News

Dear colleagues,

The wheel of time cannot be stopped, and we are part of it in our mornings and evenings, in our work and holidays. With the most illuminating holidays of the year approaching, may I wish you all to experience a moment of joy, a moment of pensive mood. Even the darkest night finds its end in the morning, this year of uncertainty and disastrous events may hopefully find its end in peace. I would like to thank you all for your contribution to our everyday life at the University, to its values and our common goals. May I wish you all merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year in the circle of family and friends.

Prof. Inesa Šeškauskienė
Dean of the Faculty of Philology

Nuotr. Justino Auškelio

We kindly invite you to the Applied Debate 2022 event on December 15 th.!

Event programme >> 

We kindly invite you to an experimental musical and poetic performance ENERHOMOR this Tuesday, December 6th, at the Writers' Hall (Domus Philologiae). The performance is created by our Faculty's Ukrainian language lecturer Yelyzaveta Drach in order to illuminate the terrors the Ukrainians are facing today. We talked with the author about the performance and how language can build bridges. 

How did the idea of “ENERHOMOR“ come about?

After the first massive shelling aiming to destroy Ukrainian energy infrastructure approximately a month ago, I came across a photo of Kyiv burdened with darkness. And it just came back to me that in March, when I was leaving my native city, being broken, I wrote a short story. This story was telling about the pain of abandoned de-energized city, where only one strange man decided to stay. But one day the main hero meets a girl on the city streets. They experience this darkness and coldness together. This photo of Kyiv which I stumbled upon made me think that I’ve predicted, though with some exaggeration, the events that are now happening in Ukraine. And I started writing music that, as for me, best reflects the sounds of energetic genocide: experiments with electrical current, meter clicking and sounds of drones. I called it ENERHOMOR (or energetic genocide), the name that we created together with my dad who is now in Kyiv. 

The performance is held in Ukrainian with a translation into Lithuanian. What part does language play in this performance? 

ENERHOMOR is based on a poem that I wrote two weeks ago; it is in Ukrainian. Though music plays a crucial role in this performance, I still think it is important to see the translation for those who do not understand Ukrainian. My poetic style was always based on alliteration and assonance that is why my poems sound like songs. I try to use unique words, to combine untypical constructions and make every line special. We are now working on Lithuanian translation of the poem together with my students. Their discussions on synonyms that would be more appropriate in this or that context seem very professional to me. 

Speaking of language, you are now a lecturer of the Ukrainian language at the Faculty of Philology. How do you find the experience of teaching your native language in Lithuania?

I am grateful to Lithuanian people, to the University, to the Faculty of Philology for this opportunity to teach, to share experience, to get inspired from students and inspire them back. Three months of teaching passed, and we are now communicating Ukrainian with students. I am truly impressed by their desire to learn, their aspiration to speak a new language. It reminded me of my students from Kyiv: the same burning eyes. What a pleasure to share my native culture and language and meet such an eagerness! 

Here is the List of Open Electives for the 2022/2023 spring semester.

These subjects can be chosen with the individual study plan instead of the electives suggested in your study programme.

More information can be found here>

We kindly invite you to an experimental musical and poetic performance ENERHOMOR on December 6th at the Writers' Hall (Domus Philologiae).

The performance is created by our Faculty's lecturer Yelyzaveta Drach in order to commemorate Holodomor and illuminate the terrors the Ukrainians are facing today. 

ENERHOMOR is a musical performance about overwhelming darkness that covers Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine these days. It is an electronic ambient and vocal composition with poetic elements and visual effects. 

ENERHOMOR is an experiment with electric current. There will be both light and dark sounds: the cold trembling of an overheated transformer, the indifferent clatter of a meter, a gentle voice that whispers through communication jamming, decreasing signal-to-noise ratio, the tight air after an explosion, the echo of eerie signals, flashes and shadows that have a whimsical nature. 

You can find all details here >> 

The performance will be presented in Ukrainian with translation to Lithuanian.

The Rectors' Scholarship Competition, which has become a tradition among the three Baltic universities - Vilnius University, the University of Latvia and the University of Tartu - is again inviting students to participate. This year, the competition is moving to Vilnius University.

The competition aims to promote the unity of the three Baltic States and encourage the study of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian languages and cultures. The winner is awarded a scholarship of EUR 2000. More information > 

From November 29th to December 2nd lectures and seminars about gender and motherhood studies and research with professor Jenny Björklund will take place at the Faculty of Philology.

Jenny Björklund is a Professor of Gender Studies at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her current research deals with cultural representations of in/voluntary childlessness, and reproductive decision-making and climate change. Her books include Maternal Abandonment and Queer Resistance in Twenty-First-Century Swedish Literature (2021) and Lesbianism in Swedish Literature: An Ambiguous Affair (2014). Her work has also appeared in Social Science and Medicine, Women’s Studies, Scandinavian Studies, and Contemporary Women’s Writing.

Jenny Björklund has been awarded the Vilnius University Teaching and Learning Internationalisation Initiatives funding for the initiative Gender and Motherhood Studies and Research in the Baltic Sea Region. As part of this initiative in collaboration with the Horizon 2020 project MotherNet, she will deliver seminars to BA and MA students, of the Faculty of Philology, Vilnius University (in English and Swedish), will give a public lecture entitled Runaway Moms: Mothers Who Leave their Families in the Twenty-First Century, and will consult BA and MA students of the Faculty of Philology, on their final theses.

About the public lecture Runaway Moms: Mothers Who Leave their Families the Twenty-First Century

What does it mean that so many mothers leave their families in twenty-first-century Swedish literature? The lecture takes its point of departure in this question and explores how novels about mothers who leave can be understood as queer resistance against Swedish-branded ideals of parenthood, family, and reproduction. The public lecture will be streamed online.

To get the readings, please contact the MotherNet project coordinator Eglė Kačkutė-Hagan:

The visit of Prof. Jenny Björklund is a part of the project “Developing a New Network of Researchers on Contemporary European Motherhood (MotherNet)”. This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 952366.

Programme >