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
Pia Schmüser
Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg
Diaries as Alter-Ego-Documents: Constructions of Diaries as a Personified Dialogical ‘Other’ in Late 19th and 20th Century Germany
In a diary entry from 1957, a German teenager declared that, inspired by Anne Frank’s famous example, she had decided henceforth to address her own diary as ‘Silberfee’ (silver fairy). While Frank’s ‘dear Kitty’ gave a new boost to such practices, personifications of the diary can be traced back to emphatically older writing traditions, conceptualizing the diary as a space of religious and moral self-examination (e.g., in dialogue with God). Drawing on archival sources of a broader project, this contribution focuses on German case studies from the 1880s and 1950s to trace how modern diaries are often not only ego-documents, but also alter-ego-documents. How are diaries constructed as a dialogical ‘other’ (naming, addressing real or fictionalized persons), and what emotional and psychological functions does this perform for the diarists? In what ways does the quasi-dialogical structure of writing reflect specific understandings of the self in (communicative) relation to others, and how did such practices change against the background of what has been called the ‘democratization’ of diary writing during the 20th century?
