Futures of Doing Literature

Please register by 22 June 2025 via the registration form.

The 5th Annual Conference „Futures of Doing Literature“ will focus on the potentialities, strategies, expectations, challenges and imaginaries for doing literature, both as a scholarly practice and as a social, material-aesthetic and performative form of expression, communication and negotiation. We will explore how doing literature enables mediation, critique and action; how it enacts different notions of participation, impact, agency and literary timing, always creating temporalities of its own. 

In addition, by placing contributions from Cluster members, associated researchers and fellows at the core of the programme, the conference will provide an opportunity to reflect on the collaborative achievements and developments throughout Temporal Communities‘ first funding phase. 

Three days of panels, roundtables, presentations and readings will provide an exploratory space and shared time for Cluster members and friends to engage in critical discussion and reflection, while the Cluster’s international partners will gather with the local research community in Berlin to discuss the future(s) of their collaborative work.

Programme

9 July

12:30 | Registration and Coffee

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13:00–13:30 | Conference Opening

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13:30–15:30 | Panel: Hierarchies of the Past, Entanglements of the Future
With Suja Sawafta, Mark Schmitt and Amina Zarzi

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15:30–16:00 | Break

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16:00–17:30 | Roundtable: Reading Matters – Literature as Social and Political Practice
With Laura Bieger, Heike Geißler and Hanan Natour

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17:30–18:30 | Dinner Break

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18:30–20:00 | Nocturne/Blue Light Moon: Public Reading and Interview with Yvonne A. Owuor
Followed by a Conversation with Ana Rocío Jouli

10 July

11:00–12:30 | New Voices, Next Turns: Emerging Futures in Literary Research
With Julius Böhm, Melina Brüggemann, Carla Dalbeck, Dhritii Dutta, Chiara Liso, Nicolas Longinotti, Pedro Mora Madriñán, Omid Mashhadi, Sulthana Nasrin, Elena Patrika, Ananya Punyatoya, Nathalie Rennhack, Anton Terhechte, Laura Untner and Victoria Wirtz

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12:30–13:30 | Lunch Break

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13:30–15:30 | Panel: Infinite Texts – Digital Editions as Matters of Time
With Marwa M. Ahmed, Gimena del Rio Riande, Till Grallert, Beatrice Gründler and Christopher Ohge

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15:30–16:00 | Break

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16:00–17:30 | Doing Literature: A Fishbowl Conversation on Literary Futures
Initiated by Dîlan Canan Çakir, Rebecca Hardie, Viktor J. Illmer and Stefanie Messner

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17:30–18:30 | Dinner Break

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18:30–20:00 | Roundtable: Past Perspectives on Contingent Futures for the Performing Body – Anarchival, Anarchitectural and Queering Practices
With Jack Halberstam, Friederike Schäfer, Caroline Lillian Schopp and Jennifer Sichel

11 July

11:00–13:00 | Panel: The Futures of Doing Publishing / Publishing as Doing Literature
With Janneke Adema, Johanna Maierski, Niki Rhyner and Olga Schubert

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13:00–14:00 | Lunch Break

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14:00–16:00 | Panel: Literature Augmented
With Anke Finger, Vadim Keylin and Carolin Schmidt

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16:00–16:30 | Break

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16:30–17:30 | Constellations Walkthrough

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17:30–18:00 | Conference Round Up

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18:00–19:00 | International Partners Reception with Flying Buffet

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19:00 | Summer Party with the Adriano Celentano GebäckorchesterConference Organisation Team (Research Area 5: Building Digital Communities):
Dîlan Canan Çakir, Frank Fischer, Rebecca Hardie, Viktor J. Illmer and Bart Soethaert.