International Conference
"Vladimir Nabokov, or Education Without Borders"
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, Oct. 31 - Nov. 2, 2024
An international conference jointly organized by the International Vladimir Nabokov Society and the French Vladimir Nabokov Society
Organizing committee:
Isabelle Poulin, Bordeaux Montaigne University, France
Marie Bouchet, Toulouse Jean Jaures University, France
Dana Dragunoiu, Carleton University, Canada
Agnès Edel-Roy, Paris Créteil University, France
Christopher Link, SUNY New Paltz, USA
Julie Loison-Charles, Lille University, France
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Conference made possible with the generous support of:
Laurent Dubreuil (French Studies Department, Cornell University)
The French Studies Program, Cornell University
The Society for the Humanities, Cornell University
The Vladimir Nabokov fund in the Department of Comparative Literature, Cornell University
The Division of Rare and Manuscripts Collection at the Cornell University Library
The A.D. White House
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Conference sponsors:
Vladimir Nabokov Literary Foundation
Cornell University, College of Arts and Science
The Society for the Humanities, Cornell University
Wellesley College
Bordeaux Montaigne
Plurielles (labo Bordeaux)
CAS
Lille Cecille
LIS (UPEC)
Search Strasbourg
Strasbourg USIAS
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Day 1 Thursday, October 31, 2024
9:00-9:30 a.m. Check-in Pale Fire Lounge, Goldwin Smith Hall
9:30 a.m-10:45 a.m. Exhibit Nabokov & Butterfly Science
Mann Library
11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Pop-up Exhibit: Nabokov manuscripts and rare documents
Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections
Lecture Room, Level 2B, Carl A. Kroch Library
12:00 am - 1:00 pm Check-In (Continued) Take-Away Lunch
Grab a Sandwich at the Pale Fire Lounge, Goldwin Smith Hall
1.30 pm Conference opening- Welcome address-Introduction
2:00 – 3.00 pm Keynote Address: Gavriel Shapiro, Cornell University
“Ill-treatment of the Other in Nabokov’s Works”
Chair: Stephen H. Blackwell
3:15-4:45 pm Layers of otherness
Chair: Adam Weiner
- Olga Voronina, Bard College
“A Lecturer as a Cryptologist: Writing Masters of European Literature into Lolita”
- Ludmila Shleyfer Lavine, Bucknell University
“Nabokov’s Displaced Academics: Intertextuality, Traditions, and Disruptions”
- David Potter, University of Sydney, Australia
“Provoking Nabokovian Time with Bruno Schulz”
5:00-6:30 pm A.D. White House
5.00-5.15 pm Coffee Break
5:15-6:15 pm Looking at the other through humor
Chair: Christopher Link
- Anoushka Alexander-Rose, University of Southampton, UK
“In on the joke: Jewish Shibboleths in Vladimir Nabokov”
- Léopold Reigner, University of Rouen, France
“Flaubert’s humor: Nabokovian laughter in Madame Bovary and Bouvard et Pécuchet”
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Day 2 Friday, November 1, 2024 A.D. White House-Guerlac Room
9:00-10:00 am Keynote Address: Monica Manolescu, “Crossing Borders with Nabokov”
Chair: Isabelle Poulin
10.00-10.30 am Coffee Break
10:30 am - 12:00 pm Confronting Translation
Chair: Julie Loison-Charles
- Morgane Allain Roussel, University of Rouen, France
“Literary and cultural equivalents and their impact on reading Lolita”
- Sorenza Wilkin, University of Mons, Belgium
“Could the Translation of the Diminutive Adjectives ‘Little’ and ‘Small’ Influence the Perception of the Narrator’s Attitude in Lolita? A Criticism of the French and Russian Translations”
- Erin Gilbert, University of Washington
“‘All thorn, but cousin to your rose’: Vladimir Nabokov’s Untranslatable Weeds and Their Literary Roots”
12:00-1:30 pm Lunch break
1:30-3:00 pm Mapping Exile
Chair: Laurent Dubreuil
- Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA
“Spatial Disorientation and Exile in Nabokov”
- Christopher Link, SUNY New Paltz
“‘It is not down in any map; true places never are’: Geographic Dislocation, Fictive Space-Time, and the Imaginal Realm in Nabokov and Melville”
- Kathryn Haydon, Independent Researcher, St. Louis, Missouri
“Link-and-Bobolink-and-Botkin-and-Kinbote: A naturalist’s map of Charles Kinbote’s migration from Z(embla) to A(merica)”
3.00-3.30 pm Coffee Break
3:30-5:00 pm Reading with contemporary critical tools
Chair: Matthew Roth
- Erik Eklund, Northwestern University (Evanston, IL)
“Nabokov and Race: In Place of a Prolegomena”
- Hannah Bradley, Brandeis University, MA
“Kinesthetic Empowerment Denied: A Somaesthetic Critique of Nabokov’s Lolita”
- Elena Rakhimova-Sommers, Rochester Institute of Technology
“My Students’ Lolita Jury Duty: Teaching with Reader-Response Theory”
6:00-7:30 pm Room 109 and/or 110
Victor’s Punch Bowl
- Bernhard Aigner, University of Vienna, Austria / Fulbright Exchange Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“‘Transformation … Transformation is a marvelous thing.’ Nabokov and Metamorphosis in Teaching, Writing, and Person”
- Stephen H. Blackwell, University of Tennessee
“Hidden Traumas and Transformations in Nabokov’s Works”
- Louise Carey-White, Independent Researcher, Sydney, Australia
“The Alien and the Beetle: Vladimir Nabokov on Franz Kafka”
- Katherina Kokinova, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Bulgaria
“Nabokov & Gombrowicz: Instruction without Borders”
- Irina Marchesini, University of Bologna, Italy
“‘A Very Pleasant Void’: Arizona, Nabokov’s Migrant Identity, and the Exercise Of Self-Translation”
- Nancy Pollak, Cornell University
“Nabokov and Jakobson (émigrés, enemies, essays on translation)”
Day 3 Saturday, November 2, 2024 A.D. White House - Guerlac Room
9:00-10:30 a.m. Teaching Nabokov today
Chair: Dana Dragunoiu
- Matthew Roth, Messiah University
“Teaching Lolita through the Argus Eyes of Critical Theory”
- Shoshana Milgram Knapp, Virginia Tech
“Nabokov’s Rescue of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: Teaching My Students in the 2020s What He Taught His Students in the 1950s”
- Stanislav Shvabrin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Professor Nabokov beyond Lectures on Russian Literature”
10.30-11.00 am Coffee Break
11:00 am-12:00 pm Zoom Session: Tatiana Ponomareva, Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House), St. Petersburg
“Nabokov at Cornell through Véra’s Eye”
Chair: Nancy Pollack
12:00-1:30 pm Lunch break
1:30-3:00 pm Writing Trauma
Chair: Agnès Edel-Roy
- Sabine Metzger, University of Stuttgart, Germany
“The Audibility of Dread: Somatosounds and Soundscapes of Repression in Nabokov’s Invitation to a Beheading and Bend Sinister”
- Sara Pankenier Weld, University of California, Santa Barbara
“To Flee or Not to Flee: Trauma, Ethics, and the Tortured Child in Bend Sinister”
- Hanna Miles Jewell, University of London, UK
“Trauma and Timelessness in Lolita”
3.00-3.30 pm Coffee Break
3:30-5:00 pm Writing, Filming, Photographing
Chair: Marie Bouchet
- Ana Bumber, Toulouse Paul Sabatier University, France
“Echoes of Visconti’s Vaghe Stelle dell’Orsa (1965) in Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor (1969). A magical connection”
- Julie Lesnoff, EHESS Paris, France
“Lolita or the ethical challenge of adapting metaphors for the screen”
- Robyn Jensen, University of California, Berkeley
“The Terror of ‘Naked Sight’: Nabokov and New Vision Photography” On Zoom
6:00-8:00 p.m. Conference Dinner at the A.D. White House
* Comic strip described by Nabokov in Invitation to a Beheading and executed by Clarence Brown
© 1998 Cornell University Press
Contact:
nabokov.cornell2024@vladimir-nabokov.org
Conference website: