The Reflective Figure: The Doll. Artificial Beings in (Central European) Modernist Literature and Art

Workshop

June 11-13, 2026

University of Münster, Vom-Stein-Haus (German Studies Department), Schlossplatz 34, Meeting Room 10 im EG

Organized by: Irina Wutsdorff

In light of recent discussions on developments in artificial intelligence and artificial beings, it is worth taking a look back at how artists have engaged with dolls since the dawn of modernism. In many ways, they serve as a mirror for the often ambivalent reaction to modernism, with its inherent problems as well as its potential: By showcasing the mechanical, dolls embody both the progress associated with technological advancement and the looming threat of dehumanization and alienation. They can also be shaped into an ideal or desired image of the body, often playing out the tension between the conscious and the unconscious.

A wide range of themes is explored and interwoven through the lens of dolls: fundamental anthropological questions are reflected in the relationship between dolls and humans. The exploration of (artistic) creativity through dolls encompasses a dimension that is often imbued with magic or religious-metaphysical significance, but also has a poetological aspect. A psychological dimension is particularly emphasized in connection with childhood memories and the doll as a toy. Reflections critical of civilization focus primarily on the automaton-like nature of dolls.

This interdisciplinary workshop explores diverse ways in which the phenomenon of the “puppet” is portrayed in literature and theater, from classical modernism to the present day, and examines typological connections.

Issue 2 (2025) of the journal "Schnittstelle Germanistik. Forum für Deutsche Sprache, Literatur und Kultur des mittleren und östlichen Europas" is dedicated to the topic of “Westsplaining.”

Two members of the institute have contributed articles to this special issue:

Agata Czaja: Polnischer Postkolonialismus als Instrument der politischen Rechten? Eine Analyse ausgewählter Aspekte  

Irina Wutsdorff: Selbstverliebte Selbstkritik oder: Zu blinden Flecken westlicher Kritik am ,Westen‘ 

In the interview series ‘Research at the Cluster of Excellence “Religion and Politics’, Irina Wutsdorff and Daniela Amodio talked about their academic work on references to traditional icon painting in 19th and 20th century Russian art and literature. Icons were originally cult and saint images of the Eastern Churches. However, they were elevated to symbols of this very tradition by the so-called Slavophiles, followers of a Russian philosophical-political ideology in the 19th century that emphasised Russia's independence from Western Europe. Thus, icons differed from the Western European and Western Church pictorial tradition.

In their research project ‘Between Religious Tradition and Aesthetic Innovation: The A-Mimetic Nature of Icons in Russian Art and Literature of the 19th and 20th Centuries,’ Slavic scholars Irina Wutsdorff and Daniela Amodio examine the tension surrounding references to the icon tradition. In a video and a written interview, they explain their research.

Prof. Dr. Regina Elsner, Prof. Dr. Ricarda Vulpius und Prof. Dr. Christina Clasmeier, all three of them experts on Eastern Europe, discussed the impact of the war in Ukraine on academia.

The full interview can be found here: https://www.uni-muenster.de/news/view.php?cmdid=15228

Neuerscheinung: Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and Prague – Perspectives of Intellectual Entanglement

The thematic block ‘Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and Prague: Perspectives of Intellectual Entanglement’ with contributions by Renate Lachmann (Konstanz), Josef Vojvodík (Praha),Irina Wutsdorff (Münster), Roman Mnich (Warszawa), Patrick Flack (Fribourg) and Maxim Demin (Bochum)goes back to a workshop with this title that took place at the Masaryk Institute and Archive of the CAS in Prague from 18–20 January 2024.

The workshop focussed on Dmytro Čyževs’kyj and his stay in Prague (1924–1932) as an example of intellectual entanglement in 20th century Central Europe. When living in Prague, Čyževs’kyj was simultaneously involved in the Ukrainian and Russian émigré communities. He taught at the Mykhailo Drahomanov Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute as well as in the Ukrainian Free University and was a member of the Ukrainian Historical-Philological Society. At the same time, he participated in the work of the Prague Linguistic Circle and the Philosophical Society at the Russian Free University. Interwar Prague was a place of intercultural intellectual exchange and entanglement, where several traditions of thinking came together or were confronted with each other — a configuration which was true for differing political positions as well.

Taking Čyževs’kyj’s involvement in intersecting communities in interwar-Prague as a starting point, the workshop combined literary theoretical and literary-historical as well as philosophical and philosophical-historical approaches to this phenomenon of intellectual entanglement.

Neuerscheinung: Valentin Peschanskyi - Die tote Frau als Ikone. Zur Verbindung von Tod, Weiblichkeit und (Heiligen-)Bild bei Fedor Dostoevskij, Vasilij Perov, Ivan Turgenev und Evgenij Bauėr.

Abstract: Die zum Reflexionsbild erstarrte Frauenleiche ist ein zentrales Motiv der europäischen Kunst, das sein russisches Kulturspezifikum durch die Verbindung mit der orthodoxen Ikone erhält. Die Studie untersucht die Transformationen lebendiger Frauenfiguren zu toten Bildkörpern und geht deren Funktions- und Bedeutungsvielfalt nach. Die hier betrachteten (Bewegt-)Bilder und Texte stellen den weiblichen Leichnam als (Heiligen-)Bild in vielschichtige ästhetisch produktive Spannungsfelder: zwischen Kult und Kunst, Dies- und Jenseits, Form und Zerfall, Ethik und Ästhetik. Insofern sie dabei auch das Verhältnis von Russland und (West-)Europa sowie zwischen Tradition und sich anbahnender Moderne verhandeln, problematisieren die Werke virulente Fragen der Zeit, Umbrüche und Krisen sowohl ästhetisch-poetologischer als auch religiöser, philosophischer, medialer, ethischer und sozialer Natur.

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Neuerscheinung

Marie-Sofia Trautmann, Verena Meyer, Rasmus Hahn:
Zehn Jahre Krieg: Ukrainische Tagebücher und Aufzeichnungen und der Einfluss des Kriegsgeschehens

In: Schnittstelle Germanistik. Forum für Deutsche Sprache, Literatur und Kultur des mittleren und östlichen Europas. Jahrgang 4, Ausgabe 1 (2024). Sondernummer zum Themenschwerpunkt Die Ukraine. Am Schnittpunkt europäischer Traditionen, hg. von Amy-Diana Colin und Steffen Höhne. S. 259-275.

Online können Sie hier auf die Ausgabe zugreifen. 

Neuerscheinung: Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West

Wir möchten Sie auf die Erscheinung des Handbuchs zur Central and Eastern European Literary Theory and the West aufmerksam machen, das von Michał Mrugalski , Schamma Schahadat und Irina Wutsdorff herausgegen wurde. Das Handbuch ist vollständig im Open Access zugänglich.

Zum Inhalt

Literary theory flourished in Central and Eastern Europe throughout the twentieth century, but its relation to Western literary scholarship is complex. This book sheds light on the entangled histories of exchange and influence both within the region known as Central and Eastern Europe, and between the region and the West. The exchange of ideas between scholars in the East and West was facilitated by both personal and institutional relations, both official and informal encounters. For the longest time, however, intellectual exchange was thwarted by political tensions that led to large parts of Central and Eastern Europe being isolated from the West. A few literary theories nevertheless made it into Western scholarly discourses via exiled scholars. Some of these scholars, such as Mikhail Bakhtin, become widely known in the West and their thought was transposed onto new, Western cultural contexts; others, such as Ol’ga Freidenberg, were barely noticed outside of Russian and Poland. This volume draws attention to the schools, circles, and concepts that shaped the development of theory in Central and Eastern Europe as well as the histoire croisée – the history of translations, transformations, and migrations – that conditioned its relationship with the West.