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The day-long colloquium began with the opening words by Dr Uku Lember, Director of School of Humanities, setting the key for the subsequent discussions: what is the relationship of crisis and literature? And why does the book address literatures in plural? Are there also crises in plural or one big ongoing crisis, referred to in the book as permacrisis and polycrisis.

This was followed by the introduction by the book’s editors—Julia Kuznetski, Chiara Battisti and Silvia Pellicer-Ortin—who explained the rationale behind this volume and this conversation: literature reflects crises, and in this volume, literatures are addressed in the plural for their transcultural nature. The 42 chapters cover over 20 different cultural spaces, including Anglophone, Brazilian, Chinese, Japanese, French, Ukrainian, Ugandan, etc. These chapters show how crises have influenced cultural development, particularly literature, over time, fostering new genres and literary forms—from drama and poetry to graphic and digital narratives and street art. Important concepts include vulnerability, (in)visibility, slow violence, scale, and relationality. Most importantly, the editors asked whether literature can offer some hope in crisis times, drawing on the etymology of the word in different cultures, which can mean both danger, a grave situation, and opportunity. 

The first keynote speaker, Robert Eaglestone of Royal Holloway, University of London, continued on this very note: despite its grim connotations, crisis calls for hope. Eaglestone drew on Byung-Chul Han’s recent essay The Spirit of Hope (2024), which suggests that hope is a fundamental mood that discloses the world to us and may act as an antidote to collective fear and despair that characterises our time. The speaker emphasised the distinctions between hope and simple optimism. Whereas the latter believes, rather naively, that everything will be fine, hope is essentially cautious, undefinable, yet strong. It is an idea that narrates a story, and while there is story, there is hope. Hope is teachable, and thus spreadable—an important takeaway in the academic context, and in the context of education. Another engaging point raised by the keynote is that fear is incompatible with democracy. Participants found it rather accurate in assessing the world today, discussing how politicians often employ fear as a beneficial tool to divide the population and harm efforts made for peace or progress. A surprising point that resonated in the general discussion was the idea of “the paradox of satire”, evoked by Eaglestone: a device commonly associated with criticising the current state of affairs has instead turned into a supporter of the status quo that does not work as a method of change. By supposedly making fun of the world, it harks back to it and perpetuates the people and systems it attempts to criticise. This provocative idea facilitated further fruitful discussion.

The keynote address by Prof Raili Marling of Tartu University focussed on Laurent Berlant’s concept of “crisis ordinariness” (2011) and its manifestations in recent history, such as the “boring apocalypse” of Covid-19. “Ordinariness” was defined as a “normalised state of panic resulting from the loss of genres, or conventions, determining how to act and the lack of apparent solutions.” The audience agreed that many feel that the world as we see it today is often numb due to the sheer amount of crises, at a loss and a standstill, with an apparent lack of action and no strong, workable solutions.

Four contributors to the book, who attended the event, presented their respective chapters, to give a taste of the book’s scope in geographic, temporal and literary-critical terms. 

• Prof Chiara Battisti, University of Verona: “The resilient frame: Graphic narratives and crises representation”  (Chapter 12) 
• Dr Harvey Wiltshire, Royal Holloway, University of London: '"Fair sequence and succession": Shakespeare and the Elizabethan succession crisis” (Chapter 16)
• Prof Piret Viires, Tallinn University: “‘The year war did not begin’: Representations of war in Estonian literature” (Chapter 26)
• Dr Ksenia Shmydkaya, Tallinn University: “One man's dystopia is another woman's utopia: Humanity revolutionised, according to Stanisława Przybyszewska' (Chapter 27)

Further on, Prof Eneken Laanes and Prof Marek Tamm of Tallinn University discussed their opinions as academic readers of the book. Both speakers praised the scope of the book and the diversity of the contributions, covering various genres, including nonfiction, life writing, film, art, traditional and experimental forms. Highlighting the topicality of the main focus, Marek Tamm contended this volume to be an “impressive achievement” and “an important reference in the field of crisis studies.” 

The colloquium culminated in a panel discussion involving the book’s editors, academic readers and keynote speakers. The point raised by Eneken Laanes stimulated a lively discussion: what happens to reading nowadays and if the role of literature is so crucial, how to maintain it at a time of a reading and attention crisis? Is literature as a cultural tool still prominent in people’s lives? Panelists contended that the problem of students not reading literature or having a hard time with it is acute. On the other hand, although conventional literature may be said to have slowed down in popularity (a debatable point in itself), new genres such as young adult or graphic novels are currently at their peak. Additionally, it was mentioned that despite the decline in readership, the narrative writing in other popular media such as films, television and video games are still heavily influenced by literature, and thus have the potential of reaching a wide audience in any case. Good script writers are clearly well-read, which becomes obvious when seeing their products. 

The panel deliberated on the universal issues academics face, such as the tension between academics and publishers, in particular the restrictions and limitations that are imposed, copyright and ownership, especially in the case with AI. A unique difference in favour of smaller universities, such as TLU (especially in comparison with the UK) is a possibility to work more broadly with theories rather than pure historicism in regards to literature. As most scholars in Estonia have to work on different areas of literature, not only the one they research, it allows for a wider perspective and broader horizons; a significant  asset in crisis times.

The event also included a delightful  raffle, for which participants had to answer the question: “What was the biggest crisis of your life(time)”—worded ambiguously on purpose, as crisis itself is  an ambiguous notion. The crises that were brought up include: The September 11th terrorist attacks in the US; the disaster of MS Estonia ; Donald Trump’s presidency; the rise of Russian revisionist imperialism; Covid-19; trying to thrive in a colonised country; depression; loss of job; divorce; massive technophilia; etc. 

Luck was with Helin Puksand, who won a copy of the book, signed by the editors present at the event.