Panel on Estonian Decadence and Modernism at Nordic Gender Research Conference

On June 20–22, 2022, the Nordic gender research conference titled Tensions and Potentials in Nordic Feminist and Gender Research will take place in Oslo. The keynote speakers are Marianne Liljeström, Astri Dankertsen, Amund Rake Hoffart, and Raewyn Connell. The purpose of the conference is to create an opportunity for researchers from the region and beyond to have open dialogues and delve into the latest perspectives of feminist and gender theories.

From the Baltics, Eret Talviste from the University of Tartu, Zita Karkla from the Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art of the University of Latvia will participate at the conference. The Literature Centre will be represented by Mirjam Hinrikus and Merlin Kirikal. As part of the session Love, Sex and Gender: Estonian Decadence and Modernism in Nordic and International Contexts, Mirjam Hinrikus will give a presentation on Dionysian decadence in A. H. Tammsaare’s Kärbes (The Fly, 1917). She will also speak about Tammsaare’s (1878–1940) oeuvre’s interlinking with women’s rights. Merlin Kirikal will give a talk about Johannes Semper’s (1892–1970) decadent short story Püha umbrohi (Sacred Weed, 1918), more precisely about its female protagonist, the student Alla as a Nietzschean-Bergsonian New Woman. Eret Talviste’s paper Leida Kibuvits’s Rahusõit and transnational (feminist) modernist studies will focus on Leida Kibuvits’s (1948–1976) work in the context of new modernist studies. In her presentation Intuitive Feminism in Contemporary Latvian Women’s writing, Zita Karkla will analyse the work of the Latvian writer Andra Neiburga (1957–2019) through the notion of “intuitive feminism”.

Further information can be found here.