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
Anna Pisula
University of Warsaw
Thomas Zan’s Diary from the Exile, or Romanticism in Isolation
Thomas Zan (in Polish: Tomasz Zan) was a nineteenth century author, recognized in Poland primarily as Adam Mickiewicz’s friend and a member of the undercover societies of Philomaths and Filarets based in Vilnius. He was exiled in the year 1824 under the suspicion of conspiracy against the Russian State (which held its domination above the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth at that time). His diary from the exile presents an interesting case of the Romanticism developed in cultural isolation – with little access to new literary discussions and with no possibility to publish his own work (which, as a result, deprived him of the literary public’s feedback about his ideas). It effected in a unique way of understanding Romanticism as a literary trend. Moreover, Zan’s exile served as an act of isolation also in a literal sense of depriving the author of the contact with his loved ones. The diary, therefore, is also an example of processing the unfulfilled need for communication. The presently mentioned manifestations of the exile-related experience demonstrate the link between the literary text and the socio-political condition of the author.
