International Conference “Reading Bodies and Embodied Readings in Modernist Prose and Poetry: (Inter-)Cultural Experience”

School of Philology, Moscow Lomonosov University, Russia;

College of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China;

College of Foreign Languages, Huaqiao University, China

invite to international conference

Reading Bodies and Embodied Readings in Modernist Prose and Poetry:

(Inter-)Cultural Experience

This virtual panel is designed as an opportunity for scholars to share their ideas, diverse perspectives, and insights on the embodied dimension of reading literary modernism through open discussion and collaborative exchange.

Аs teachers in the humanities, we find ourselves poised in between an established literary canon and newer generations of young readers who prefer viewing, listening, and playing to regular reading. For contemporary readers, embodied reading refers to a new approach to reading that prioritizes the holistic engagement of the body, rather than solely the intellect, and enhances comprehension and interpretation of a text. Physical movement, acting out scenes, and using multisensory experiences are employed to create a deeper connection with the work.

We are also caught between the self-consciously «Western» canon taught and studied as literary history and broader receptive practices that are culturally «out of sync» and nurtured by a the world where modernist symbolic geography no longer applies. As scholars we also find ourselves in a difficult moment when the virtues and claims of interpretative reading have come under question, whereas the alternative theory of reading—the so-called “experiential” or enactivist paradigm—is under discussion. Should we not use our unique situatedness to address a large, multidimensional problem—related to literary and cultural aesthetics as well as to anthropology and cognitive theory—that is likely to remain with us in the future?

Topics focus on literary modernist dealings with bodies:

• Reading as Multisensory
• Enactive and Affective Responses in Reading Practices
• Reading as a Multi/Intermedia Experience
• The Materiality of Reading: The Text as a Physical Body 
• Somatic Reading vs. Reading as a Disembodied Activity
• Somaesthetics: Bodily Engagement with Texts
• Reading Experience in Terms of Embodied Cognition
• The Representation of Reading in Different Media Practices
• The Dynamics of Pleasure: from Non-interactive to Interactive Fiction
• The Senses of Touch: Haptics, Sensory Empathy, Feeling-with
• Film Adaptation as an Embodied Re-reading.

 

This is an online conference. To participate you need to register here.

 

PROGRAM

Friday, May 16, 2025

Welcome Speech (Beijing time: 6.00 pm- 6.30 pm)

Lipgart Andrei (PhD., Dean of the Philological Faculty, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)

Chinese official representative

Venediktova Tatiana (PhD., Professor, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russia)

Wang Bowen (PhD., Professor, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China)

 

Music of Sound and Sound of Poetry: Enactment of Musical Poetries

 Logutov Andrey (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) “Resonant Traces: Time, Space, and the Materiality of Sound in Beckett and Lucier” (Beijing time: 6.30 pm – 7.00 pm)

Thobois-Gupta Céline (Trinity College Dublin) “Experiencing Samuel Beckett’s Aesthetic of Stimulation in Solitary and Communal Readings of the Novels: Stimmung and Attunement” (Beijing time: 7.00 pm – 7.30 pm)

Discussion/Conversation (Beijing time: 7.30 pm– 7.45 pm)

BREAK:  Beijing time: 7.45 pm – 8.00 pm

 

Haptic Poetics and Tactile Imagination

Schleifer Ronald (University of Oklahoma) “Reading Literature as a Haptic Art: The Modernism of Williams and Chekhov” (Beijing time: 8.00 pm – 8.30 pm)

Venediktova Tatiana (Moscow Lomonosov University) “A Mind of Winter: Modernists’ Thermal Imaginary” (Beijing time: 8.30 pm – 9.00 pm)

Discussion/Conversation (Beijing time: 9.00 pm – 9.15 pm)

 

Saturday, May 17, 2025

 The Modernist Body: Pleasures, Transformations, and Sufferings

Morzhenkova Natalia (Huaqiao University, China) “Wandering through The Modernist Text: Reader as Flaneur (the Case of Virginia Woolf).” (Beijing time: 3.00 pm – 3.30 pm)

Zubov Artem (Lomonosov Moscow State University) “Modernism’s Weird Bodies: Reading Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) as a (Pre-)Modernist Text” (Beijing time: 3.30 pm – 4.00 pm)

Xie Fei (East China Normal University) “Sub-Saharan African Somaestheics in War Writing of Francophone African Literature” (Beijing time: 4.00 pm – 4.30 pm)

Discussion/Conversation (Beijing time: 4.30 pm – 4.45 pm)

BREAK:  Beijing time: 4.45 pm – 5.00 pm

 

Intermedial Encounters. Enactments of Modernism: Intermedial Encounters and Modes of Performativity

Rybina Polina (Lomonosov Moscow State University) “Fleshing Out Literature: Atmospheric Variations in Film Adaptations of A Streetcar Named Desire” (Beijing time: 5.00 pm – 5.30 pm)

Chen Chaomei (Southeastern University, China) “Performing the ‘Crude’: Amateurism and Modernism in Contemporary Chinese Theatre” (Beijing time: 5.30 pm – 6.00 pm)

Discussion/Conversation (Beijing time: 6.00 pm – 6.15 pm)

BREAK: Beijing time: 6.15 pm – 6.30 pm

 

Avant-garde Somaesthetics: Interactions of the Social and the Material

Bowen Wang (Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China) “Tailoring the Amorphous ‘protoform’: Mina Loy’s Textural Design and Modernist Somaesthetics” (Beijing time: 6.30 pm –7.00 pm)

Shvets Anna (Lomonosov Moscow State University) “Mina Loy and Others: Affective Mimesis, Fragmented Bodies, and Modernist Somaesthetics” (Beijing time: 7.00 pm – 7.30 pm)

Discussion/Conversation (Beijing time: 7.30 pm – 7.45 pm)

The Closing Talk (Beijing time: 7.45 pm – 8.00 pm)