a mistake when I abandoned my homeland, trusting in the words of a Greek man. Now he will pay me justice, gods willing.[3] My personal interest in Medea is because I was born in Georgia. In the accounts of her myth, Medea lives in Kolkheti[4] – a very real polity, active between the 13th and 1st centuries B.C., that is considered as the first Georgian kingdom.[5] After being put under a love spell by the gods, Medea assists Jason in getting the Golden Fleece, betraying her family and kingdom in the process, and sails away with him, eventually settling in Corinth. There, after ten years of marriage, Jason decides to abandon his wife and marry the local king’s daughter. Though retellings differ, Euripides has Medea murder her two children as revenge against her disloyal husband.[6] After this, she flees Corinth and, according to Herodotus, ends up in the Iranian plateau among the Aryans who, in her honour, eventually change their name to Medes.[7] So, in one version of history, a Georgian princess, tricked, taken and then abandoned, spends the last years of her life on the same land that will later give birth to Marjane Satrapi, who, in turn, gives life to Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . Persepolis , like Euripides’ play, is the story of one woman. Marjane is only ten when revolutionaries sweep through Iran, collectively devolving into an oppressive regime upheld by religious fanaticism. This eventually leads to a war between Iran and Iraq, forcing Marjane’s parents to send their daughter away. Marjane spends nearly a decade in Austria, lost and aimless, eventually ending up on the street. Unable to go on, she returns to Iran only to become severely depressed, even attempting suicide. Here, she echoes Medea again, writing, “I was a Westerner in Iran. An Iranian in the West. I had no identity.”[8] In other words, “No country, no home, no way to turn from evil.”[9] Migration – especially one that is forced – forever alters the migrant’s position from an “insider” to someone in the in-between. This is so painful that both women are driven to extremes. Understanding her survival from the suicide attempt as a miracle, Marjane obtains a degree in graphic design, marries, divorces, and finally decides to leave for Europe again – understanding that, in her mother’s words, “You are a free woman. The Iran of today is not for you.”[10] While reading Satrapi’s work, three major questions emerged for me. First, who can colonize or be colonized? Second, is war anything but a personal matter? And third, is the idea of a return just as much of a myth as the Golden Fleece? The answers, simply put, are: everyone, no, and yes. Still, I would like to delve deeper into Marjane’s story and explore these questions while keeping the author, myself, and Medea in mind. In 1980, Marjane’s father hoped that after centuries of “tyranny and submission”, the revolution was finally waking Iranians up.[11] Since Persepolis is a graphic novel, this statement is followed with a visual depiction of Iranian history: first, subjugated by their own emperors, then the Arabs, followed by Mongolians and finally, the modern imperialists of the global West. Here, the first set of questions come to mind – Who can colonise, who can be colonised and who benefits from the claim that this must be an unchanging dynamic? For example, while Satrapi’s Iran is presented as a colonised territory, the nation where I was born considers Iran a coloniser. In the 4thand 5th centuries, Persians controlled the Georgian Kingdom of Iberia, only to be replaced by Arabian tribes.[12] Ten centuries later, Persians re-conquered Georgia, ruling over the country until 1800s, only ceding power to the Russian Empire which continues to oppress Georgians and currently occupies approximately 20% of our territory.[13] Persepolis is a novel that understands the possibility within all nations to become the “evil” that Medea has no way to turn from. This is why Satrapi begins to tell the country’s 2,500-year story by pointing out that the people were subjugated by their own emperors – the same ones who demanded expansion to foreign lands. This is also why, when Marjane is in Austria, she comes to the realisation that “In every religion, you find the same extremists.”[14] This is why, to Marjane’s old Iranian schoolmates, “making themselves up and wanting to follow Western ways was an act of resistance.”[15] Satrapi, by allowing for her personal story to be the focal point of the novel, manages to get this point across. Everyone can be an oppressor, and anyone can be oppressed. The only group that benefits from the establishment of rigid rules around colonisation is the one that decides to become a conqueror next as it makes it easy to claim innocence that way: “Us? No, never! We’ve been the victims before; how could we?” Empires obliterate others and themselves, there are no set guidelines for who can be the “bad guy.” After all, Jason is supposed to be a hero; and yet he fails at it spectacularly. Once Persepolis proposes that anyone can turn into a tyrant, the novel shifts its focus to the consequences of tyranny – mainly war. In a chapter titled “The Water Cell”, Marjane is told a story that is eerily like one I have heard from my own mother. The reader finds out that Marjane’s grandfather was the son of Iran’s last emperor, subject to frequent threats, and jailed on several occasions.[16]In one of the illustrations, we see a young girl (Marjane’s mother) opening the door to police officers looking for her dad. This is how my mother’s story starts as well, though she rarely tells it. After she opens the door, her father – my grandfather – is taken away by police. His crime was nothing more than having the same last name as a high-ranking politician who opposed the government. This type of intimidation can only foster political unrest, eventually culminating in a war. Marjane and I were both 10 when war took us by surprise, as it always does.[17] In her novel, Satrapi highlights the direct nature of violence, especially when it reaches proportions of such magnitude. The writer tells us about a classmate who writes a eulogy to her father, the refugees who flood Tehran from the South, the maid whose son is given a golden key and told to die for his country in exchange for paradise.[18]When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, our nanny came to my mother in panic because her son had just been drafted. I remember vividly that she worried about him leaving before dinner, how they had taken him in a hurry, and she had only found time to put a bar of chocolate in his pocket. Satrapi’s focus on the fates of individual citizens answers the second question – No, war is never anything but personal. So then, once Medea has betrayed her father, started a war in several cities, and killed her own children, can she return to Kolkheti? After all, Persepolis is in ruins, and I have not been truly fluent in Georgian since the age of thirteen. We will never know how much of Euripides’ play is based on facts, but I would argue that the act of returning is entirely mythological. In Austria, Marjane denies her heritage, refuses to watch the news about Iran, and tries desperately to fit in.[19] Instead, she is repeatedly discriminated against, tokenised, isolated, and ultimately ends up on the street with no one to care for her. Soon after, unable to assimilate because much like returning, assimilation is a myth, she flies to Iran. She writes, “After four years living in Vienna, here I am back in Tehran. From the moment I arrived at Mehrabad Airport and caught sight of the first customs agent, I immediately felt the oppressive air of my country.”[20] Welcome home, indeed. In chapters to follow, Marjane compares her city to a cemetery, is labelled a whore for having sexual experiences in Austria, discovers the duality of revolutionary men who preach about freedom while refusing to let their wives speak.[21] If Herodotus is telling the truth, Medea only goes home as a conqueror. Meanwhile, Marjane is barely recognisable to her own parents. As for me, after living in Georgia for a year during my twenties, I know I will spend the rest of my life trying to find the same feeling of “home” that I had at thirteen, only to fail. (Though it was not always good, I once belonged to that place, and it belonged to me). There is no rest for the migrants. And belongings get left behind. Then again, as Satrapi points out on the final page of the novel, freedom has a price.[22] Bibliography Euripides. Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation . Translated by Diane Rayor. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Herodotus. Herodotus . Translated by A. D. Godley. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920. Satrapi, Marjane. Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return . London: Vintage, 2008. Rayfield, Donald. Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia . London: Reaktion Books, 2019. [1] Euripides, Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation , trans. Diane Rayor (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2013), xiv. [2] Ibid., xiii. [3] Ibid., 37. [4] Or Colchis. [5] Ibid., 69. [6] Ibid., xiii. [7] Herodotus, Herodotus , trans. A. D. Godley (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920), 7.61. [8] Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and The Story of a Return (London: Vintage, 2008)., 118. [9] Euripides, Euripides’ Medea: A New Translation , 37. [10] Ibid., 343. [11] Ibid., 11. [12] Donald Rayfield, Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia (London: Reaktion Books, 2019). [13] Ibid. [14] Satrapi, 180. [15] Satrapi, 261. [16] Ibid., 18-25. [17] Ibid., 81. [18] Ibid., 86 – 99. [19] Ibid., 157-246. [20] Ibid., 248. [21] Ibid., 248 -339. [22] Ibid., 343.