Participation in the Scholarly Seminar

12.5.2025

On May 9, 2025, the Department of German Philology at Ivan Franko National University of Lviv hosted a scholarly seminar that brought together faculty members, postgraduate students, and scholars interested in contemporary approaches to literary interpretation.

Representing the Department of Romance and Germanic Philology, Professor Nataliia Yuhan – Doctor of Philological Sciences, Associate Professor, Acting Head of the Department of Romance and Germanic Philology, and Professor of the Department of Literary Studies, Eastern Philology, and Translation – took part in the discussion. The event was held on the Zoom platform.

The seminar featured a presentation by Professor Svitlana Matsenkа, Doctor of Philological Sciences, entitled “A Queer Reading of E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Works”. In her talk, Professor Matsenko examined queer theory as an analytical category that enables the reinterpretation of both contemporary and classical literary texts. The presentation focused on key concepts such as “oceanic writing,” carnivalesque discourse, fluidity, and non-binarity.

A distinctive aspect of the lecture was the application of queer theoretical terminology and approaches – typically reserved for modern LGBTQ+ literature – to the works of the classical German Romantic E.T.A. Hoffmann. This interpretive framework revealed Hoffmann’s writings not only as artistic reflections of his era’s identity and subjectivity crises but also as precursors to poststructuralist writing practices. From this perspective, Hoffmann’s style appeared innovative and modern, disrupting the conventional boundaries of the literary canon.

Professor Matsenkа highlighted the multilayered and fluid nature of Hoffmann’s characters, emphasizing their ability to transcend established gender, social, and psychological norms. In this way, the presentation demonstrated that queer theory functions as a universal analytical tool that can be productively applied even beyond texts featuring explicitly non-binary or queer narratives – particularly in analyzing cultural phenomena that challenge fixed notions of identity.

Following the lecture, an engaged academic discussion took place, during which participants explored the applicability of queer approaches to the analysis of other classical German authors, the limits of literary interpretation, the methodological flexibility of literary studies, and the prospects for interdisciplinary research. There was a shared consensus that seminars of this kind contribute significantly to the enrichment of academic discourse and open new horizons for philological scholarship.

Department of Romance and Germanic Philology