Call for papers: Cultraband: an actor-immigrant is changing the environment. How do we investigate the changes and verify the data?

Department of Russian Studies, Jagiellonian University

In one of her interviews on the occasion of the release of her book “Contraband of Hoopoe”, Ewa Chrusciel, an American poet of Polish origin coined the term “cultural contraband”: the process of transferring certain aspects from the migrant's native culture to the host culture. Icelandic writer Ásgeir H. Ingólfsson specifies that the objects of cultural smuggling are words and ideas (Ingólfsson). As an immigrant to the United States herself, Ewa Chrusciel mastered English to write literary works in it. At the same time, her native Polish cultural experience made the field of literary experimentation wider, allowing her to integrate Polish ways of writing fiction into American literary speech. This enrichment of the artistic arsenal at the meeting point of cultures makes experimentation possible and changes cultural practices. Being integrated at first as an individual experiment, the practices gradually become accepted by more and more people. The process of cultural transfer thus adapts and transforms the host culture. The migrant artist acts as a mediator between native and host cultures, but, as a rule, their role is the embodiment/institutionalization/verbalization of the collective unconscious experience of the carriers of the original culture in the new environment. Certain aspects of “cultural contraband”–though the term itself was not used –have been explored in connection with Irish influence on English culture (O’Sullivan 1994), and there is also, for example, the practical art project “CULTURE SMUGGLING: smuggling words and ideas” (The Smuggler –Culture Smuggling) by Ásgeir H. Ingólfsson, where journalist and writer uses different languages for transferring cultural knowledge and practices into other cultural/lingual context. Cultural smuggling/contraband is a phenomenon that is poorly studied and needs a separate study. However, the peculiarities of the subject and object of research force us to search for original ways to interpret and verify the data. To avoid confusing cultural contraband with contraband of cultural property, it was suggested to call cultural contraband by the acronym “cultraband” (Troitskiy 20241). Cultraband is a transfer of ideas that makes the host culture richer and stimulates the development of the culture. This conference aims to discuss various methodological aspects of the study of cultural smuggling. Active migration in our time provides great material for studying individual immigrant actors on the cultural environment in general and changes in a particular professional field (science, literature, art, theatre, music, etc.) through the transfer of approaches, perceptions, attitudes, stereotypes, presumptions from the immigrant's native cultural environment to the new (host) environment. We expect from the participants not only examples of cultural smuggling but also their ideas about the methods of research on cultural smuggling and the verification of data obtained as a result of such research. Organizing Committee: Saša Babič (Head of the Institute of Slovenian Ethnology, The Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, ISE ZRC SAZU, Slovenia), Bartłomiej Brążkiewicz (Jagiellonian University, Poland), Olga Caspers (Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany), Andrzej Dudek (Head of the Department of Russian Studies at Jagiellonian University, Poland), Mare Kõiva (Academician of Estonian Academy of Sciences; Head of the Department of Folkloristics, Estonian Literary Museum, Estonia), Anna Krasnikova (eCampus University, Italia), Elena Kurant (Jagiellonian University, Poland), Marta Lechowska (Jagiellonian University, Poland), Ainsley Morse (UC San Diego, USA), Sergey Troitskiy (Estonian Literary Museum, Estonia) The conference will be held at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland). Travel and accommodation costs must be covered by the participants. More details about transport and accommodation will be announced. The preferred mode of participation is on-site in person, but also online and/or hybrid formats are allowed. The working languages of the conference are English, Polish, and Russian. The conference materials are planned to be published in a highly-rated scientific journal. Please send us the title and abstract of your presentation, a short bio-info, and your affiliation via Google-form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeifZIiVv5HZsGxLsTLaaC6VD-YfYcyxTsaI7n2pEA6Fq5K-A/viewform?usp=header Please do not hesitate to contact us if further information is required. Key dates: CfP - January 25, 2025 Deadline for the application - March 1, 2025 The organizing committee sends an email about the acceptance of the application- on April 1, 2025