Call for Abstracts (Circle 3)  

                                        Literature and the Arts as Sites of Resistance and Solidarities
                                                 24 July -31 July 2026, Saulkrasti, Latvia

Focus

Literature and the Arts as tools for intersubjective transformation, resistance, and the forging of solidarities.

Framing Questions

• How do we listen to what has been silenced?
• In what ways do literary and artistic practices shape identity, resistance, healing, and collective action?

Description

Stephen Duncombe (2024) argues that social change is rarely enacted through rational persuasion alone; rather, people are moved to act through emotionally powerful stimuli such as love, fear, hope, anger, or compassion. When such affective forces are entangled with activism grounded in a genuine desire to reimagine power relations, they can lead to what Duncombe describes as aesthetic reconstitutions of the material world.

The summer session (Circle Three) builds on Duncombe’s insight while extending it beyond material transformations. Artistic resistance often operates first and foremost on and through bodies, sensations, emotions, and modes of perception—most explicitly in the performing arts, but also across visual, literary, sonic, and digital practices. Rather than functioning solely as responses to existing struggles, artistic practices participate in the production of resistance itself. As they are encountered through sight, sound, movement, and affect, they recalibrate collective perception, generate urgency, and open up new horizons of solidarity and imagination.

Against this backdrop, the symposium invites contributions that examine how literary and cultural discourses from selected regions of the Global South (South Asia, South Africa, Colombia) and Nordic–Baltic contexts articulate the lived experiences of specific communities. These works often privilege localized knowledges, intersubjectivities, and everyday negotiations with homogenizing state narratives. As such, they function as alternative historical archives—archives that not simply foreground aesthetic or aesthesic reconstitutions of collectivities, but also enable sustained critiques of the nation-state and its allied networks of power, particularly where these structures regulate differential access to rights, resources, and belonging.

At the same time, this study circle emphasizes the generative and affirmative dimensions of artistic resistance. We particularly welcome abstracts that foreground diverse narratives that have been historically excluded or marginalized, and artistic practices that convey stories, emotions, and embodied experiences—whether collective or personal—that deepen the understandings of resistance. We are interested not only in resistant content, but also in resistant forms of becoming: how artworks are produced, circulated, materialized, and sustained.

Acknowledging the institutionalization of the arts—and the ways in which state or power-aligned funding structures may constrain or neutralize dissent—we also seek contributions that explore alternative modes of artistic practice. These may include independent, or community-led initiatives, as well as individual and collective practices that move beyond normative frameworks. Of particular interest are collectives and practices that do not simply represent resistance, but actively enact it—becoming, in themselves, living examples of resistant social, aesthetic, and political formations.

Possible Topics Include (but are not limited to):

• Literature and art as affective archives of silenced or marginalized histories
• Embodiment, performance, and the politics of sensation in resistant practices
• Artistic resistance beyond representation: process, materiality, and circulation
• Literature, Art and Culture in Digital Spaces
• Collective, and community-based artistic practices
• Politics of the sensorium in Arts 
• Literature, Art, activism, and alternative imaginaries of solidarity
• Negotiating institutional funding, power, and dissent in artistic production
• Comparative Literary and artistic perspectives from the Global South and Nordic–Baltic regions

We invite abstracts that engage critically, experimentally, and reflectively with these questions, drawing from literary studies, art practice, cultural analysis, performance studies, ethnography, and allied fields. Presenters are welcome to experiment with the format of the presentation, in terms of paper presentation and/ or creative responses in terms of performative, academic, and pedagogical responses. For more information on Study Circle 3 and Nordic Summer University, please login here- https://www.nsuweb.org/circle-3-re-configuring-colonialities-reforging-k...

Submission guidelines : Please submit abstracts (no more than 500 words) along with a title for the proposed presentation and bionote (100 words) to decolonialstudycircle@gmail.com 

The last date of proposal submission is 15th April, 2026. 

April 15: Scholarships lists are due

April 22: Scholarships are allocated

May 1: Remaining scholarships (if any) allocated

June 1: Last day for registration and payment

Cost:

Two Scholarships (worth 100 Euros) covering accommodation in shared 4-bed rooms with shared bathroom are available. Please note that scholarship applicants are expected to help with small tasks during the summer session, whether it is help with practicalities or writing a blog post.

1250 euros Institutional price/any room type

900 euros Institutional price PhD/any room type

950 euros Single room

700 euros Bed in double room

1000 euros Double room 1 adult 1 child

1200 euros Family room 1 adult 2 children

1800 euros Family room 2 adults 2 children

1500 euros Family room 2 adults 1 child

500 euros Camping

                                                                         Work Cited

Duncombe, Stephen. 2024. Æffect: The Affect and Effect of Artistic Activism. Fordham University Press.