Annual PG Conference on Re-reading 22nd–23rd May 2025
The Research Centre for Comparative Literature and Translation’s annual Postgraduate Conference on the theme of Re-Reading took place over two days, Thursday 22 and Friday 23 May 2025. The event featured papers by postgraduate students from Glasgow and around the world, covering a wide range of topics and approaches. It proved to be a very successful conference, offering the audience plenty of food for thought on the topic of re-reading.
If reading, comparing, interpretation, and translation are regular keywords in our discipline, re-reading is often overlooked, even though it enriches them all with new meaning. The ‘re’ asks us to situate reading and its repetitions within time and space: in the short term, re-reading is crucial for critical engagement; over the longer term, it involves revisiting more than just the text—actively comparing now and then, and renegotiating both cultural and personal awareness. Re-reading takes many forms, from seasonal returns to cumulative, palimpsestic layers, and when shared with others, it weaves us into an interpretive community spanning time, borders, languages, and media. Our contributors’ papers explore re-reading through themes such as materiality, emotional resonance, translation, adaptation, re-appropriation, intergenerational dialogue, rewriting, decoloniality, and dystopia.
Highlights of the conference included a keynote address by David Damrosch, Ernest Bernbaum Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Institute of World Literature at Harvard University. His talk, titled ‘The Seim Anew: Towards a Map of Re-reading’, explored re-reading as a dynamic, transformative act that allows texts to gain new meanings across time, cultures, media, and languages. He outlined six modes of re-reading—intertextual, intratextual, interlingual, intermedial, intercultural, and intertemporal—showing how each encounter builds richer layers of interpretation. Professor Susan Bassnett responded by emphasising re-reading’s role in personal growth, teaching, and dialogue, highlighting how modern retellings invite fresh engagement with classics. The session concluded with reflections on interdisciplinary approaches and how adaptations can open literature to new audiences.
Another highlight was a panel celebrating the 20th anniversary of the UG Comparative Literature Degree in our School, titled Comparative Literature in Glasgow: Twenty Years On..., chaired by Dr Elwira Grossman, Comparative Literature Programme Director at the University of Glasgow. The panel highlighted not only the programme’s rich linguistic roots and unique focus on Eastern European cultures but also its growing community of passionate students, which has tripled since 2022. Dr Mirna Šolić’s moving exploration of Bosnia’s post-war riverscapes brought to life how landscapes carry memories of trauma and resilience, while Dr Paul Castro’s analysis of literary adaptations revealed the intricate ties between language, empire, and identity. Dr Julia Hartley’s presentation on Jeanne D'Alcy offered a fascinating glimpse into gender and cross-cultural exchange, enriching our understanding of French Orientalism through the story of a pioneering female archaeologist. The session ended on a hopeful note, urging everyone to continue fostering intercultural dialogue and celebrating the vibrant research that shapes this ever-evolving programme.
Furthermore, the conference included a poster session where postgraduate and PhD students from various universities had the opportunity to present their research. Poster titles included: ‘(Mis)translating The Peach Blossom Spring: Translation as a Creative Intervention’ by Gabrielle Tse; ‘Re-Reading the Text of Space: German-Polish Borderlands in Late-Twentieth-Century Polish Prose’ by Olga Grochowska; ‘Queer Re-Reading and Fluid Interpretations: A Comparative Literary Method in Elfriede Jelinek’s Die Liebhaberinnen (1975; Women as Lovers, 1994) and Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve (1977)’ by Julia Guzikowska; ‘Soft Power through Subtitles: Decoding The Art of War for the West’ by Liang Yuan; and many others.
For full details of the speakers, sessions, and timings, please see the attached programme. Click the links on the programme to watch the recordings from the conference.
Conference Programme
Conference Photo Gallery
