1st International Egodocumental Network Conference
Vilnius University, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń, the University of Lodz, and the Egodocumental Research Group (https://egodocuments.umk.pl) organise an international conference focusing on research, development, and changing perceptions of egodocuments in the twenty-first century. The conference aims to bring together scholars from different disciplines to share their insights and to encourage interdisciplinary studies of egodocuments.
The conference will also be the first meeting of the International Egodocumental Network established in December 2023 by the Egodocumental Research Group (Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń and the University of Lodz) to unite scholars from different disciplines working on egodocuments. It provides a platform for discussion, collaboration, and exchange of information between the participants, as well as online research seminars organized twice a year. In this dimension, our conference continues two editions of the Scientific Symposium "Egodocuments, Life-Writing and Autobiographical Texts..." organized at NCU in Toruń in 2022 and 2024.
Keynote speakers
Dr. Nataliia Voloshkova
Kazimierz Wielki University and Oxford Brookes University
Prof. Leona Toker
Hebrew University and Shalem Academic College
Prof. François-Joseph Ruggiu
Sorbonne Université, CNRS and Oxford University
Aleksandra Helena Tobiasz
Institute of Civilisation and Culture in Ljubljana
Fanny Copeland, “A Scotswoman by Birth but a Slav by Adoption” and her Self-Identification between Scotland and Slovenia
Fanny Copeland, “a Scotswoman by birth but a Slav by adoption”, was a linguist, translator, poet and alpinist. As a secretary, and a translator of the Yugoslav delegation at the Paris Peace Conference, she supported the establishment of a new state of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes. Copeland was also translating politically engaged texts of Yugoslav authors about borderland issues and minorities. She was awarded the highest Yugoslav distinction – the Order of Saint Sava. She was the first woman to give lectures (specifically, on English language and literature) at the University in Ljubljana. Whereas her texts on geography and Alps have been thoroughly studied, her extensive autobiography is still unpublished. In this contribution, I would like to address Copeland’s ego-documents (autobiography and letters) with the aim of studying her self-identification. Why was she such a fervent supporter of Yugoslavia? Was it because of her Scottish origins, and thus of the minority status that she became an advocate of new small nation states in East-Central Europe? Copeland’s autobiography and correspondence can shed more light on the mechanisms of her self-identification reshaped during her numerous travels in Yugoslavia, thus in the face of cultural otherness and in relation to changeable spatial contexts extending between the two worlds, British and Slavic.
