Team Utrecht Sandra Ponzanesi 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. More info: https://www.uu.nl/staff/SPonzanesi Birgit M. Kaiser Researcher Birgit M. Kaiser is Professor of Comparative Literature at Utrecht University. She holds a BA and MA in Sociology from Bielefeld University and a PhD in Comparative Literature from New York University. In fall 2009/2010, Birgit was Chair of Western European Literatures (Vertretungsprofessur) at the European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder). Birgit has also been visiting researcher at the Department of Philosophy at Paris Nanterre University (spring 2017) and at the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at The Ohio State University (fall 2017/2018), as well as DFG-Mercatorfellow at Leuphana University Lüneburg (fall 2023/24). Research profile Birgit's research spans literatures in English, French and German from the 19th to the 21st centuries, always with a focus on literature as a mode of poetic knowledge production. Specific research interests are the relation of literature and philosophy, theories of subjectivity (post-structuralist, feminist new materialist, psychoanalytic, and ecosophical), the history of aesthetics and affect, multilingualism and un/translatability in literature, as well as post- and decolonial literary critique. Intersecting post/decolonial with feminist new materialist approaches, Birgit also works on changing forms of critique and criticality in the 21st century, as well as contemporary methods of reading. Research collaborations and leadership With Kathrin Thiele, Birgit founded the interdisciplinary research network Terra Critica and together they coordinate the network since its beginning in 2012. Terra Critica holds annual international academic meetings as well as regular ReadingRoom sessions for a wider public in Utrecht (in collaboration with Casco Art Institute). The network has established collaborations with a range of leading international academic institutions in Europe, Australia, the USA and Asia. She is currently coordinator of the research community "Critical Pathways ", an interdisciplinary research community within the UU strategic theme Pathways to Sustainability, focusing on a just sustainability. "Critical Pathways" brings together colleagues from the faculties of Humanities, Geosciences, Social and Behavioural Sciences, and Law, Economics and Governance. "Critical Pathways" researches how to move beyond an understanding of sustainability narrowly focused on technological solutions and how to address social and cultural norms, political power relations, and global inequalities in order to make more sustainable futures possible. Since 2022, Birgit is researcher and supervisor in the EU-HORIZON MSCA Doctoral Network "European Literatures and Gender from a Transnational Perspective" (EUTERPE ; 2022-2026), which brings together gender and transnational perspectives within an interdisciplinary approach to literary and cultural studies. EUTERPE is a collaboration of Central European University Vienna, University of Oviedo, University of Granada, University of York, University of Coventry, University of Lodz, University of Bolgona and Utrecht University, supervising and training a group of eleven PhD candidates. In this context, Birgit is also on the editorial board of the open source publication Dictionary of Transnational Women’s Literature in Europe (CEU Press) with key concepts and bio-bibliographic entries on leading representatives of the field. Between 2016-2020, she was a core member and researcher of “Creativity in World Literatures: Languages in Dialogue”, a research network funded by the UK Arts & Humanities Research Council within the Open World Research Initiative (OWRI). Publications Her book Figures of Simplicity. Sensation and Thinking in Kleist and Melville (SUNY 2011) explores—with recourse to Heinrich von Kleist, Herman Melville, G. W. Leibniz, and Alexander Baumgarten—alternative conceptions of aesthetics and dimensions of thinking lost in the disciplinary narration of aesthetics after Kant. Rather than being ignorant or stupid, the “simpletons” that populate the writings of Kleist and Melville display a way of affective thinking, whereby Kleist and Melville continue a key line within eighteenth-century aesthetics: the relation of rationality and sensibility. The book reflects on what thinking looks like if we take affectivity into account and how literature is a practice that continues to raise this question. Birgit's second monograph Hélène Cixous's Poetics of Voice: Echo - Subjectivity - Diffraction (Bloomsbury Publishers 2024, open access) is part of the series Bloomsbury Studies in Global Women’s Writing (editors Marie Mulvey-Roberts and Jennifer Gustarargues). It argues that Cixous's poetic fictions, from 1967 to today and in critical conversation with psychoanalysis, present Echo as a figure of relational subjectivity. The book demonstrates how Cixous's writings offer an anti-narcissistic figuration of selfhood that can be called ec(h)ological: critical of colonial appropriation and patriarchal oppression of difference, Cixous pursues how we are always embedded in ecologies with many others, and at the same time how we always carefully negotiate myriads of echoes that make up an "I". Cixous's poetic fictions thereby offer an important critique of modern Man and an alternative fabulation of being human in the Anthropocene. In the context of her research on subjectivity and post/decolonial critique, Birgit has published two edited volumes : Postcolonial Literatures and Deleuze. Colonial Pasts, Differential Futures (with Lorna Burns, Palgrave Macmillan 2012) and Singularity and Transnational Poetics (Routledge 2015). With Kathrin Thiele, she edited a special issue of PhiloSOPHIA: A Journal of Continental Feminism , entitled ‘The Ends of Being Human? Re-turning (to) the Question’ (8/1, 2018). Another edited volume entitled The World in Theory. Rethinking Globalization Through Derrida and Nancy (with Laurens ten Kate and Philip Leonard; Edinburgh University Press) is currently in preparation (forthcoming 2024). Birgit's work has appeared in international journals including Cambridge Journal of Postcolonial Literary Inquiry, International Journal for Francophone Studies, Interventions, Parallax and Textual Practice. She is currently also member of the editorial board of the Dictionary of Transnational Women's Literature in Europe (with Jasmina Lukic (editor-in-chief) and the editorial board of the HORIZON DC-network EUTERPE, Vienna: CEU Press, forthcoming 2027). In the interdisciplinary research network Terra Critica , Birgit's research focuses on the future of the humanities and their critical heritage, as well as on changing forms of critique and criticality in the 21st century. She has edited with Kathrin Thiele a special issue of Parallax on ‘Diffracted Worlds – Diffractive Readings: Onto-Epistemologies and the Critical Humanities ’ (2014; also republished as book in the Routledge Series SPIB , 2018) and two edited volumes : Symptoms of the Planetary Condition: A Critical Vocabulary (with Kathrin Thiele and Mercedes Bunz; meson press 2017, open access) and The Ends of Critique (with Timothy O’Leary and Kathrin Thiele; Rowman & Littlefield 2022, open access). Another Terra Critica collaboration is in preparation (Thinking About Doing: Practice and Theory Across Continents (edited with Anirban Das and Kathrin Thiele; forthcoming with Oxford University Press India, 2025). With Timothy O’Leary and Kathrin Thiele, Birgit is also editor of the book-series New Critical Humanities (Rowman & Littlefield). Links Terra Critica: Interdisciplinary Network for the Critical Humanities Critical Pathways Gender & Diversity - Institutions for Open Societies New Critical Humanities book series (Rowman & Littlefield International) Academia.edu

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.

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.

Alice Flinta University of York Doctoral Candidate 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. Alice’s research - "Over Borders and Languages: Rethinking Transnationality in Europe Through Mediterranean Women’s Writings" - 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) Review of Rosso come una sposa by Anilda Ibrahimi Making Waves... of Words. Fictions of Race in Contemporary French Literature : French Writers, White Writing by Étienne Achille and Oana Panaïté (review)

Séamus O'Kane University of Granada Doctoral Candidate Séamus O’Kane is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Granada and his mobility period will take place at the University of Lodz. He holds an MA in Humanities from TU Dublin and he is also a graduate of the Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Children’s Literature, Media and Culture (CLMC). As part of this programme, he completed an internship researching digital literature for children for the Bibliotheek LocHal, Tilburg, and wrote a thesis on transmedia narratives at Aarhus University. His current research - “Transnational literatures in the making: dialogues with film, social media, streaming platforms, performative arts and new literary genres” - continues his interests in digital literature, adaptations and transmedia narratives. He will analyse a range of media to investigate discourses of communications technology, new media and the mediated world, and how these interrelated phenomena impact upon interpersonal relationships, selfhood and agency in transnational women’s literature. Contributions: Review: Oyeyemi, Helen. White is for Witching. (Picador, 2009). 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.

Rita Monticelli University of Bologna Principal Investigator Rita Monticelli is a full professor of English at the University of Bologna; she teaches gender studies, feminists and cultural studies, and theories and history of culture in the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Her research includes memory and trauma studies, the global novel, utopia and dystopia, travel literature, and memory and trauma studies in contemporary dystopian fiction and visual culture. She also works on issues connected to human rights and intercultural and interreligious dialogues. In these areas, she has published and co-edited volumes and essays. She is a member of international European research networks and PhD programs centred on gender studies and cultures of equality. She is part of the international councils on diversity and social Inclusion and projects on the New Humanities. She directs the Centre for Utopian Studies and coordinates the International Erasmus Mundus GEMMA (women's and gender studies) at the University of Bologna. She is the representative of the University of Bologna for the SSH Deans and the board of the Gender&Diversity group of the GUILD (European Research-Intensive Universities), a member of the governing Board of EASSH (European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities). She is currently a member of the City Council of Bologna and a delegate for human rights and interreligious and intercultural dialogue. Publications: Rita Monticelli, In sisterhood: leggere insieme Adrienne Rich , in: Adrienne Rich: passione e politica, Trieste, Vita Activa Nuova, 2024 Rita Monticelli, Raffaella Baccolini, Giuliana Benvenuti, Chiara Elefante, Transmedia Science Fiction and New Social Humanities , in: The Edinburgh Companion to the New European Humanities, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2024

Coventry University Katherine Wimpenny Principal Investigator Jaya Jacobo Researcher Suzanne Clisby Special Project Advisor and Supervisory Expert Advisor

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University of Bologna Rita Monticelli Principal Investigator Francesco Cattani Researcher Gilberta Golinelli Researcher

University of York Boriana Alexandrova Principal Investigator Nicoletta Asciuto Researcher

Publications Reading for Each Other Creative book reviews that facilitate an exchange of literature between doctoral candidates, allowing them to better understand each other's lives and work. Publications by Doctoral Candidates Publications by Doctoral Candidates A collection of writing – papers, articles, peer-reviewed publications, books and other media produced by the doctoral candidates.