In March 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 virus a pandemic, the lives of people were turned upside down. The unexpected, and thus unprepared move to digital teaching and learning rendered “face-to-face” interaction impossible, forcing teachers, researchers, educators, and students to reconsider what responsible pedagogy should look like during a crisis.
From the experience of teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic and from the exploration of resilience with the tools of literary studies and intellectual history comes the idea of feminist pedagogies for a post-pandemic future. Practicing feminist pedagogy, either in formal or informal setting, involves critical dialogue and conflict, intense discussions of important social and ethical questions, self-reflexive use of authority and showing vulnerability if the situation asks for it. The lessons on resilience should provide concepts, methods, and tools for understanding crisis and to help rethink teaching and learning, especially in the humanities, in post-pandemic future.
The goal of our interdisciplinary workshop (March 24-25, 2023, University of Belgrade, Serbia) is to bring together a transnational group of literary scholars, cultural and intellectual historians, as well as Western Balkan civil society activists, predominantly workers of non-governmental organizations. The pressing question of the planned event is: what are the possible resources of ideas, practices, and social experiences that could help us navigate the aftermath of crisis in a post-pandemic context? The workshop invites contributions that decenter the traditional focus on “high” culture and “prominent” thinkers in scholarship, and instead aim to expand the scope of what has traditionally been understood as “intellectual and literary elites,” to broaden the source base beyond high-culture, and to put the questions of societal relevance and public engagement at the core of our scholarship.
The program can be found here.
Project lead: Dr. Aleksandra Konarzewska (Tübingen), Prof. Dr. Ana Kolarić (Belgrade), in cooperation with Dr. Adela Hîncu (Budapest), Una Blagojević (Vienna)
