The Lithuanian World Community, Inc. together with the Lithuanian Writers’ Union and the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore is organizing the first congress of world Lithuanian writers in Vilnius. The event, which will take place on 5-7 May, 2019, will host 50 Lithuanian writers and/or writers of Lithuanian origin who currently live outside Lithuania.
During the event, the participants will meet with Lithuanian
writers. They will visit the Lithuanian Writers’ Union, the Institute of
Lithuanian Literature and Folklore and the Martynas Mažvydas National Library
of Lithuania. Readings will take place during the event. At the end of the
congress, an almanac of the participants’ fiction and poetry will be published.
For the sixth
year in a row, the diaspora researchers and archivists gathered at the National
Library of Lithuania. The aim of the seminar is to bring together researchers
working in the diaspora field, especially students, to give them the
opportunity to share their research, and also to encourage the representatives
of archives and museums to introduce the Lithuanian diaspora collections housed
at their institutions to the broader audience.
The first seminar, entitled “The Young Diaspora Researchers’ Seminar,” today is known under a slightly different name, “The Interdisciplinary Diaspora Researchers’ Seminar.” Currently, the community unites about 30 researchers working in various Lithuanian universities, institutes, museums, archives, and libraries.
Photo: National Library of Lithuania
Six Perspectives on Diaspora
Six perspectives on diaspora were presented at the sixth event. Ina Ėmužienė, Ph.D., who just recently defended her thesis on Lithuanian radio and TV programs in the US from 1944 to 1990, presented the Lithuanian-American electronic media. In particular she talked about the Lithuanian radio programs that were active in the country in 1944-1990: their frequency, geography, and the circumstances of their establishment. The researcher presented a list of the Lithuanian-American radio programs that ran during that period, stressing that it is not final. She is still discovering new archives, related to the topic she has been researching.
Book presentation at the Library. Photo: National Library of Lithuania
The two-volume monograph Nylon Curtain. Lithuanian Music in the Context of International History of Cold War, by the musicologists, Prof. Rūta Stanevičiūtė, Prof. Danutė Petrauskaitė, and Prof. Vita Gruodytė, was presented at the National Library of Lithuania. The book, published in 2018 by the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theater, consists of two volumes: a collective monograph, entitled Nylon Curtain. Cold War, International Exchanges and Lithuanian Music and a collection of correspondence, Foreign Correspondence of the Lithuanian Musicians, 1945-1990.
In the
collective monograph, the authors using extensive archival documents gathered
from the state and private archives, as well as published sources, analyze the
channels of the exchange of musical information among the individuals and
institutions in Lithuania and foreign countries that took place during the
Soviet period. They also looked into the reasons that encouraged promoting personal
and transnational relations between the two musical environments divided by the
ideological confrontation of the Cold War, and posed questions, such as: which
ideological, economic, and cultural constraints and differences limited such
exchange and what impact international exchanges had on the national music
scene.
