HSE BA and MA Students at the International Conference of Young Philologists

On February 12-14, HSE students from the School of Philology and Linguistics presented their papers at a conference of young philologists in Tallinn. The conference, which was first held in Tallinn in 1998, focused on ‘Text as a Communication System’ and saw the participation of 24 presenters from various countries such as Russia, Estonia, and Poland.

There was a wide range of themes discussed by the conference’s presenters, from completely traditional historical and literary issues to interdisciplinary research. There were also reports centered on international authors’ reception in Russia (I, for example, study Holmes in Russia in the 1900s-1910s), as well as translation studies, textual criticism, literature and film, poetry, etc. The chronological spread of topics was also impressive – from Karamzin to Pelevin, though papers leaned more towards the 20^th century. Despite the seemingly eclectic nature of the time periods, methods, and topics, there was still something uniting the papers – first, their high quality, and second, very active and fruitful discussions after each of the presentations. The latter was largely thanks to the poetry scholar Kirill Golovastikov who was invited to the literature session of the conference.

Nadezhda Shmulevich, student of HSE School of Philology and Linguistics, said that it was her first experience as a participant and despite her initial apprehension, she was inspired by the conference atmosphere of commitment, mutual respect and friendship.

"The organizers and lecturers of Tallinn University managed to create a comfortable environment for all the participants, so that everyone could share experiences and ideas, as well as discussing the reports.

Each day of the conference literary section included three meetings, during which reports on different topics were delivered. Each of the participants showed personal involvement and good knowledge of the subject, whether it was prosody or cinematic arts. In addition to reports and lectures, the programme also included an excursion to Peter the Great’s House Museum and an evening walk around the historic centre of Tallinn."

Another HSE student, Maria Krivosheina shares her impressions: "This was my first conference experience in Tallinn, though I had participated in various other philology conferences in Estonia. Actually, my very first conference – the International Conference of Young Philologists in Tartu – was in Estonia back in 2012 when I was a first-year undergrad. Since then, annual Tartu youth conferences, which I cannot even imagine April without, have become a wonderful tradition, and I like to think that they will remain that way. Before this year, I had never participated in a conference in Tallinn, and it seems no HSE students had. This year’s academic voyage was massive, though – there were nine presenters from HSE in the literature session. I did not really know what to expect, honestly, but I was left with only good impressions from the conference. It was very well organized, there was a great atmosphere, and the discussions were lively."

Papers were delivered by:

Alsu Akmaldinova on characteristics of the subgenre ‘social satire’ in Griboyedov’s play Woe from Wit;

Elizaveta Timofeeva on Transformation of one plot in 19 cent. Russian literature;

Maria Krivosheina on Sherlock Holmes took it into his head to visit Russia: problems of image reception in Russia 1900-1910;

Raisa Khanukayeva on Alexei German and Svetlana Karmalita’s  screenplay What the tobacconist said on Tobacco Streetas a means of interpreting Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s story Hard to Be a God;

Konstantin Vorovich on the objective world of A. I. Vvedensky’s poetry;

Georgi Korotkov on strategies of translators at the foreign literature journal Inostrannaya Literaturain the later 1970s (for example in the column, Stories by US Writersin issue No. 7 1976; 

Nadezhda Shmulevich on Moliere the wanderer. The world of Moliere’s comedy in F. V. Bulgarin’s novel Ivan Ivanovich Vyzhigin;

Ekaterina Kuznetsova on Igor Severyanin’s Ambiguous themes;

Lyubov Lukashenko (Moscow) on Life and art in Boris Pasternak’s poem Bacchanalia.

You can read about the conference in Russian on the Estonian website Baltnews.