Female Sexual Desire in Women’s Writing (pre 1940): Exploring and Digitally Modelling Texts and Reception (23-24 September 2026)

23. 9. 2026

9. 15 Conference Opening

9.30 -10.30 Keynote Lecture:

Viola Parente Čapková (University of Turku): “Heritage and Confluence: Fin de siècle Female Desire as Mimetic Desire”

10.30-11.00 Coffee or Tea Break

11.00-12.30 Session 1: Session dedicated to Zofka Kveder

Katja Mihurko (University of Nova Gorica): Negotiating Normative Femininity and Free Love: Zofka Kveder’s Writings in Transnational Perspective

Ivana Zajc (University of Nova Gorica): Female Sexual Desire, Shame, and the Disabled Body: Selected Case Studies from Zofka Kveder and International Feminist Women Writers

Sara Vukotić (The Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Ljubljana): Narrating Abortion in Women’s Writing from the Former Yugoslav Region (1900–1950): The Cases of Kveder, Lazarević, and Mohorič

12.30-13.15 Lunch

13.15-14.45 Session 2: Speaking Desire Indirectly: Language, Silence, and Narrative Strategies

Giada Silenzi (University of Udine): Between Voices and Gazes: The Enunciation of Desire in La Princesse de Clèves (1678)

Eva Eglāja-Kristsone (Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, Riga): Desire, Respectability, and the Poetics of Restraint in Early 20th-Century Latvian Women’s Writing

Alenka Jensterle Doležal (Charles University Prague): The Triumph of Reason over Desire: A Conflict at the Turn of the Century in Zdenka Hásková’s Mladí (Youth)

14.45-15.00 Coffee or Tea Break

15.00-16.30

Session 3: Modernism, Experimentation, and the Rewriting of Female Desire

Leonora Flis (University of Nova Gorica): (Veiled) Urban Appetites and Transgressions in the Interwar New York Novels by Fannie Hurst, Nella Larsen and Tess Slesinger

Nicoletta Asciuto (University of York): Sexual Desire from the Digital Archive: Mina Loy’s “Brontolivido”

Kristina Grgić (University of Zagreb): Female Desire in George Egerton’s and Adela Milčinović’s Short Fiction

16.00-16.15 Short Break

16.15- 17.45

Session 4: Queer Desire, Ambiguity, and Non-Normative Attachments

Irina Talevska (Ss. Cyrill and Methodius University of Skopje): Oblique Configurations: Queer desire under narrative constraint in Fausta Cialente’s Natalia

Martyna Miernecka (University of Regensburg): “Everything Here Is Saturated”: Littoral Atmospheres and Sexless Queer Longing in Anna Iwaszkiewiczowa’s Modernist Diary

Edit Zsadányi (Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest): Between Love and Friendship: Margit Kaffka’s Anthill

18.00 -22.00 Conference Dinner

24. 3. 2026

9.30-10.45

Session 5: Digital Humanities and Distant Readings of Desire

Roiala Mamedova (University of Pardubice): Desire under Respectability: Medicalized Language and Erotic Indirection in Sharg Gadini (1922–1937)

Antonio Terrón Barroso (University of Barcelona): Between Floral Purity and Animal Desire: Regimes of Control in Nineteenth-Century Iberian Women’s Press

Daniel A. Finch-Race (University of Bologna): ‘Digital Analytics for Poems by Delphine Gay and Renée Vivien about Others’ Desire’:

10.45-11.15 Coffee or Tea Break

11.15-12.30

Session 5: Desire, Morality, and Self-Narration in Life Writing

Gordana Galić Kakkonen (University of Split): “But My Nature Is Fierce and Inclined to Dissipation” Desire and Moral Negotiation in Dragojla Jarnević's Diary

Dubravka Zima (University of Zagreb): Desire and Sin: A Discourse on Sex in Dragojla Jarnević's Diary (1833-1875)

Maria Xesús Lama López (University of Barcelona): Laughing at Desire: Humor, Transgression, and Social Sanction in Rosalía de Castro’s Poetry

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-15.00

Session 7: Desire, Agency, and Literary Subversion

Tímea Jablonczay (Jewish Theological Seminary, University of Jewish Studies, Budapest): Subversion, female sexuality, and affective aspects of subjectivity in a forgotten Hungarian female writer’s fiction (Teresa Rudnóy)

Kilmeny Chernys (University of York): “But, by the way, you’re bearing in mind, aren't you, that I’ve had a lover?” “Oh, yes. So have I, if it comes to that. In fact, several. It’s the sort of thing that might happen to anybody.”: Passions in Plain Sight.

Julia Podlejska (Jagiellonian University in Kraków): “Not a Man, Not a Woman, But a Poet: Artistic Desire in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando”

15.-15.30 Coffee or Tea Break

15.30 Discussion about the collected volume

17.00 Closing of the conference