Project directors:
- Atinati Mamatsashvili, Ilia State University (atinati_mamatsashvili@iliauni.edu.ge)
- Arvi Sepp, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium (arvi.sepp@vub.be)
The objective of the project is to rethink the representation of Jewishness through the lens of literary history in Western, Central and Eastern Europe from 1850 until the present. Adopting a transnational and intermedial perspective, the research project seeks to examine the relationship between literature and anti-Semitism in light of the politico-racial anti-Semitism that emerged during the 19th century, the Dreyfus Affair and its resonance in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, followed by the rise of fascisms, Nazism and the rupture introduced by the Shoah, as well as the state anti-Semitism of the Soviet Stalinist regime.
This project aims to conceptualise the manner in which anti-Semitic discourse, shaped in specific socio-historical and temporal contexts proper to diverse national spaces, is addressed by writers voicing opposition to it. Its objective is to explore the ways in which European literatures construct a literary space that enables engagement with events at different historical moments, under different political contexts and in societies with their own (literary) history. The integration of peripheral literary spaces, which have hitherto been overlooked by Western research, in conjunction with the adoption of a focus on anti-antisemitism literature that has been understudied, has the potential to bring about a substantial shift in the existing understanding of the subject in the field of literary studies. Consequently, the study will make a substantial contribution to our understanding of European comparative literary history.