Seminar on the Question of Fictionality

Monday 20.10.2025 12-16.

Place: University of Helsinki main building, Lecture hall U3039.

Address: Fabianinkatu 33. Please see:

https://tilavaraus.helsinki.fi/en/city-centre/main-building-fabianinkatu-33/main-building-u3039

 

There is no registration for the seminar. The event is open to all participants in the Method and Matter research network at the U of Helsinki and those interested. Welcome!

12:00-12:10

Welcome and introduction: Prof. Kai Mikkonen (U of Helsinki)

12:15-13:00

Keynote Prof. Nicholas D. Paige (keynote, UC Berkeley): “What Should a Long History of Fiction Look Like?” 35+10min for discussion

Coffee break 13:00-13:15

13:15-14:15

Prof. Alison James (U of Chicago): “Hybridity without Blurring: Configuring Fictionality in Contemporary Literature.” 20+10min

Prof. Françoise Lavocat (U Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3): “Fictionality: Variants and Inviariants.” 20+10min

14:15-15:15

postdoc researcher Simona Bartolotta (Justus-Liebig U of Giessen): “Regimes of Interpretation: Fictionality in the Art of Fiction.” 20+10min

postdoc researcher Juulia Jaulimo (U of Helsinki): “The Composition Must Be True": On the Limits and Ethics of Fictional Truth in Agota Kristóf’s Notebook Trilogy.” 20+10min

15:15-16:00

Ass. Prof. Alexander Yudin (Taras Shevchenko National U of Kyiv): “The Text as a Deed: Act-performing Writing in Andrei Bitov's Prose.” (online) 20min

Response: postdoc researcher Daria Kondakova (U of Helsinki). 10min

The presentations will be followed by a doctoral students’ workshop. The discussion on doctoral students’ papers (Esko Roininen, Ansa Salonen) is for the participants of the research seminar in literary studies. (16:15-18).

Invited speakers:

Nicholas D. Paige is the author of Technologies of the Novel: Quantitative Data and the Evolution of Literary Systems (Cambridge UP, 2021), the first quantitative history of the novel based on a systematic sampling of French- and English-language works from 1600 to 1830. His earlier book, Before Fiction: The Ancien Régime of the Novel (U Penn Press, 2011), examines the novel through the lens of fictionality, understood primarily as the principle that literary characters need not correspond to real people to remain credible and compelling. More information is available on his homepage: link

Alison James, Professor of French at the University of Chicago, is the author of Constraining Chance: Georges Perec and the Oulipo (Northwestern UP, 2009) and The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature (Oxford UP, 2020). She has also co-edited volumes on fiction and belief, the everyday, hybrid genres, and chance in literature. Together with Françoise Lavocat and Akihiro Kubo, she co-founded the Association for Studies in Fiction and Fictionality (ASIFF).

Françoise Lavocat, Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3, specializes in theories of fiction (fact and fiction, possible worlds, characters), early modern literature, and narratives of catastrophe. Her publications include Arcadies malheureuses: aux origines du roman moderne (Champion, 1997), La Syrinx au bûcher: Pan et les satyres à la Renaissance et à l’âge baroque (Droz, 2005), Usages et théories de la fiction: la théorie contemporaine à l’épreuve des textes anciens (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2004), La théorie littéraire des mondes possibles (CNRS, 2010), and Fait et fiction: pour une frontière (Seuil, 2016). Interview link

Alexander Yudin is Professor in the Department of World Literature and Theory of Literature at Dragomanov Ukrainian State University and Associate Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages at Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko State University. His research spans philosophy and theory of literature, interpretation, authorial intention, the history of authorship, and M.M. Bakhtin’s aesthetics. He has published two monographs: Text as a Deed and a Way: Poetics of the Performative in Andrei Bitov’s Book of Travels (2008) and Authorship as a Cultural Institution (2016).

Simona Bartolotta is a Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellow on the project Towards a Theory of Post-Anthropocentric Narrative at the Department of English/Institut für Anglistik, Justus-Liebig Universität Gießen. Profile link

Juulia Jaulimo, Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Helsinki, defended her doctoral dissertation What is Impossible for Fiction? in May 2025.

Daria Kondakova is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Helsinki, currently researching cultural connections between Kyiv and Helsinki (1880–1920) from a post-imperial perspective. Profile link

 

One-day seminar on the question of Fictionality will take place at the University of Helsinki on Monday the 20th October 2025
The keynote speaker will be Nicholas Paige, Professor of French Literature, University of California/Berkeley.  
Other invited speakers include: Associate professor Alexander Yudin, Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine (online), and PhD Juulia Jaulimo (University of Helsinki). Postdoc researcher Daria Kondakova (University of Helsinki, formerly Dragomanov University, Kyiv) will provide comments to Alexander Yudin’s presentation. 
Professor Paige is best known for his Technologies of the Novel: Quantitative Data and the Evolution of Literary Systems (Cambridge UP, 2021), which aims to be the first quantitative history of the novel via a systematic sampling of French- and English-language novels over the years 1600-1830, and Before Fiction: The Ancien Régime of the Novel (U Penn Press, 2011) that provides a history of the novel from the point of view of fictionality. Fictionality here refers mainly to the notion that literary characters need not be “real people” but can still be credible and compelling. Please see Prof. Paige’s home page: https://french.berkeley.edu/people/nicholas-paige
Please get in touch with me if you are interested in participating in the meeting and giving a paper. The event is organized as part of the research seminar in literary studies and under the auspices of the Method and Matter research network at the University of Helsinki. The deadline for proposals is 15 August 2025.
 
Contact: kai.mikkonen@helsinki.fi Kai Mikkonen, professor in comparative literature, University of Helsinki.