News and events
Unlearning Monolingualism in the Philologies: Concepts, Methods, Literary Practices
Bratislava, 8.-9. October 2026
Organized by Marianna Deganutti, Esther Kilchmann, and Dirk Weissmann within COST Action MultiLiLiTrans – Literary Multilingualism and Social Transformations in Superdiverse Societies
We are delighted to announce the conference 'Unlearning Monolingualism in the Philologies: Concepts, Methods, Literary Practices' which will take place in Bratislava from 8-9th October.
The conference addresses the fundamental challenge at the heart of our COST Action: the persistent hold of monolingual and national paradigms that continue to structure large parts of literary philologies, academic institutions, and research practices. Despite the multilingual realities of authors, texts, and societies, philological disciplines remain predominantly organized around national languages, national canons, and national literary histories. A central aim of the conference is therefore to critically examine how existing descriptions, concepts, and methods for studying literary multilingualism can sustainably transform these deeply embedded structures—and how a conscious unlearning of monolingual habits within philology can enable genuinely multilingual approaches to research, analysis, literary history, and canon formation.
A full programme is available below.