Completed Projects 2011–2023
An Archaeology of Identity Photography
Project leader: Dr. Eszter Polonyi
Slovenian Writers and Imperial Censorship in the Long Nineteenth Century
Project leader: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Marijan Dović (ZRC SAZU)
Project team member UNG: Prof. Dr. Katja Mihurko Poniž
Project website
About the project
The three-year research project ARRS J6-2583 (1st September 2020–30th August 2023) aims to examine an under-researched topic that has yet to receive systematic scholarly attention. Instead of partial descriptions, this project offers an insight into the concealed yet constitutive nature of censorship practices by carrying out the first systematic survey of the period, which includes new primary sources, and framing the various detailed case studies with a new conceptualization of the modern institution of censorship. Rather than continue to apply the term “censorship” to highly heterogeneous practices, the project proposes a more unified concept of censorship, which then allows for insight into actual relatively specific areas of its legal regulation and implementation. In the literature of the period, these areas are 1) periodicals, 2) book publishing, and 3) theater.
The spatial scope is limited to the Slovenian lands within the Habsburg monarchy (especially Carniola, but also Carinthia and Styria); this Slovenian situation is then broadened by the imperial context and the context of neighboring literary cultures (German, Czech, Croatian, Hungarian). The temporal scope is the “long nineteenth century,” the period between 1789–1914, which the revolutionary year of 1848 divides almost symmetrically into two phases: the phase dominated by preventive (or pre-publication) censorship, and the phase determined mostly by retroactive (or post-publication) censorship.
DARIAH group Women Writers in History
The tasks of the DARIAH Working Group Women Writers are as follows:
- reinforcement and enlargement of a network created over the last decade thanks to NWO, COST and HERA;
- further development of a VRE allowing large-scale research in women’s literary history;
- encouragement of new research initiatives in this field, both individual and collaborative, focusing upon women’s authorship and reception;
- reflections upon use and interpretation of the data provided by as yet unexplored sources;
- service for – academic and other – teaching, and encourage students to use the online VRE as “their” tool;
- preparation of initiatives for crowdsourcing and citizen’s participation in the field of women’s literary history;
- maintenance of contact with members of other institutions in women’s cultural heritage and relevant networks such as WINE (Women’s Information Network of Europe).
Call for Webinar Presentations in 2023
and contributions for the Brill Collection “Women Writers in History”
The Slovenian group was one of the organizers of a conference Teaching Women Writers: exploring NEWW VRE possibilities (Ljubljana, November 16, 2017)
The project aims to utilize the panoramic view of the “longue durée,” whose long temporal scope itself also encourages theoretical and methodological reflection. The focus is on censorship in the narrow sense of institutionalized forms of control over the circulation of texts, the essential dimension of which is the capacity to sanction (implemented by the repressive apparatus of the state). This provides a firm vantage point for investigations into less institutionalized restrictions, such as self-censorship, indirect sanctions, market forces, discrimination against sexual and other minorities, and other forms of censorship in the broader sense.
The project comprises both general (synthetic) investigations and a set of carefully selected case studies covering the entire period, all literary media and genres, and all key problem areas of the proposed project. The focus is on the implementation of censorship practices; their impact on Slovenian books, newspapers, and theater; their role in the development of the Slovenian national movement; the recorded strategies for evading censorship; the changes in censorship’s social functions; and the impact of “gender censorship,” which remains an unexplored area of Slovenian literary history.
COST Action Distant Reading for the European Literary History
http://www.cost.eu/COST_Actions/ca/CA16204
Action member UNG: Prof. Dr. Katja Mihurko Poniž, dr. Ivana Zajc
This Action’s challenge was to create a vibrant and diverse network of researchers jointly developing the resources and methods necessary to change the way European literary history is written. Grounded in the Distant Reading paradigm (i.e. using computational methods of analysis for large collections of literary texts), the Action created a shared theoretical and practical framework to enable innovative, sophisticated, data-driven, computational methods of literary text analysis across at least 10 European languages. Fostering insight into cross-national, large-scale patterns and evolutions across European literary traditions, the Action facilitated the creation of a broader, more inclusive and better-grounded account of European literary history and cultural identity.
Action website
EDUKA project
Within the framework of the Research Center for Humanities and the Faculty of Humanities, under the leadership of Assoc. prof. dr. Ana Toroš, we prepared teaching materials on minority and cross-border literature in the program area. The aim of the project activities was to provide primary and secondary school teachers and professors with knowledge and skills for teaching about minority and cross-border literature from a comparative perspective. Pupils and students are thus given the opportunity to become comprehensively acquainted with literature in the contact area between Slovenia and Italy, regardless of the language in which it is written and regardless of national borders.
HERA project: Travelling Texts 1790-1914: The Transnational Reception Of Women’s Writing At the Fringes of Europe
Participating countries: Finnland, Norway, Slovenia, The Netherlands, United Kingdom
Slovenian team: Katja Mihurko Poniž, Aleš Vaupotič, Tanja Badalič
This HERA-funded collaborative research project studed the role of women’s writing in the transnational literary field during the long 19th century. It explores in terms of gender cultural encounters through reading and writing that contributed to shaping modern cultural imaginaries in Europe. The systematic scrutiny of reception data from large-scale sources (library and booksellers’ catalogues, the periodical press) forms the basis for the study of women’s participation in this process. By tracing and comparing the networks created through women’s writing from the perspective of five countries (Norway, Finland, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands) located at the fringes of 19th-century Europe we question the relations between centre and periphery from a gendered point of view. The project thus contributes to the development of new, transnational models of writing the history of European literary culture.
The use of shared digital research tools is central to the implementation and coherence of this project. Building on the database WomenWriters and the experience of the COST Action Women Writers In History, a Virtual Research Environment will be developed, providing not only advanced technology for statistical analysis, charting and visualisation, but also the possibility to work together in the virtual space. Parts of it will be open to the public, which allows interested user communities to engage with our research. Outputs will include a conference, peer-reviewed articles and book publications. Enhanced online publication will directly link to the research data. These activities will be complemented by workshops and seminars organised together with our two Associated Partners, Chawton House Library (UK) and Turku City Library (Finland), sessions at international literary festivals in Norway and Slovenia inviting writers to meet their ‘foremothers’, and exhibitions.
From the final evaluation of the project:
More data are available now than ever before thanks to the engagement with digital humanities. The digital tool that was developed is available for all researchers and is set up in a way that others can keep adding to it. I imagine this provides a very useful service to the field.
The analyses have given rise to new insights about cultural history. Specifically, it brings literary history in line with current thinking in other Humanities domains, especially regarding the way in which contact and dynamism leads to change.
COST Action IS0901: Women Writers in History – Toward a New Understanding of European Literary Culture
https://sites.google.com/a/costwwih.net/www/
The main objective of the Action was to create a strong collaborative international Research Network and to produce a Road Map outlining future systematic collaborative research in European women’s literary history. The historiography of literature needs renewal. In particular women’s contribution to European literary practice can and must be accounted for in a much more adequate way than current literary histories do. This COST Action laid the foundations for an innovative European-scale approach to this problem. The neglect of women as cultural agents is indeed an international phenomenon, directly relating to gender inequality in modern societies. International cooperation is needed in order to change things and demonstrate that women’s growing presence, since the Middle Ages, prepared the way for their massive entrance into the “literary field” (Bourdieu) during the 20th century. Using recent theoretical insights (Moretti, Hutcheon, Valdés) and new technological means, the Action prepared avenues for collective research by organizing a strong network of European (and other) researchers. Slovenian Team organized the symposium “Women’s Authorship and Literatures of Small Countries in the 19th Century” which investigated the role and place of women authors within “smaller” culture es, and their connections with their female counterparts in “larger”, dominating cultures. The colloquium linked the world of books with the academic world. Symposium was organized in the context of Ljubljana World Book Capital 2010, 22-23 September 2010.
Chair, Vice-Chair, Secretary and STSM-Manager of this Action, based at Huygens ING The Hague (NL):
Suzan van Dijk,
Vanda Anastacio,
Marie-Louise Coolahan,
Henriette Partzsch.
Working Group leaders:
WG 1: Viola Parente-Capkova and Biljana Dojčinović,
WG 2: Marie-Louise Coolahan,
WG 3:Alicia Montoya and Marie Sorbo,
WG 4: Gillian Dow and Katja Mihurko Poniž.