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.