25 September 2026 · Day 2
Palimpsestic Spaces: Urban Erasure, Resistance, and Literature as Counter-Archive
Cecile Sandten (Chemnitz University of Technology, President of ALUS)
Chair: Lieven Ameel
Venue: Vincas Krėvė auditorium (Room 118), Faculty of Philology
Coffee break
Session 3: Cityscapes of Memory and Oblivion
Chair: Marija Spirkovska
Venue: Vincas Krėvė auditorium (Room 118), Faculty of Philology
Christina Horvath (University of Bath, United Kingdom)
The Banlieues as Sites of Individual and Collective Memory and Oblivion in French Postcolonial Literature
Bengisu Bayrak Shahmiri (Beykoz University, Istanbul)
The Vegetal Archive: Artistic Research on Urban Ecology and Cultural Memory in Aşiyan Cemetery
Daria Semenova (University of Warsaw, Poland)
Urban Magic and Cultural Memory: Animating Kyiv’s Landscape in Contemporary Ukrainian Urban Fantasy for Children and Adolescents
Liucija Vervečkienė (Lithuanian Institute of History; Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, Lithuania)
Irritative, resilient and slow: home museums in Lithuanian mnemo-political battles and memory of the city
Session 4: City Walks and Urban Routes
Chair: Riikka Pulkkinen
Venue: Room 115A, Faculty of Philology
Michela Meschini (University of Macerata, Italy)
Between Worlds: Urban Trajectories in Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Irati Majuelo Itoiz (University of the Basque Country, Spain)
A Feminist Reading of the Basque Urban Novel: Options and Limitations of the Contemporary Flâneuse
S. U. Kriegel (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany)
Walking Home: Mobility and Home-City Geographies in Johannesburg City
Martin Dines (Kingston School Art, Kingston University London, United Kingdom)
Reading the Road (and Rivers and Railways): Infrastructure, heritage and collective reading practices in southwest London
Lunch (on-site)
Session 5: Historical Urban Identities
Chair: Eleonora Terleckienė
Venue: Room 115A, Faculty of Philology
Dariusz Chemperek (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin, Poland)
Vilnius – Thessaloniki – Ruse. Three Multicultural Cities and Autobiographical Places in Baroque Ego-documents
Robert Mileszczyk (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland)
(Re)shaping the city – Architectural and Historical Identity of Istanbul in the Eyes of Early XVII Century Humanist
Tomas Vytautas Kotovičius (Vilnius University, Lithuania)
Civitas germanica. Civitas ruthenica. Civitas asiatica? On the Ethnic Composition of Vilnius as Portrayed in Late 18th Century German-language Texts
Session 6: Contemporary Urban Imaginaries Across Media and Genres
Chair: Taisija Oral
Venue: Vincas Krėvė auditorium (Room 118), Faculty of Philology
Irina Melnikova (Vilnius University, Lithuania)
From the Setting to the Land-/Cityscape: Italy in Highsmith’s Adaptations
Gerda Pilipaitytė (Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania)
The City in Steampunk Novels: Vilnius in Andrius Tapinas’s The Hour of the Wolf and Madrid in Eduardo Vaquerizo’s The Dance of Darkness
Ibtihel Ghourabi (Aix-Marseille University, France)
Imagining the Arabian City in Japanese Manga and Anime: Urban Reconstruction in the Alabasta Arc of One Piece
Coffee break
Beyond Vilnius: the Departure from Things Human
Laimonas Briedis (independent researcher, cultural geographer, writer, Canada/Lithuania)
Chair: Inga Vidugirytė
Venue: Vilnius, UNESCO City of Literature, Šv. Jonų g. 11–16