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. 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 Samriddhi Pandey . 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.

University of Granada Adelina Sánchez Espinosa Principal Investigator Angela Harris Sánchez Researcher Beatriz Revelles-Benavente Researcher

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. She also reflects on the challenges and rewards of performance poetry, and the unexpected universality of her deeply personal writing. We hope that you enjoy listening to this podcast. You can follow Minal on Instagram @minalsukumar_ for updates on her work and upcoming performances. The episode transcript can be accessed here: https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:EU:5805a08e-4837-46d8-9366-c95c69e96ab0 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.

María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto Utrecht University Doctoral Candidate María Auxiliadora Castillo Soto holds an Erasmus Mundus Master’s Degree in Women’s and Gender Studies (GEMMA) from the universities of Granada in Spain and Ł ódź in Poland. She also holds a Master’s Degree in World Languages, Literature, and Linguistics from West Virginia University in the United States. Her research has focused on the teaching of English and Spanish as second languages, and literary analyses with an interdisciplinary perspective. In a broader sense, her research interests span feminist literary criticism, migration studies, transnational literature, postcolonial studies, and gender studies. Her teaching experience at the university level has ranged from teaching English and Spanish to Latin American culture and introductory gender studies courses. For the EUTERPE Project: European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective, María Auxiliadora’s research analyzes how daily embodiments of transnational self-identified women serve as adaptation and survival strategies in the host countries, and how these same strategies may also represent a sense of autonomy, power, and resistance. The project focuses on the analysis of non-fictional autobiographical works written by transnational subjects who have migrated and resettled in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to identify the different ways in which these embodiments challenge European belonging and identification. Contributions: Challenging European Identity: Representations of Female Transnational Experiences in Marrón by Rocío Quillahuaman Challenging the Idea of Europe: Representations of Female Transnational Experiences in Chérissa Iradukunda's Broken Object Ponzanesi, Sandra, and Maria Auxiliadora Castillo Soto. 2025. "Postcolonial Intellectuals: Exploring Belonging Across Borders in Igiaba Scego’s La mia casa è dove sono (My Home Is Where I Am) " Social Sciences 14, no. 4: 209. Andrea Abreu's Dogs of Summer : An in-depth exploration of working-class adolescenthood Conveying Migrant Experiences through Literature

Uthara Geetha University of Oviedo Doctoral Candidate 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. Contributions: Prose and Counter-history: Review of The Emperor's Babe by Bernadine Evaristo

Team Oviedo Isabel Carrera Suárez Principal Investigator Isabel Carrera Suárez is Professor in English at the University of Oviedo, her research centres on the intersections between postcoloniality and gender. She first taught at the University of Glasgow and has been a visiting scholar at the universities of Calgary, Flinders, Adelaide, Tsinghua and King’s College London, among others. She has been a keynote speaker at international conferences, such as the biennial meeting of the European Society for the Study of English, ESSE , and the Spanish Association for English Studies, AEDEAN. Her articles have appeared in international specialist journals such as Interventions, EJES, Journal of Canadian Poetry, International Journal of Canadian Studies, and Australian Literary Studies, and she has collaborated in and coedited many collaborative transnational volumes. Since 2017, she has been co-general editor of the European Journal of English Studies (EJES), a journal of The European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), and was Chair of EACLALS, the European Association for Postcolonial Studies (2017-2021), among other academic responsibilities. She leads the transnational research group Intersections/Intersecciones, recognised as an excellence group by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spanish QA), and the recipient of many R&D competitive projects. Emilia M. Durán-Almarza Researcher Emilia M. Durán-Almarza is Associate Professor of English at the University of Oviedo, Spain. She specializes in Caribbean and Afro-diasporic postcolonial writing and performance. In this field, she has authored a monograph Performeras del Dominicanyork: Josefina Báez and Chiqui Vicioso (PUV 2010) and edited several collective volumes, such Diasporic Women’s Writing. (En)Gendering Literature and Performance (Routledge 2014), Debating the Afropolitan (Routledge 2019) and Performing Cultures of Equality (Routledge 2022). She regularly publishes her research at international peer reviewed journals. In EUTERPE, she serves as leader of WP6, “The role of transnational literatures in the decolonization of understandings of gender within the European academe”, where she supervises Uthara Geetha’s PhD project. Her research focus includes excavating the presence of Anglophone African and Caribbean women writers in Europe. Carla Rodríguez González 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. Her publications include the monographs Escritoras escocesas en la nueva literatura nacional (U. Illes Balears, 2013), María Estuardo (Madrid, Ediciones del Orto, 2006) and Jackie Kay: biografías de una Escocia transcultural (Oviedo: KRK, 2004). She has also co-edited the books Performing Cultures of Equality (Routledge, 2022), Debating the Afropolitan (Routledge, 2019), Nación, diversidad y género. Perspectivas críticas (Anthropos, 2010), Culture & Power: The Plots of History in Performance (Cambridge Scholars, 2008) and Historia y representación en la cultura global (KRK, 2008). She has also guest edited special issues for the journals European Journal of English Studies , Papers on Language and Literature and Complutense Journal of English Studies . She has translated into Spanish short stories by Jackie Kay and Suhayl Saadi, published in 2 annotated volumes with an introduction: Las últimas fumadoras /Grace y Rose (2008), Las reinas de Govan /Oscuridad (2022). 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).

Sandra Ponzanesi Utrecht University Principal Investigator Sandra Ponzanesi is Chair and full Professor of Media, Gender and Postcolonial Studies in the Department of Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, Netherlands, where she is also the Founding Director of the Postcolonial Studies Initiative (PCI ). She has published widely in the field of media, postcolonial studies, digital migration and cinema, with a particular focus on Postcolonial Europe from comparative and interdisciplinary perspectives. She is currently project leader of the project ‘Virtual Reality as Empathy Machine : Media, Migration and the Humanitarian Predicament ’ funded by NWO (Dutch Research Council) and Utrecht University PI with Birgit Kaiser in the MSCA EUTERPE project on ‘European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective’, responsible for (WP 5, WP6): Transnational women intellectuals, multilingualism and decolonising European pedagogies. Publications: Leurs, K., & Ponzanesi, S. (Eds.) (2024). Doing Digital Migration Studies: Theories and Practices of the Everyday . (Media, Culture and Communication in Migrant Societies). Amsterdam University Press. De Medeiros, P., & Ponzanesi, S. (Eds.) (2024). Postcolonial Theory and Crisis . (culture & conflict; Vol. 25). De Gruyter.

Gilberta Golinelli University of Bologna Researcher Gilberta Golinelli is an Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, where she teaches English Literature, Feminist Methodologies and Critical Utopias. Her main research areas include the Shakespearean canon and the Elizabethan Theatre, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Women’s Utopias in the Early Modern Age. She is the referent of the PhD program EDGES (European Doctorate in Women’s and Gender Studies) and vice coordinator of Master Gemma (University of Bologna). Publications: “Educational space(s) and female communities in Margaret Cavendish’s The Female Academy and Mary Astell’s A Serious Proposal to the Ladies Part 1”, «PROSPERO» , 2024, 29. “Of Cimbalin king of England”: The controversial representation of the British past in Cymbeline”. TEXTUS , XXXVII(2), 2024. Gender Models Alternative Communities and Women's Utopianism . Bologna, Italy: Bononia University Press, 2018.