Globalization and Conferencing Comparative Literature in Egypt and Slovenia

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 Purdue University Press ©Purdue University Volume 3 (2001) Issue 1 Article 7 Globalization and Conferencing Comparative Literature in Egypt and Slovenia Babis Dermitzakis University of Athens, Greece Follow this and additional works at: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb Part of the Comparative Literature Commons, and the Critical and Cultural Studies Commons Dedicated to the dissemination of scholarly and professional information, Purdue University Press selects, develops, and distributes quality resources in several key subject areas for which its parent university is famous, including business, technology, health, veterinary medicine, and other selected disciplines in the humanities and sciences. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Language Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monograph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Recommended Citation Dermitzakis, Babis. "Globalization and Conferencing Comparative Literature in Egypt and Slovenia." 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This journal is covered under the CC BY-NC-ND license. UNIVERSITY PRESS <http://www.thepress.purdue.edu> CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture ISSN 1481-4374 <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb> Purdue University Press ©Purdue University CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, the peer-reviewed, full-text, and open-access learned journal in the humanities and social sciences, publishes new scholarship following tenets of the discipline of comparative literature and the field of cultural studies designated as "comparative cultural studies." In addition to the publication of articles, the journal publishes review articles of scholarly books and publishes research material in its Library Series. Publications in the journal are indexed in the Annual Bibliography of English Language and Literature (Chadwyck-Healey), the Arts and Humanities Citation Index (Thomson Reuters ISI), the Humanities Index (Wilson), Humanities International Complete (EBSCO), the International Bibliography of the Modern Langua-ge Association of America, and Scopus (Elsevier). The journal is affiliated with the Purdue University Press monog-raph series of Books in Comparative Cultural Studies. Contact: <> Volume 3 Issue 1 (March 2001) Article 7 Babis Dermitzakis, "Globalization and Conferencing Comparative Literature in Egypt and Slovenia" <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol3/iss1/7> Contents of CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 3.1 (2001) <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol3/iss1/> Abstract: In his article, "Globalization and Conferencing Comparative Literature in Egypt and Slovenia," Babis Dermitzakis discusses two recent conferences in the discipline of comparative literature. The former conference was held on the topic of literary criticism in Cairo and the latter on the genre of the romantic epic poem in Ljubljana. The implicit and explicit objective of both conferences was to discuss as well as to demonstrate a stand against globalization with specific reference to culture and literature. The conference participants as much as the organizers intended to show that cultures and countries peripheral to economic, political, and cultural centres -- in particular the global impact of American culture -- possess important products of culture, including such in literature and in the study of literature, that is, in literary and culture theory. Although acknowledging English as the tool of communication serving the objectives of globalization, the argument is proposed that there are possibilities to avoid or at least to mitigate the marginalization of peripheral cultures and their scholarship and to establish meaningful dialogue with scholars globally. Babis Dermitzakis, "Globalization and Conferencing Comparative Literature in Egypt and Slovenia" page 2 of 6 CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 3.1 (2001): <http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb/vol3/iss1/7> Babis DERMITZAKIS Globalization and Conferencing Comparative Literature in Egypt and Slovenia In the last few months I attended two international conferences in comparative literature, one in Cairo, Egypt and another in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The former, on the theme "Literary Criticism on the Threshold of the New Century," was organized by the Egyptian Society for Literary Criticism and Ain Shams University, in collaboration with Misr University for Science and Technology, 20-24 November 2000; the latter, on the theme "The Romantic Epic Poem," was organized by the Department of Slavic Languages of the University of Ljubljana, 4-6 December 2000. The Ljubljana conference was dedicated to the 200th anniversary of the Slovene poet, France Preseren (for the web site of the Ljubljana conference including a post-conference report by the organizer, Marko Juvan, see <http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/center-slo/simpozij-eng.html>). In the opening plenaries of both conferences we heard about one specific item several times, namely the topic of "globalization" (for bibliographies on the topic, see, e.g., Casey <http://www.govst.edu/users/gddcasey/libarts/milleniumbib2.htm>[inactive]; Leung). After the Cold War and the demise of Soviet colonization, it appears that globalization and its implications pose a new threat to culture and society. In order to preserve their identities, cultural and social, cultures of small peoples and countries strive to avoid the scylla of globalization without falling upon the charybdis of marginalization. Small cultures on the p (...truncated)