Graduate Conference: ‘Eurasia’ Across/Beyond Borders: Migration, Mobility, & Translation

Conference program coming soon!

 Call for Papers:

Every map [...] is always a world map, for it represents a ‘part of the world,’ it locally projects the universitas that is omnitudo compartium absoluta. —Étienne Balibar

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, much effort has been devoted to decolonization of frameworks for the study of Baltic, Caucasian, Central Asian, East European, and Slavic cultures and societies—Eurasian studies. Yet how can we critically approach a conventionally circumscribed “Eurasia” without looking as well to East Asia, the Baltic Region, Western Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and so on? It is impossible to decolonize a single world zone without decolonizing the world as a whole. As Étienne Balibar noted some three decades ago, every local border is a segment of the bordering of the entire world. The graduate conference “‘Eurasia’ Across/Beyond Borders: Migration, Mobility, & Translation” will critically examine the hierarchies and blind spots of area studies’ disciplinary categories and boundaries in the key of postcolonial, decolonial, and imperial studies.

The graduate students and faculty of the Comparative Literature & Literary Theory Program at the University of Pennsylvania invite paper proposals from current Ph.D. students in any discipline of the humanities or social sciences that in one way or another crosses the borders of ‘Eurasia.’ The conference will be held on April 2-4, 2026 at the University of Pennsylvania. We are particularly interested in case studies of cross-border engagements involving literature, film, and other cultural forms. Possible topics, keywords, and methods include, but are not limited to: 

•       Border studies

•       Cold War studies

•       Comparative poetics and aesthetics

•       Cross-border mobility, communication, and cultural movements

•       Diasporas, emigres, exiles, intermediaries

•       Educational and intellectual exchange

•       Empire studies

•       Geographic imaginaries

•       Global cultural capital markets

•       Socialist solidarity movements and projects

•       The socialist world

•       Translation studies

•       Transnational cultural movements

A keynote lecture will be given by Bruno Barretto Gomide, Professor of Russian Literature and Culture at the University of São Paulo. Food and lodging will be provided for all participants.

Please send proposals (in English), including a CV, paper title, and abstract of no more than 250 words, by Jan. 5, 2026 to: eurasiabeyond@gmail.com.