Modern Literary Theories in the Cultures of East Central and Eastern Europe from 1914 until Today. An Intellectual Entangled History.

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Schamma Schahadat
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2015 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 270468554

The starting point of our project is the observation that in the 20th century intensive intellectual movements took place in East and East Central Europe not only in the form of an exchange of ideas, but also as a result of personal and institutional, official and unofficial contacts. Ideas, intellectuals and theories were wandering between the cultures of the German-speaking countries, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Russia, essentially creating a common theoretical field. This exchange was however constricted for long periods of time; political events resulted in several waves of exile on the one hand, and on the other led to the exclusion (and seclusion) of large parts of East and East Central Europe. Political as well as linguistic borders were the reason why Western Europe and the Anglo-American world ignored most of (East)Central European thinking and knowledge. With the help of intellectuals living in exile only a fraction of the theories nonetheless found their way into Western discourse of literary theory: some of them (e.g., Bakhtins dialogicity) only by way of detour became a central concept in literary theory and were transformed in new cultural contexts; others, however (e.g., the theories of Olga Freidenberg or Stefania Skwarczynska) have rarely been noticed by scholars working outside the field of Russian or Polish theory. A well-known example for a successful transfer of ideas is the history of literary structuralism which had its beginnings in transcultural Prague and developed into different schools after World War II: into the internationally visible Paris Structuralism as well as Warsaw Structuralism and later forms of Prague Structuralism. However, only the French version reached an international audience, although elements of the Warsaw and the Prague schools had an important impact insofar as they contained elements which can be discovered in those theories which later were (re)imported from French and American universities as Post-Structuralism. The aim of our project is to make the entangled history of East and East Central European theories visible: its movements, dialogues, usurpations or transformations. The result will be an English-language handbook based on original research of East and East Central European theory and its transformations; the title of the book is Literary Theory Between East and West. Transcultural and Transdisciplinary Movements from Russian Formalism to Cultural Studies. The movements of East and East Central European literary theory will for the first time be looked at from the perspective of a history of transfer and cultural entanglement.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Poland
• Co-Investigators: Professorin Dr. Danuta Ulicka; Professorin Dr. Irina Wutsdorff