NORLIT 2009: Codex and Code Aesthetics, Language, and Politics in an Age of Digital Media

The Nordic Association for Comparative Literature (NorLit) organizes every two years an international scholarly conference. The aim of NorLit is to develop the study of Comparative Literature through Nordic collaboration both in its own discipline and in Modern Language and Cultural studies. The next conference will take place in Stockholm, August 6-9, 2009. The conference is organized by the School of Computer Science and Communication, Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm), the Department of Comparative Literature, Stockholm University, the Department of Communication and Culture, Södertörn University College, and the Department of Comparative Literature, Uppsala University. 

The theme for the meeting is ”Codex and Code: Aesthetics, Language and Politics in an Age of Digital Media”. The conference venue is the Royal Institute of Technology. The conference languages are the Nordic languages and English.

The conference wants to stimulate interdisciplinary scholarly research of the literary in a broad sense. We addresse ourselves to scholars in Comparataive Literature and in Classical and Modern Languages, Aesthetics, Media and Communication studies, Film and Theatre studies, Philosophy and adjacent disciplines. We want to encourage a discussion of how literary studies respond to the ongoing changes in media and technology, politics and economy. Many argue that the Humanities currently are in a state of crisis. We argue that the discipline seldom has found itself in such an interesting and fruitful historical moment.

The principal question for the conference is the challenge that the study of literature encounters in an age of digitalization and globalization. The conference also adresses questions of authenticity and originality, identity and gender, literary genres and reading practices, media and materiality, culture and popular culture, language and history, world literature, work aesthetics, translations and canon formation. Several of these questions have surfaced during earlier media system changes, in particular during Romanticism and Modernism, which provides the conference with an historical frame.

Keynote speakers (confirmed): 
Professor Patrizia Lombardo, Département de langue et de littérature françaises, Université de Genève 
Professor Jochen Hörisch, Seminar für Deutsche Philologie, Universität Mannheim
Professor Andrea Polaschegg, Institut für deutsche Literatur, Humboldt Universität 
Dr. Göran Sommardal, Institutionen för orientaliska språk, Stockholms universitet

The conference is organized around a number thematic sessions to which we invite researchers and scholars to present papers.