Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the lifting of the iron curtain, for citizens of the former Soviet Bloc travel became an act of liberation and a symbol of finally overcoming the physical, geographical, and ideological restrictions imposed by the communist regime. Free to roam at last, thousands of people chose to leave their homeland behind, often with no specific plans to return. At the same time, access to previously forbidden places and sites of knowledge (libraries, archives, museums) opened new venues for personal and national self-actualization, for therapeutic creative endeavors, and for new visions of national identity, belonging, and cultural production, which could now be complicated through open dialogic encounters with the West. More recently, in the context of increased displacement, war, and political crises, the journey and its narratives have assumed fresh forms and new expressive means, often resulting in transnational or exophonic writing that crosses the borders of language, culture, and identity. 

This seminar focuses on the practices and representations of travel in contemporary Eastern European literatures and cultures in order to explore how the metaphor of the journey has been adapted to the region’s traumatic geopolitical realities since 1989. Among others, we hope to address some of the following questions: How have Eastern European writers, artists, translators reimagined travel with its sites and itineraries? What are the rhetorical or topographic strategies they have embraced to give form to inner or outward journeys? What does it mean to depart and return in our contemporary world rent by violence, separation, and uncertainty? How do travelers from the “other” Europe understand and express their identities in the context of global mobility? What role does gender play in such physical, spiritual, or intellectual movements across the globe, and their artistic explorations? What modes of linguistic, cultural, and personal translation are deployed in the process? And what tangible or intangible effects have these new practices and representations produced? How are notions of home and abroad reimagined, and are other old concepts, such as exile and immigration, in need of updated definitions, too? Why has nostalgia become once again such a powerful tool for inciting individual action and exerting collective political influence today? 

We invite scholars from a variety of disciplines, such as  literature, film studies, art history, translation studies, travel studies, cultural studies, urban studies, international migration studies, and beyond, to submit abstracts for papers that engage with any of the proposed or related topics. Please contact the panel organizers (Stilina Milkova, smilkova@oberlin.edu, and Margarita Marinova, margarita.marinova@cnu.edu)  should you have any questions.