“Loneliness is one of the least satisfactorily conceptualized psychological phenomena,” wrote German psychiatrist Frieda Fromm-Reichmann in a 1959 paper. This statement still holds true today. In recent years, loneliness has garnered considerable attention as a research topic across a wide range of disciplines, including neuroscience, sociology, philosophy, ethnology, and cultural history. Many scholars contend that, due to the rise of individualism under capitalist modernity, loneliness has come to be a characteristic feature of modern life—especially in Western societies. Loneliness is not only an object of scientific inquiry, however; it has been a concern for many writers and artists for centuries. The archive of modern literature, in particular, is full of characters who could use a friend (e.g., the bitter underground man of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground; the starving writer of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger; the pathologically indifferent protagonist of Albert Camus’s The Stranger; mysterious narrators and fragment subjects of Beckett’s trilogy; the bored bookkeeper of Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet etc.); likewise, the depiction of loneliness has informed the aesthetic language of numerous filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman, Aki Kaurismäki, Andrei Tarkovsky, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. In contemporary narratives, loneliness frequently figures in depictions of hyper-commodified, hyper-digitized, productivity-obsessed capitalist societies, and in stories of marriage, friendship, (in)dependency, grief, isolation. Some recent popular examples that explore loneliness around these themes include: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Rachel Cusk’s narratives of family and marriage; Jon Fosse’s Septology; television series Pluribus and Severance; films such as The Substance, Fallen Leaves, About Dry Grasses.

Potential questions to consider include but are not limited to: What does it mean to be and feel lonely (today)? How might literary and cultural production help us better understand loneliness? How does loneliness influence our aesthetic judgment and pleasures? How does loneliness influence dreams? Departing from these questions, this seminar invites papers that explore depictions of loneliness in literature, film, television, and visual culture. Papers from any linguistic, national, historical, or theoretical traditions are welcome; interdisciplinary and intermedial approaches are especially encouraged. Potential topics to explore include but are not limited to:

• Self-help literature and reading
• Aesthetics and politics of loneliness
• Loneliness and closely related states such as boredom, idleness, anxiety etc.
• Productivity and work culture
• Consumer society
• Narratives of pain
• Intimacy, friendship, vulnerability, care
• Marriage and family
• Trauma and memory
• Solitude vs. loneliness

For more information or questions: [email protected]

Please submit a short bio (100-150 words) along with your abstract (250-300 words).