Co-organizer of the doctoral school course 'Intellectuals on the margins. Why and how to study the marginal/marginalized in intellectual, cultural and literary history?', together with prof. dr. Steven Vanden Broecke.
Like everyone else, academics live with histories explaining how their knowledge, ideas and culture came to be. Unlike everyone else, academics are also responsible for producing scientifically authorized versions of such histories. This double situation produces a tension, and it is this tension which this course seeks to explore and articulate. The course does so by questioning one of the most prominent features of the histories we live by: a narrative focus on intellectual and cultural ‘successes’ by ‘geniuses’ clearing a historical trajectory that ultimately leads to our modern, emancipated and rational selves. What happens when our histories try to focus on the marginal penumbra of our intellectual and cultural horizon rather than the bright sun of progress? The course aims to 1) generate in-depth discussions on the issues this question raises; 2) by focusing on the specialists’ research; 3) and by exposing the PhD students to a variety of concepts, frameworks, theoretical insights, methodological issues, concrete case studies, etc. that can enable them to conceptualize, contextualize, analyze … the ((non)importance of) minor figures they encounter and / or focus on in their research.
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Past conferences and seminars:
Principal organizer of the international conference 'Accelerated development? Socio-political landslides, cultural ruptures and literary history in Eastern Europe', Ghent University, Ghent, September 29-30, 2017, with the support of Ghent University's Russia Platform.
Principal organizer of the seminar 'Platonov and the Revolution' in cooperation with the International Platonov Seminar (MPS/IPS), Ghent University, Ghent, February 10-11, 2017.
Co-organizer with Michel De Dobbeleer et al. of the colloquium ‘Dostojevski en Tolstoj buiten Westen’, in cooperation with the Department of Languages and Cultures and the Section of Slavic and East-European Studies (Ghent University), Ghent University, Ghent, December 5, 2016.
Principal organizer of the colloquium ‘Onvoorspelbaar verleden. Historische beeld(ver)vorming in Oekraïne en Rusland', in cooperation with the Section of Slavic and East-European Studies (Ghent University), Ghent University, Ghent, May 12, 2014.
Co-organizer with Thomas Langerak of the international conference ‘Platonov Revisited. Past and Present Views on the Land of the Philosophers’, in cooperation with the Department of Slavic and East-European Studies (Ghent University), the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy (Ghent University), and the Research Foundation – Flanders, Ghent University, Ghent, May 26-28, 2011.
Co-organizer with Thomas Langerak of the international translation colloquium ‘Amidst Smoke and Different Questions’, in cooperation with the Department of Slavic and East-European Studies (Ghent University) and the Associated Research Group on Literary Translation, Ghent University, Ghent, May 25, 2011.
Co-organizer of the ‘5th Dutch-Flemish Slavists’ Days’, in cooperation with the Research Foundation – Flanders, the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy (Ghent University), the Department of Slavic and East-European Studies (Ghent University), Ghent University, Ghent – April 16-18, 2008.
Member of the organizing committee of the international colloquium ‘Provocation and Extravagance in Modern Russian Literature and Culture’ (in cooperation with the Department of Slavic and East-European Studies (Ghent University), Research Foundation – Flanders, Bozar Literature and Europalia), Brussels – October 27-29, 2005.