Villages of Europe. Provinciality in the mirror of contemporary European literature (Workshop)

Despite its backward image, the provinces are booming - the village continues to be one of the most popular settings and a decided theme in contemporary literature, and by no means just in German literature (cf. Seel 2023: 18). In a world that is becoming increasingly complex and anonymous and in which there is a growing sense of alienation, concepts with rural connotations such as homeland, idyll and village are once again gaining in importance in other European literatures and function as a "projection surface for urban longings" (Marszałek 2018: 10). At the same time, modern man is increasingly integrated into the opening up of European, even global society and can hardly be imagined without it. This is only an apparent contradiction, as research has repeatedly found that "this seemingly provincial narrative form [...] is particularly characterized by worldliness" (Twellmann 2019: 8), meaning that the big can be told well on a small scale. The village is regarded as a microcosm that is easy to depict in literature, allowing contemporary historical, socio-political themes and problems to be viewed on a larger scale as if under a magnifying glass (cf. Stockinger 2020: 298).

This idea can be linked to the concept of 'glocalization', which is also becoming increasingly common in literary studies, according to which "the local only gains its contour as local when it is challenged by more comprehensive, superordinate - (...) global - structures". (Haensler/Heine/Zanetti 2022: 14) And conversely, according to this concept, global processes can only be understood if both their preconditions and consequences at the local level are taken into account (cf. ibid.). In addition to the global level, however, other superordinate structures can also be considered, which can be reflected in the local, provincial level. Robert Menasse, for example, transfers the local level, albeit not from a literary studies perspective, to the European idea, which he understands as a "Europe of regions" (Menasse 2014: 78). He describes the region as the "heart root of identity" (ibid.: 80), which offers much greater scope for creativity and projection than, for example, a nation state.

The connection between local and "superordinate" structures in literature is therefore worth examining more closely. This is what we want to do in our workshop, focusing on Europe as a superordinate entity by looking at European provincial literature. At a time when Europe and European cohesion are becoming ever more important and at the same time there is increasing evidence of European literary negotiations of provinciality, we want to bring these two phenomena together and analyze the literary panorama of European villages in order to work out the overarching "big themes" of our time and take a comparative look at European understandings of provinciality.

General guiding questions can be formulated here, such as: How can the phenomenon of village literature be grasped from a pan-European perspective? Is there such a thing as a 'European village'?

What relevance does provinciality have in a global world in terms of the European idea? What (thematic, representational) differences, but also similarities, can be observed between villages in different European countries and cultural circles? What are the cross-connections, how are provincial topographies perceived from a foreign perspective and processed in literature?

We are also interested in the idea of Europe itself. What constitutes (individual and collective) European identity and how can this be seen in the respective (literary) provincial microcosms? Are European themes themselves reflected in the village, and if so, how? To what extent is Europe constituted by regions in particular?

Conversely, the question can also be asked: Is Europe fragmented into regions? The focus on local structures is given an additional explosive accentuation by current nationalist tendencies in many European countries, which is worth investigating. Here, for example, the compatibility of regionality and Europe as well as the question of whether a turn towards the local calls into question the overarching, in this case, European context, can be controversially discussed.

We are hoping for a diverse discussion on current European negotiations of provinciality in literary or other media. The aim is to make the provinciality of different nations comparable. We are looking for analyses from different philological directions, which we want to bring into contact and context within the framework of the workshop. In terms of time, the contributions should concentrate on European "village literature" from the year 2000 onwards.

Possible contribution topics (open list):

• literary-scientific, preferably also interdisciplinary contributions from different European philologies that negotiate provinciality and village life
• Comparative approaches that bring together different European literatures
• the German literary view of foreign provincial topographies and, conversely, the view from abroad of Germany's villages and other reciprocal observations
• diverse thematic orientations: political themes such as the shift to the right, nationalism, climate crisis, negotiation of Europe (themes) in provincial literature, glocalization, etc.
• Europe outside Europe: European structures in e.g. villages with a colonial past
• various (cultural studies) approaches such as ecocriticism, spatial theory, gender studies, postcolonial studies, food studies, (post-)migrant approaches in their application to literary provinciality
• Media studies and diachronic comparative studies are also conceivable

We are planning 20-minute presentations, each followed by 20 minutes of discussion.

We look forward to receiving proposals for topics in the form of abstracts (approx. 500 words) plus brief biographical information by June 30, 2025 to the addresses below. We will provide feedback by around mid-August 2025.

The workshop is scheduled to take place on February 26 and 27, 2026 at the University of Kassel; a publication is planned for early 2027.

Contact: Julia Leitherer // Lea Lotterer

Bibliography

Haensler, Philippe P.; Heine, Stefanie; Zanetti, Sandro: Introduction. In: This (ed.): Literarische Glokalisierung (= Colloquium Helveticum 51). Bielefeld: Aisthesis 2022. p. 13-21.

Marszałek, Magdalena: Introduction. The village and the idyll. In: Yaraslava Ananka, Magdalena Marszałek (eds.): Potemkin villages of the idyll. Imaginations and Imitations of the Rural in European Literatures. Bielefeld: transcript 2018 (= Rural Topographies 5). S. 7-17.

Menasse, Robert: Home is the most beautiful utopia. Talking (we) about Europe. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2014.

Seel, Henri J.: The walk to the countryside. A Poetology of Research on Rural Spaces in Contemporary German-Language Literature. Bielefeld: transcript 2023 (= Rural Topographies 19).

Stockinger, Claudia: Narrating the province. An introduction. In: Journal for German Studies 30 (2020). Issue 2: Focus: Narrating the province. S. 295-305.

Twellmann, Marcus: Village stories. How the world comes to literature. Göttingen: Wallstein 2019.