Overview
Re-reading | Research Centre for Comparative Literature and Translation | 2025 Annual PG Conference

Theme | If reading and comparing, interpretation and translation are regular keywords in our discipline, re-reading is a concept that goes often unexplored, even though it endows them all with new and enhanced meaning. That ‘re’ necessarily asks us to position that reading and its repetition (or repetitions) within time and space: in the short term, re- reading is essential to any intensive, critical engagement with text; but re-reading in the longer term entails revisiting more than just text – it means an active comparison between now and then, necessarily locating ourselves within that action and renegotiating both cultural and personal awareness. Re-reading can take different forms as it happens over time, sometimes a seasonal or cyclical action to find something familiar – yet never quite the same – sometimes taking the shape of cumulative, palimpsestic reading. And what if we extend that act of reading outside of ourselves, and choose to read and understand with others, inscribing our own interpretive effort within a history of reading? We become part of an interpretive community where reading and re-reading – across time and space, borders and languages, cultures and media – contribute to a tapestry of meaning.

Keynote Address by Professor David Damrosch (Harvard)

Programme Details

Date & Time | Day 1: Thursday 22 May 2025, 9:00am-6pm (in-person registration begins at 12:30 pm | Day 2: Friday 23 May 2025, 9:00am-6pm

Location*| Day 1: Wolfson Medical School Building – Yudowitz Seminar Room and Room 248 Gannochy | Day 2: Wolfson Medical School Building – Room 248 Gannochy

Remote Access | Participants joining online can do so via Zoom. The link will be sent after registering at the following link: https://events.bookitbee.com/university-of-glasgow-296/re- reading-2025-postgraduate-conference/

*Locations subject to change. Final confirmation will be provided closer to the event date.

Day One

9:00-10:00 Session I (Online) 

·       Franziska Rauh (Mainz) – Rewritings as Catalysts for Rereading

·       Merve Sevtap Süren (Istanbul) – Frankenstein’s Legacy in Cleopatra and Frankenstein: Rewriting the Monstrous in Modern Relationships

10:00-10:30 Coffee/Tea Interval

10:30-12:30 Session II

·       Alexandra Dold (Highlands and Islands) – Intertwining Chronologies and Narrative Foreshadowing in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander Novels

·       Luna Lindberg (Glasgow) – “I still read fairy tales, they’re just dirtier now”: Invesigating Teratophilia in Contemporary Paranormal Romance Novels

·       Kateřina Segešová (Sorbonne & Masaryk) – Re-reading Tradition: Marie Noël and Francis Jammes Between Heritage and Transformation

·       Limeng Xiong (Edinburgh) – Re-reading with the Manuscripts to Find Her Name: A Case Study of Chinese Women’s Autobiographical Writing in the 1920s

12:30-1:30 Lunch and In-Person Registration

1:30-3:00 Session III

·   Mohammad Aboomar (Dublin City) – Re-reading Darwin: Arabic Translations of Darwin in the 21st Century

·   Yifan Lyu (Durham) – Retranslation and Reception: A Study of Ah Cheng’s Three Kings Series

·   Ishika Rishi (Oxford) – Mothers and Modes: Reading and Re-imagining Hindu Nationhood

·   Tias Basu (Jadavpur) – Re-reading as Resistance: Comparative Literature and the Transformation of Reading Practices in Indian Academia

3:00-3:30 Coffee/Tea Interval

3:30-5:00 Session IV | Comparative Literature in Glasgow Twenty Years on...

Chaired by Dr Elwira Grossman, UG Comparative Literature Programme Director

·       Dr Mirna Šolić (Glasgow) – Disturbed Waters and Homerivers: Representations of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Postwar Riverscapes

·       Dr Paul Castro (Glasgow) – Between Nations, Empires and Cultures: Re-reading José da Silva Coelho’s Gentle Vision

·       Dr Julia Hartley (Glasgow) – ‘More Audacious than the Classics’: Jane Dieulafoy’s Gendered Rewritings of Ancient Persian History

5:00-6:00 Reception at the Wee G (Gilchrist Postgraduate Club)

Day Two

9:00-10:00 Session V (Online)

·       Estera Federciuc (UAIC) – Revisiting C. S. Lewis, Re-Translating Metaphors

·       Maya Hollander (Oxford) – “I know the Word”: Re-reading the Bible in Louise Erdrich‘s Future Home of the Living God

10:00-10:30 Coffee/Tea Interval

10:30-12:30 Session VI

·       Julia Guzikowska (Edinburgh) – Queer Re-reading and Fluid Interpretations in the Comparative Reading of Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Liebhaberinnen (Women as Lovers) and Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve

·       Maria Raluca Hanea (Sorbonne-Nouvelle & Babes-Bolyai) – Mircea Cãrtãrescu: Re-readings of Self-Generative Writing

·       Roberta Passaghe (Durham) – ‘à la manière de moi-même’. Reinterpretation of Petronious’s Satyricon in the work of Italian Poet Edoardo Sanguineti (1930-2010)

12:30-1:30 Lunch and ‘Working Lunch’ Poster Session

1:30-3:00 Session VII

• Yuan Liang (UWTSD) – Soft Power Through Subtitles: Decoding The Art of War for the West

• Yuan Liu (Glasgow) – Translating Self, Performing Migrancy: Ha Jin’s Transnational Poetics in A Distant Center

• Zoe Hansford (Glasgow) – Race, Territory, and Narrative Control in Postcolonial Translation: A Case Study of the Desmichels Treaty of 1834

• Yidan Hu (Glasgow) – Reframing Imperial Spectacle: Censorship and Theatrical Revision of Mr Wu (1912-1923)

3:00-3:30 Coffee/Tea Interval

3:30-5:00 Keynote

Prof David Damrosch (Harvard) – The Seim Anew: Towards A Map of Re-reading

Prof Susan Bassnett (Glasgow) – Response

5:00-6:00 Drinks nearby (Curler’s Rest)