The Condition We Call Exile with Dr. Gazmend Kapllani

Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies is a part of SFU: The Canadian university that is Engaging the World

SFU Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies

Join us on Friday, February 28th for the next  installment in our 2025 Spring Seminar Series

SFU Bennett Library, Room 7200

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation Centre for Hellenic Studies at Simon Fraser University is pleased to present <a href="https://las.depaul.edu/academics/modern-languages/faculty/albanian/Pages/gazmend-kapllani.aspx" title="https://las.depaul.edu/academics/modern-languages/faculty/albanian/Pages/gazmend-kapllani.aspx" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr. Gazmend Kapllani</a>, DePaul University.Join us Friday, February 28th at 2:30pm in person at the Bennett Library, SFU Burnaby, Room 7200, or online (https://us06web.zoom.us/j/84698480212), for his talk "The Condition We Call Exile".This talk will be moderated by <a href="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/s-sofos.html" title="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/s-sofos.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Dr. Spyros Sofos</a>, Assistant Professor, Global Humanities.Attendance is free. The event is open to the public and will be recorded.This programming is made possible thanks to the generous support of the <a href="https://trk2.cp20.com/click/ds9u-2vguei-i8x8z4-cocw1z80/" title="https://trk2.cp20.com/click/ds9u-2vguei-i8x8z4-cocw1z80/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Stavros Niarchos Foundation</a> (SNF).

ABSTRACTWhen you write in a language that is not your native tongue, you recreate and reinvent your identity – your cultural identity, but mainly, the identity of the narrator. Immigration means starting from scratch. To write in a language that is not your native tongue is like starting the narration of your life from the beginning. That is why I felt as if the Greek language was a new pair of shoes, which gave me the desire to run. Narrating in a “foreign” language, I felt not only like a participant but also like an observer of my own experiences. Greek offered my narration a different style and pace. But mostly, Greek offered me the distance I needed to reshape and re-read my previous and current experiences. Sometimes, this distance transforms the familiar into the unfamiliar and works as a shield. The “foreign” language does not carry the psychological burden of your native language. Writing in the language of the Other, especially about your own life, you feel as if you have acquired a layer of protection from the overwhelming weight of your own experiences.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY<a href="https://las.depaul.edu/academics/modern-languages/faculty/albanian/Pages/gazmend-kapllani.aspx" title="https://las.depaul.edu/academics/modern-languages/faculty/albanian/Pages/gazmend-kapllani.aspx" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Gazmend Kapllani</a> is an Albanian-born polyglot author, scholar, and journalist. He lived in Athens, Greece for over twenty years. He graduated in Philosophy from The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and received his PhD in Political Science and History from Panteion University in Athens – where he also taught classes in Albanian modern history and culture. From 2001-2011 Kapllani contributed weekly columns and editorials to Greece's largest-circulation newspaper, TA NEA.He is the author of two collections of poetry in Albanian and four published novels written in Greek and Albanian. His literary work centers on themes of borders, totalitarianism, identity, and how Balkan history has shaped public and private narratives and memories. Kapllani’s first novel A Short Border Handbook (2006) has been translated and published into ten languages. It has been adapted for the stage by Bornholm Theater in Denmark and The National Theater of the Deaf in Greece. In 2017, it won the International Literary Prize of the City of Cassino in Italy.His other three novels, My Name is Europe, The Last Page and Wrongland have been published so far in French, Italian, Albanian, Greek and English; The Last Page was short-listed for the French Cezam Prix Litteraire Inter CE 2016 and awarded the literary prize of the Salon du Livre des Balkans in Paris, France. WRONGLAND, his second novel translated and published in English, was adapted for the stage by the Greek award-winning theater director Pantelis Flatsousis and performed in Athens, Greece, in 2022.Since 2012, Kapllani has lived and worked in the US, where he was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and writer-in-residence at Brown University and Wellesley College. He taught creative writing and European history at Emerson College in Boston, MA (2013-2018). In 2021, he became an American citizen through naturalization. From 2019, he lives in Chicago, where he directs the Hidai “Eddie” Bregu Endowment in Albanian Studies at DePaul University and The DePaul Albanian and Southeastern European Studies Program.

MODERATOR BIOGRAPHY<a href="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/s-sofos.html" title="https://www.sfu.ca/hellenic-studies/humans/people/s-sofos.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Spyros Sofos</a> has held teaching and research positions in the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Italy—most recently at Lund University and the London School of Economics and Political Science. His research explores the intersection of societal insecurity, identity, and collective action and, to date, it has focused on Turkish politics and society, nationalism and populism in Europe and the Middle East, European Muslim identities and politics, and the theory of populism.His latest book, "Turkish Politics and ‘The People’: Mass Mobilisation and Populism" (Edinburgh University Press 2022), explores the emergence of populism in contemporary Turkey from a genealogical perspective. His other publications include "Islam in Europe: Public Spaces and Civic Networks" (Palgrave 2013, co-authored with Roza Tsagarousianou), "Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey" (Hurst and Oxford University Press 2008, co-authored with Umut Özkirimli), and "Nation and Identity in Contemporary Europe" (Routledge 1996, co-edited with Brian Jenkins).Spyros initiated #RethinkingPopulism, originally in partnership with openDemocracy, and is its lead editor.

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