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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. The episode includes an introduction to the lecture given by Sandra Ponzanesi, a EUTERPE Consortium member and the Principal Investigator for Utrecht University. Sandra is also a Chair and full Professor of Media, Gender and Postcolonial Studies and the Founding Director of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative at Utrecht University. In this lecture, Quayson explores the conceptual landscape of interdisciplinarity, identifying two central principles at its core. The first is the notion of integrative epistemologies that apply across all fields of knowledge – sciences, social sciences, humanities, and the arts. The second involves collaborative modes of knowledge production aimed at addressing real-world issues, such as environmental degradation, urban complexity, water scarcity, public health crises, migration and refugees, international security, and the vagaries of globalization. He argues that meaningful interdisciplinary work requires a clear understanding of the concepts, methods, and propositional protocols borrowed from other disciplines, and an understanding of how these shape one’s own configuration of interdisciplinarity. True interdisciplinarity, he suggests, demands familiarity with the methods of all the disciplines involved, as well as humility and a self-awareness of one’s own disciplinary limits. Quayson illustrates these ideas using examples from his own scholarship and from influential thinkers in the humanities and social sciences, including Hayden White, Christopher Norris, Gillian Beer, Edward Said, and Karen Barad. This lecture was originally delivered on 10/09/2024. The episode transcript can be accessed here . 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: Evangeline Scarpulla 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.

Alice Flinta Alice’s research interests have developed in the fields of translation, postcolonial, transnational, and migrant literature; she has conducted archival research on Franco-Algerian writer Albert Camus’s manuscripts, and in her master’s thesis she explored how French author Michel Houellebecq reconceptualises Camus’s absurd, adapting it to the contemporary world. Modern languages are an integral part of Alice’s research: she is fluent in English, French, Italian and Spanish and is currently learning Russian. A creative writing and translation enthusiast, her poems have been shortlisted in regional competitions on multiple occasions; in the context of promoting Finnish literature in Italy, some of Alice’s translations from English into Italian are published online . Alice is undertaking her PhD in the Centre for Women’s Studies at the University of York, where she also completed her BA in English and Related Literature. She holds a Masters in Comparative Literature from the University of St Andrews. Research topic Over Borders and Languages: Rethinking Transnationality in Europe Through Mediterranean Women’s Writings Alice’s research is rooted in the core belief that literature helps us understand and challenge our current political reality. For the EUTERPE project she is working on how transnational Mediterranean literature by women shapes a new sense of transnationality in Europe and challenges how we think of Europeanness. With a focus on the literature of contemporary translingual, migrant and second-generation women writers, Alice’s project explores the intersection of gender, race, languages, and colonial histories and how it affects migrant writers’ narratives of identity formation, transnationalism, multilingualism, and translation. Rosi Braidotti’s nomadic theory and Paul B. Preciado’s work are at the core of the project’s theoretical framework. Contributions: Contested Communities: Small, Minority and Minor Literatures in Europe ed. by Kate Averis, Margaret Littler and Godela Weiss-Sussex (review) Previous Next

Uthara Geetha Uthara Geetha is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oviedo, Spain working on ‘The role of transnational literatures in the decolonization of understandings of gender within the European academe’. She was an Erasmus Mundus scholar (2019-21) of Gender Studies from University of York (UK) and University of Oviedo (Spain). She also holds a master’s degree in applied economics from Centre for Development Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her main research interest is on the intersections of gender with race, caste, and class inspired from her Dalit identity. In addition to her academic works, she also writes online articles on popular culture from a decolonial intersectional feminist perspective. Previous Next

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Podcast Library Europe beyond Europe. On Macau, water heritage, and “the language of women.” A conversation with Mariana Pinto Leitão Pereira Mariana Pinto Leitão Pereira is a heritage and diaspora researcher, and in this podcast she talks to York-based EUTERPE candidate Alice Flinta about what it means to be and grow up as Macanese. Having lived through Macau’s transition period and vividly remembering the handover day, she reflects on identity at the historical and political fringes of Europe, as well as what feelings of belonging are possible when the landscape changes in the blink of an eye and childhood geographies morph. International Literature Festival in Utrecht: Q&A with Authors Alejandra Ortiz and Chérissa Iradukunda In this podcast, Doctorate Candidate María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto converses with life writing authors Alejandra Ortiz and Chérissa Iradukunda. This conversation is the result of a workshop’s Q&A that Auxi Castillo Soto delivered as part of her EUTERPE internship. During their conversation, Ortiz and Iradukunda talk about their writing process, the language selection, the opinion of their close ones, and many other interesting topics related to their life writing narratives. Hélène Cixous, Echo, Subjectivity, Diffraction (Part 2): A Conversation with Professor Birgit Kaiser In this two-part episode of the EUTERPE Podcast, doctoral candidate Uthara Geetha (University of Oviedo) speaks with Professor. Birgit Kaiser (Utrecht University) about her second monograph ‘Hélène Cixous's Poetics of Voice: Echo - Subjectivity – Diffraction. Prof. Kaiser reveals how Hélène Cixous’s poetic fictions perform a radical, anti-essentialist model of subjectivity as “voice”– one that emerges not from a closed individual but from a ceaseless echo of other beings, places, and times. Hélène Cixous, Echo, Subjectivity, Diffraction (Part 1): A Conversation with Professor Birgit Kaiser In this two-part episode of the EUTERPE Podcast, doctoral candidate Uthara Geetha (University of Oviedo) speaks with Professor. Birgit Kaiser (Utrecht University) about her second monograph ‘Hélène Cixous's Poetics of Voice: Echo - Subjectivity – Diffraction. Prof. Kaiser reveals how Hélène Cixous’s poetic fictions perform a radical, anti-essentialist model of subjectivity as “voice”– one that emerges not from a closed individual but from a ceaseless echo of other beings, places, and times. Sparkly Pearls in the Dustbin of Literature – in conversation with Olja Alvir In this episode of the EUTERPE podcast library, host Tamara Cvetković engages in a wide-ranging conversation with Olja Alvir, a multifaceted literary scholar, writer, translator, and journalist who examines the complexities of identity and migration. Born in Yugoslavia before moving to Austria in 1992, Alvir discusses her academic "excavation" of early Yugoslav partisan films to reveal their artistic value. She reflects on her position as a writer in exile whose homeland no longer exists, and the linguistic friction of navigating between German, English, and Serbo-Croatian (BCMS). Libros con L de Latinas In this episode, Séamus O’Kane interviews Roxana Aguilar and Diana Cruz, two of the founding members of the Libros con L de Latinas book club. They discuss the importance of establishing a Spanish-speaking book club for Latin American women living in Glasgow which allows for migrant women to connect and form a community. The conversation explores how the book club can serve as an inclusive space for expression, solidarity and connecting literature to lived experience. A Conversation with Francesca Sobande For this podcast, Doctorate Candidate Maria Auxiliadora Castillo Soto conversed with Dr. Francesca Sobande about her book titled Big Brands are Watching You: Marketing Social Justice and Digital Culture published by University of California Press in 2024. In this episode, Dr. Sobande talks about her experience with writing this book, her bricolage methodology, and other important topics and concepts that she deals with in her research, including morality and racial capitalism. We invite you to dive into this conversation to know more about Dr. Sobande’s work and to check out the following links for more information. Ruins, Fragments, and the Word: War, Memory, and Utopian Vision in H.D.’s Late Poetry with Raffaella Baccolini This episode features a lecture delivered by Raffaella Baccolini, a professor of Gender Studies and American and British Literature at the University of Bologna, Forlì Campus. Baccolini completed her PhD under the supervision of Susan Stanford Friedman, and has since published widely on women’s writing, H.D., modernism, dystopia and science fiction, trauma and memory, and Young Adult literature. The episode also includes a short introduction given by Jasmina Lukić, Professor with the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University in Vienna and the Principal Leader for the EUTERPE project. This lecture is dedicated to the memory of Susan Stanford Friedman. A Conversation with Marta Olivi on Translation In this podcast, doctoral candidate Evangeline Scarpulla speaks with translator Marta Olivi. During the conversation we discuss Marta’s four major English to Italian translation projects: Canta Ancora, Ragazza (2022), a translation of Jacqueline Roy’s The Fat Lady Sings (2000); L’Antropocene Inconscio (2022), a translation of Mark Bould’s The Anthropocene Unconscious (2021); Paradiso Terrestre (2024), a translation of Laura Vandenberg’s State of Paradise (2024); and selected poems from Molly Brodak's The Cipher (2020). Olivi also talks about her approach to translation work, the intersections between translation and academic research, and the importance of translation in today's transnational literary landscape. We hope that you enjoy listening to this podcast. “Use the Words You Have to Get the Words You Need” with Kimberly Campanello This episode features a lecture given by Kimberly Campanello, which weaves together her recent published and unpublished writing and her reading in neuroscience and literary criticism, including Susan Stanford Friedman’s writing on H.D., who has significantly influenced Campanello's work. This lecture is dedicated to the memory of Susan Stanford Friedman. Reshuffling: Feminist Collaboration and Transnational Solidarity with Rebecca L. Walkowitz This episode features a lecture delivered by Rebecca L. Walkowitz, Claire Tow Professor of English and Provost and Dean of the Faculty at Barnard College. The episode also includes an introduction given by Jasmina Lukić, Professor with the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University in Vienna and the Principal Leader for the EUTERPE project. The lecture pays tribute to the legacy of Susan Stanford Friedman as a scholar and mentor by reflecting on the concept of “reshuffling,” which Friedman developed in her later work as a way of thinking about feminist collaboration across differences of generation, nationality, race, religion, and class. This lecture is dedicated to the memory of Susan Stanford Friedman. Stories of Survival: South Asian Voices in Vienna What does it mean to translate one’s story, language, and labor across borders? In this episode of the EUTERPE podcast series, host Samriddhi Pandey speaks with three South Asian scholars based in Vienna whose work deals with migration, identity, and artistic practice. Moiz Rehan reflects on queer asylum and bureaucratic violence, Rameeza Rizvi explores the “gray zones” of consent and the politics of intimacy in Lahore, and Fattima Naufil Naseer discusses the fading craft traditions of Lahore’s carpet weavers. The conversation moves through stories of navigating European academic spaces and finding ways to keep one’s voice alive inside these institutions. A Conversation with Eugenia Seleznova In this episode, doctoral candidates Tamara Cvetković and Samriddhi Pandey interview Eugenia Seleznova, an author, researcher, and cultural manager from Ukraine. Currently, Eugenia is a PhD Candidate at Central European University, where she conducts a research on queer Ukrainian relationalities during the war. In conversation with Tamara and Samriddhi, Eugenia shares how the contexts of the post-Soviet, then revolutionary, and then, finally, wartime Ukraine have shaped her experience as an author, and directed her own shifts and transitions: between identities, regionalities, languages, genres, occupations — and ways to love and write. The conversation also touches on transnational and translingual experiences of writing through displacement, and on finding one's way as a "peripheral researcher" amidst the Western academia. "I am not a sedentary person; I am peacefully restless": A Conversation with Elvira Dones How does an artist listen to the pain of others? How can writing represent and respect their voices? In this episode, Albanian Italian author, and English PEN Award winner, Elvira Dones talks to Alice Flinta about her process of writing, and how her life experiences inform the creative process. From life in Albania and her escape in 1988, to the asylum experience in Switzerland, to the documentary work across borders (Albania, Italy, Kosovo and the U.S.) that informs her literary endeavours, Dones offers intimate and thought-provoking insights into being transnational and living transnationally. A Conversation with Author Chérissa Iradukunda In this podcast, doctoral candidates Evangeline Scarpulla and Maria Auxiliadora Castillo Soto, converse with transnational author Chérissa Iradukunda, a first time published author who recounts her migratory experience from Burundi to the Netherlands in her book titled Broken Object. Her book was published in 2023 by Austin Macauley Publishers, and it presents readers with the difficulties experienced by a teenage girl while adapting to her new home and Dutch culture. Throughout their conversation, Iradukunda talks about what being a transnational author means to her. She also discusses the process of publishing her book, and her motivation for choosing English as the language of publication. Lastly, they discuss specific themes related to the plot and characters of her creative novel. 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. Postcolonial Europe and Its Intellectuals: Feminist and Transnational Perspectives with Sandra Ponzanesi This episode features a lecture by Sandra Ponzanesi. Sandra is a member of the EUTERPE consortium and the Principal Investigator for Utrecht University. She is Chair and full Professor of Media, Gender and Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, where she is also the Founding Director of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative (PCI). In this lecture, Sandra Ponzanesi discusses how Europe is not just a continent, a mere geographical space that continually redefines its boundaries and peripheries, but an ideal. It is the cradle of Enlightenment and scientific revolutions, and therefore of Western modernity and democracy. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Olga Fenoll Martínez Olga Fenoll-Martínez holds a BA in Translation and Interpreting (University of Granada) and an MA in English Literature and Linguistics (University of Granada). She has been granted with different scholarships for early researchers provided by the Spanish Government and the University of Granada, and she has also engaged in R&D research projects. In her works, Olga has aimed to display a queer approach through different intra-actions such as contemporary queer poetry, translation studies or located audiovisual cultures from a feminist new-materialist lens. Research topic Olga’s PhD project aims to tackle located and nomadic transnational womxn’s art and writings as assemblages that are in-the-making by exploring the plastic potentiality of those works through a diffracted approach guided by onto-epistemological new materialist optics and interferenced logics. Previous Next

International Literature Festival in Utrecht: Q&A with Authors Alejandra Ortiz and Chérissa Iradukunda In this podcast, Doctorate Candidate María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto converses with life writing authors Alejandra Ortiz and Chérissa Iradukunda. This conversation is the result of a workshop’s Q&A that Auxi Castillo Soto delivered as part of her EUTERPE internship. During their conversation, Ortiz and Iradukunda talk about their writing process, the language selection, the opinion of their close ones, and many other interesting topics related to their life writing narratives. Alejandra Ortiz is the author of the book titled De waarheid zal me bevrijden , where she recounts her migratory journey from Mexico, first, to the United States and later to the Netherlands in 2015. And Chérissa Iradukunda is the author of the book titled Broken Object, a life writing narrative about the migratory journey of a teenage girl to the Netherlands. The episode transcript can be accessed here . 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 María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto. Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Our Time in Utrecht: Transnational Reflections Authors: Anna Hulsen, Franka Stauber, Giada Quaranta, Marta Scalera, Stella Ivory, Viola Ruggieri, and Ninutsa Nadirashvili What you see here is a collaborative collage and a co-written creative reflection made with love by the seven of us – transnational students who found each other during a fall semester at Utrecht University. Setting off on an adventure is never easy. It is scary, troubling, and, quite frankly, one of the most excruciatingly hard things to navigate. You face the unknown, the void, you close your eyes and jump. It’s a leap of faith. The first months in Utrecht have been brutal. Battling bureaucracy and the weather of doom? Not for the weak. Adjusting to an entirely different academic system? A game of survival. And yet, it is among the difficulties, the tears, and the ‘I can’ts’ that I have found community, care, and solidarity. Looking back on this past year as a transnational student, I realize that the initial and apparent glamour of living abroad has faded. There’s something deeply tiring about having multiple nests, multiple homes scattered across different places. Of course, there is a significant degree of privilege in living abroad, but once the excitement of a new adventure wears off, you are left facing a new language, new people, and a new bureaucracy (and yes, Dutch bureaucracy can be truly exasperating). The months I spent in Utrecht felt a little like sinking into dark blue water. It was a time of vulnerability. Being in the classroom felt both frightening and safe. Much of the study material, like the university system, was new, heavy, and exposing. I felt vulnerable in the academic environment: I wasn’t used to speaking so much, to writing, and being read. I felt that it was expected to explain where we come from, what our families are like, what kinds of chosen families we are building, and where. In the gender studies classrooms, I searched for a space to listen, read, and learn from those who live, and have lived, under fire. I found a space for grief and reflection, but also a space of comfort and privilege. Studying gender in Utrecht felt like watching a long, beloved film that makes you cry every time – one that connects you to pain, but in a place where you’re allowed to feel it. Being open to intimacy and risking being wounded is one of the most difficult but bravest things one can do nowadays. Making yourself vulnerable in a world driven by toxic, painful, and harmful systems that drain and decelerate you requires a lot. Though over and over again, community and companionship pushed me through the systemic sludge that was aiming to make me feel miserable in Utrecht. Looking for and finding genuine connection with people was the bridge I needed when coming to Utrecht and finding myself in a random place I should call home out of nowhere, in the middle of a breakup and a horrendous global political climate. Staying soft in hard times has been a life goal of mine for a long time now, but this last year has reminded me yet again that it is not possible to stay soft with oneself without intimate friendships that hold, balance and catch you. Tough times can’t be dealt with on your own. And there were a lot of tough times, believe me. This work required a reconfiguration, but for long stretches in the Netherlands winter, we couldn’t find our way through. We were trapped in the density of texts, in the thick raindrops made bigger through the impact and speed of our bikes, in a constantly shifting social and political landscape in our classroom, amongst our peers, and beyond. We huddled, stuck in confusion and sticky with commiseration for months. The world is on fire, but the master's tools will never dismantle the master’s house, so what do we do with these words? A constant questioning that our teachers failed to answer, if they even listened to hear us ask. Important liberatory theories stretched above us, out of reach, eluding any application in our bodies or on the earth. As a Gemma, I felt accepted by other GEMMAs and part of the community, but there was the lingering feeling that I was still on my own because everyone had different countries, classmates, teachers, and courses. It feels a little cringy to even write this out, but I was so angry all the time. I think I was flying in rage, constantly, and I wanted to land so badly it made my soul ache. No wonder then that my semester in Utrecht was painful. I smoked more cigarettes than I should have and walked up more stairs than my body was willing to. The wind routinely cut through to my bones; the rain drenched those cuts like alcohol thrown onto a fire. And the protests, and the encampments, and the lecturers complaining about students missing class. Weren’t they angry, too? I kept thinking. Why weren’t they also shooting up, high with rage over the flat landscape of the Netherlands? At first glance, this picture of two figures putting on their rain jackets in our collage is nothing but an unsuspecting moment of shared routine (although I’ll admit it has caused a hysterical amount of giggles) that could easily be washed away by the greater coming-of-age-movie kind of memories. And yet, the person who chose this picture saw in it something more: the promise of care. Helping each other weather the storm – a simple gesture, an act of care that tells you, “You do not have to face this alone” – you zip each other’s rainjackets up and up and away you go, a little bit warmer, a little bit stronger. When the glamour of the international experience begins to fade, something far more meaningful takes place: the deep bonds formed with those who truly understand your struggles – because they’re going through the same thing. And so, the glossiness is replaced by something warmer: regular coffee and croissants at “Vegitalia”, where you talk, vent, and comfort one another. You build a nest in this new country – a temporary one, because it is only a matter of time before you must leave and start building all over again. I often felt intimidated by others, and I felt certain that each person, though it takes a great deal of privilege to get there, was guided by a fire inside, a story that deeply motivated them to arrive in that classroom. I think I’m still intimidated by the reasons behind the fire inside me, but I know that this fire is alive. Riding my bike on cold nights to find a warm place where we could share and embrace that mixture of rage, fear, and the desire to build something was essential for me. To me, Utrecht felt like dark blue water, but also like a warm room. I see myself searching for markers on a Saturday night, knowing that even in a new city, there was a house where I could be welcomed. Now those memories feel farther away. Summer is over. I don’t know what our families look like today, or where the connections we built are going. What was that summer for us? And where, now, do we find space to grieve those who did not survive the summer under fire? Oh, I can’t count the times I was sitting at home, in my room, burning. Burning from anger, frustration, and sadness. But one person after another contributed their little, cooling drop of water to ease my fire, to gently restrict it, to channel it into motion instead of letting it numbly burn me. And for that, I am grateful every day. Grateful that I risked it. Grateful that I found personal, political, and spiritual intimacy that was worth every burn along the way! And who knows, maybe one day, we’ll master the flames and throw them right back at the injustices of the world. Together. Eventually, the light returned, and with cheap coffee (2 euros before 11 am, dankjewell), we got braver and found ways to loosen our focus on the imperfections in our writing and perspectives. When we laughed together, the lofty ideas dripped into our crevices and those between us, gradually saturating and permeating us. Despite the endless rain, a new world began to, at least, feel possible, as long as we had each other. It’s the memories with all of us that make this past year so special. In our group, we have grown closer, as friends, humans, and international students trying to navigate life with all its intricacies and hardships. We have shared tears, laughter, hugs, discomfort, joy, and so many more things. But this is why we made it through. Every class, coffee, and meeting at night was an experience of sharing how we felt. I learned how to feel with and through all of you. It is okay to sit with but also share my discomfort. There was so much frustration that we all shared the burden of, but also so many lovely moments, small or big, full of gentle kindness or much-needed life advice. But we are not alone in this, and we also do not have to be. Each of us is good enough with all our complicated, heavy, and happy moments and personalities. This is what spending time in Utrecht has shown me and what I will always treasure. We hugged each other in the damp, clutching onto our keffiyehs and knowing that was all we could do. I was furious. I had so much joy inside me, and I wanted to spread my arms wide and rise into the endless grey, radiant, toward the sun. Instead, I shook in the gales like a protest poster, begging for someone to do something. The only solace I found in this place that was not mine was the sight of you careening across the clouds with me, just as angry, just as tired. I knew you were also full of joy, with it nowhere to go, being choked by everything, everything. I could reach out, hold your hand, and bat my wings a little harder. So maybe you could rest for just a second. Works cited in our collage Angelou, Maya. “Alone.” Poem. In Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well. Random House, 1975. Anzaldúa, Gloria. “Preface: (Un)natural bridges, (un)safe spaces.” In This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation. Edited by Gloria Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating. Routledge, 2022, pp. 1-5. Blofeld, John, trans. I Ching: The Book of Change. London: Mandala, 1978. Davenport, Michael A. “3,090 Degrees Fahrenheit.” Oil on canvas, 2025. https://michaeladavenport.art/paintings/ Ferrante, Elena. My Brilliant Friend: The Four Volumes. Translated by Ann Goldstein. London: Europa Editions, 2025. Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation . Translated by Betsy Wing. London: Penguin Books, 2025. Hobbs, May. Born to Struggle . Plainfield, Vermont: Daughters, 1975. Jansson, Lars. Moomin: The Complete Lars Jansson Comic Strip. Vol. 8. Montréal: Drawn & Quarterly, 2015. Mbaye, Aminata Cécile. Feminist Research Practice: Session 2 (Presentation). Utrecht. September 18, 2024. Minoliti, Ad. “Fantasias Modulares.” MASS MoCA | Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, March 9, 2021. https://massmoca.org/event/ad-minoliti-fantasias-modulares/ . Oliver, Mary. “When I Am Among the Trees.” Poem. In Thirst: Poems. Boston: Beacon Press, 2006. Pillow, Wanda. 2003. “Confession, Catharsis, or Cure? Rethinking the Uses of Reflexivity as Methodological Power in Qualitative Research.” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 16 (2): 175–96. doi:10.1080/0951839032000060635. Putuma, Koleka. “Graduation.” Poem. In Collective Amnesia: Poems . Cape Town: uHlanga, 2019. Wynter, Sylvia. “The Pope must have been drunk, the King of Castile a madman: Culture as actuality, and the Caribbean rethinking modernity.” In Reordering of Culture: Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada in the Hood . Edited by Ruprecht Alvina and Cecilia Taiana. Ottawa: Carleton University Press, 1995, pp. 17-41. Zhadan, Serhiy. “So That’s What Their Family Is like Now.” Translated by Virlana Tkacz and Bob Holman. Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine , 2017. https://www.wordsforwar.com/so-thats-what-their-family-is-like-now .

A Conversation with Eugenia Seleznova In this episode, doctoral candidates Tamara Cvetković and Samriddhi Pandey interview Eugenia Seleznova, an author, researcher, and cultural manager from Ukraine. Currently, Eugenia is a PhD Candidate at Central European University, where she conducts a research on queer Ukrainian relationalities during the war. In conversation with Tamara and Samriddhi, Eugenia shares how the contexts of the post-Soviet, then revolutionary, and then, finally, wartime Ukraine have shaped her experience as an author, and directed her own shifts and transitions: between identities, regionalities, languages, genres, occupations — and ways to love and write. The conversation also touches on transnational and translingual experiences of writing through displacement, and on finding one's way as a "peripheral researcher" amidst the Western academia. The podcast transcript is available upon request. If you require a copy of the transcript please email seleznova_eugenia@phd.ceu.edu to request a copy. 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 Samriddhi Pandey and Tamara Cvetković . 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.

Evangeline Petra Scarpulla Interested in speculative and imaginative genre criticism, contemporary feminist literary theory, and decolonizing the canon, Evangeline Scarpulla holds a BA in Comparative Literature with Honours from King’s College London and an MSc in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. During her MSc she explored how contemporary fantasy writers are reimagining the conventions of the genre through her dissertation entitled ‘Folklore in Fantasy: Challenging the Western Conventions of the Genre through a Critical Comparison of Marlon James’s Black Leopard Red Wol f and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings .’ Research topic Building off her previous explorations into broadening representation in imaginative genres and global literature, Evangeline’s PhD thesis will discuss how transnational feminist authors in Europe communicate narratives of resistance through ‘minor’ literary genres, including fantastic and speculative fiction, magical realism, and graphic novels. Investigating the close relationship between form and content, the thesis will discuss how many migrant female authors reach to border-defying and experimentative genres because their characteristics mirror their own liminal social positioning and hybrid identities. By challenging prevailing notions of fixed genres and truth vs. fantasy, these narratives overturn traditional binaries and ideas of nationalism, creating a unique transnational community of writers, readers, and thinkers. The research will be conducted in conversation with postcolonial and contemporary genre critics such as Homi K. Bhaba, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, Nnedi Okorafor and Helen Young, contributing to efforts to expand the subjectivities represented in our ‘collective imagination.’ (Thomas, 2019). Previous Next

Libros con L de Latinas In this episode, Séamus O’Kane interviews Roxana Aguilar and Diana Cruz, two of the founding members of the Libros con L de Latinas book club. They discuss the importance of establishing a Spanish-speaking book club for Latin American women living in Glasgow which allows for migrant women to connect and form a community. The conversation explores how the book club can serve as an inclusive space for expression, solidarity and connecting literature to lived experience. You can follow the book club on instagram @conldelatinas. The episode transcript can be accessed here . A translation of the original transcript into Spanish can be accessed here . 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 Séamus O’Kane . Thank you to Alexander Walker for the music and to Alice Flinta for the voice over. Thank you also to Ninutsa Nadirashvili, Evangeline Scarpulla, and Kris Orszaghova for designing the podcast covers.

Team CEU Jasmina Lukić  Principal Leader Jasmina Lukić is Professor with the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University in Vienna, the Principal Leader for EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective, a Marie Curie Doctoral Network project (101073012  EUTERPE HORIZON-MSCA-2021-DN-01 Project, 2022-26), and the CEU Coordinator for EM GEMMA MA Program in Women's Studies and Gender Studies. She has published two monographs, numerous articles, and book chapters in literary studies, women’s studies, and Slavic studies. Her most recent publications are the edited volume Times of Mobility: Transnational Literature and Gender in Translation  (with Sibelan Forrester and Borbála Faragó, CEU Press 2019); “ To Dubravka Ugrešić, with Love”, CEU Review of Books  (No 1/2023); and “Reading Transnationally: Literary Transduction as a Feminist Tool”, in Swati Arora, Petra Bakos-Jarrett, Redi Koobak, Nina Lykke, and Kharnita Mohamed (eds.), Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms: And Words Collide from a Place  (Routledge 2024). Petra Bakos Researcher Petra Bakos is an interdisciplinary literary scholar, arts writer, and embodied writing facilitator. Her research focuses on the South Pannonian borderlands, and the floating debris of empires and other high-hope state formations in the tsunami of market-driven populism. Presently she is the scientific coordinator of the EUTERPE project, as well as a researcher of EUTERPE’s Work Package 1: Transnational Turn in Literary Studies: Looking from Central and Eastern Europe, writing biocritical entries on Judita Šalgo and Katalin Ladik, among others. She is also a long-standing affiliate of CEU Romani Studies Program. Latest publication: Lykke, Nina, Redi Koobak, Petra Bakos, Kharnita Mohamed and Swati Arora (eds.) 2024. Pluriversal Conversations on Transnational Feminisms – And Words Collide from a Place . London and New York: Routledge. Noemi Anna Kovacs European Cooperation Officer Noemi joined Central European University in 2009. Her professional career started when she graduated from Pázmány Péter Catholic University and completed her MA degree in Humanities and Liberal Arts with two specialisations, one in Romanic Studies/Italian Language, History and Literature and another in English and American Studies/English Language, History and Literature. During university, she worked as a language teacher and freelance translator. Later on, as a fresh graduate, a book publishing house hired her as the in-house editor. Before joining CEU, Noemi had been working on large EU- and state-funded research projects for an independent, interdisciplinary research institute, Collegium Budapest – Institute for Advanced Studies. At CEU, Noemi’s portfolio ranges from individual postdoctoral fellowships to large multi-beneficiary EU-funded research and educational projects. Her responsibilities include pre- and post-award management of such grants and projects, be it legal or financial matters or the development of dissemination, communication, and cooperation strategies. Kris Országhová Project Administrator Kris Orszaghova (they/them) holds a Master’s in Artistic Research from Hogeschool Voor de Kunsten Utrecht and a PhD in Sociology from Charles University in Prague. Kris Orszaghova (they/them) holds a Master’s in Artistic Research from Hogeschool Voor de Kunsten Utrecht and a PhD in Sociology from Charles University in Prague. As an artist-athlete-scholar, they explore the intersections of art and social inquiry. Their research focuses on bodies moving and shifting, meandering and at times floating between the urban centres and peripheries, borders both real and imaginary, between hopes and disillusionments, despair and commitment, discipline and disobedience. Currently, Kris is a visiting faculty and coordinator at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University and a junior coordinator for EUTERPE: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective, a Marie Curie Doctoral Network. Their latest publications include the book chapter "Turn the Volume Up! Boxing Hearts and Beats", featured in Boxing, Narrative and Culture (Routledge, 2023) and the article "The Gender of Bruising: A Critical Literature Review on Gender in Boxing," published in Sociology Compass (2023). In addition to their research, Kris has participated in various exhibitions, including "To Seminar" at bak (basis voor actuale kunst) "Poetry & Performance: The Eastern European Perspective" at Nová synagóga in Žilina, or "Possibility of Preserving" at Kunsthalle Bratislava.