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We invite you to the Seventh Scholarly Seminar, titled "The Rhetoric of Sincerity in Central
and Eastern European Literatures" on October 2, 2024, at 4:00 p.m.
Two guest researchers from the Institute of Slavonic Studies at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Dr.
Jakub Kapičiak and Dr. Jacob Mikulecki, will deliver presentations on the rhetoric of sincerity in
20th-century and contemporary culture. The seminar will take place at the Institute of Lithuanian
Literature and Folklore (Antakalnio g. 6, Vilnius), in the Conference Hall on the 2nd floor, and will
also be broadcast online. The seminar will be conducted in English.
The program of the seminar:
Jakub Mikulecký (Institute of Slavic Studies of Czech Academy of Sciences), “Georgi Markov;
Between Political Correctness and Sincerity of the Cold War Exile”
The exile writer Georgi Markov (1929–1978) belongs to most famous Bulgarian dissidents from the
Cold War period. The lecture focuses mainly on the dynamics of the author's thoughts including his metamorphosis from a left idealist into a relentless critic of the Bulgarian regime and soviet-type
communism at all. As many other political emigrants from the Eastern Europe, Markov manifests a
deep disillusion from the Cold War détente politics during 1970s in his political essays. I would like
to point out some discursive contradictions between Markov as BBC and RFE employee and
Markov as a personal critic of the functioning of the then Western society.
Jakub Kapičiak (Institute of Slavic Studies of Czech Academy of Sciences), „Avoiding
Speechlessness: Reading Essays from the Russian-Language Journal ROAR – Resistence and
Opposition Arts Review”
Shortly after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a new online journal was founded. It uses
the acronym ROAR. The meaning of the acronym is Resistance and Opposition Arts Review. The
lecture discusses essays published in the journal. The focus is on the motif of speechlessness and its connections with different emotions and topics. The authors of the essays may express their feeling of inability to speak very overtly. When they are asked to comment on the war outbreak, they frequently begin their answer with a statement that they don’t really know what to say. However,
speechlessness may emerge in a plenty of other situations and may obtain a variety of more tacit
forms.
The presentations are part of the Lithuanian and Czech scholarly collaboration project "The
Rhetoric of Sincerity in Central and Eastern European Literatures since the 19th century to the
Present" (2024-2026). The moderator of the session – Dr. Akvile Reklaityte.
The link to the seminar:
Meeting ID: 822 6440 4225
Passcode: 296440
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