We invite you to join us for the one-day graduate student conference devoted to Slavic and World Literatures.

Over the past two decades, the concept of “world literature” has been in the spotlight of scholarly attention. This influential discourse, which can be traced back to Goethe’s idea of Weltliteratur, was put forth by three groundbreaking studies that came out at the turn of the 21st century: Pascale Casanova’s La République mondiale des Lettres (1999), Franco Moretti’s pair of essays “Conjectures on World Literature” (2000) and “More Conjectures” (2004), and David Damrosch’s What Is World Literature? (2003). With the exception of a few notable scholars like Galin Tihanov, Katerina Clark, and Anne Lounsbery, Slavicists either are absent from these discussions or focus solely on the Soviet model, whose best expression is the activity of the Gorky Institute of World Literature. With this conference, our aim is to bridge this “communication gap” and bring these conversations into the present.

If there are any questions, please feel free to email slavicgradconference2025@gmail.com.