Congist'26: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Crisis

Session

Session 2.7 (Day 1)

D1-S2-K1

13 May 2026, 15:55

Kurul Odası (Istanbul University Faculty of Letters)

Conveners

Session 2.7 (Day 1): Edebiyat Bilimi / Literary Studies

• Elena Giovannini (University Of Eastern Piedmont)

Aesthetic Reflections of the Crisis: Narrative Construction of Crises in Contemporary Western and Eastern European Literature (D1-S2-K1)

Ksenia Kuzminykh (Georg-August-University)

13/05/2026, 15:55

Oral Presentation

Exogenous and endogenous crises, as anthropological constants, represent foundational elements of literature. Authors possess a wide range of narrative strategies through which such crises can be articulated and shaped. This paper explores how contemporary Western and Eastern European literature narratively constructs experiences of crisis, including political instability, war, migration, and...

Shadows and Mothers. Representations of Generational Conflicts, Psychological Crises and Systemic Healthcare Critique in German-Language Comics (D1-S2-K1)

Jessica Langenstein (Karlsruher Institute of Technology)

13/05/2026, 16:15

Oral Presentation

Traumatic experiences, accounts of familial conflicts as well as systemic oppression are topics oftentimes explored in the format of the Graphic Novel. Not only are they artistic and subjective representations of memory/semiotic (re-)construction: due to their multimodal nature, they can also be interpreted as artefacts of discourse.

The interdisciplinary field of Graphic Medicine thus...

Reorienting Eco-grief into Eco-empathy: The Children’s Graphic Novel Global (D1-S2-K1)

Tuğçe Alkış (Recep Tayyip Erdogan University)

13/05/2026, 16:35

Oral Presentation

This paper examines Global, a children’s graphic novel by Eoin Colfer, Andrew Donkin and Giovanni Rigano, which portrays the disastrous effects of climate change through the environmental challenges experienced by two adolescent protagonists. The story focuses on Sami whose poor living conditions are exacerbated by the devastating impacts of coastal flooding and cyclones in the Bay of...