Department of History and Theory of Literature
An Interdisciplinary Scientific Conference
THE SEASONS IN CULTURE
The Conference is dedicated to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Kristijonas Donelaitis, the founding father of Lithuanian literature
15 –16th May, 2014
A Lithuanian Book . Ona Šimaitytė-Račkauskienė, 2006
Conference Organising Committee:
Chairperson – Prof. Dr. Džiuljeta Maskuliūnienė (Šiauliai University)
Members – Gintarė Adomaitytė (a writer)
Dr. Nerijus Brazauskas (ŠU)
Prof. Dr. Giedrė Čepaitienė (ŠU)
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Dalia Jakaitė (ŠU)
Dr. Napalys Kitkauskas, President of Kristijonas Donelaitis Society
Izolina Lingienė, Chairperson of the Šiauliai Department of Kristijonas Donelaitis
Society
Prof. Dr. Vytautas Martinkus (LEU)
Prof. Dr. Bronius Maskuliūnas (ŠU)
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kęstutis Šerpetis (KU)
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Jolanta Zabarskaitė (The Institute of the Lithuanian Language)
Contact persons:
Vyda Bajarūnienė, Lina Daunienė, Jūratė Žukauskienė
The Department of History and Theory of Literature at the Faculty of Humanities of
Šiauliai
University has been organising interdisciplinary scientific conferences for a number of years. The following conferences have already been held: “The Witch in Lithuanian Culture” (1997), “The
Province in Lithuanian Culture” (1999), “The Body in Lithuanian Culture” (2000), “The Canons in
Lithuanian Culture” (2001), “The Myths in Lithuanian Culture” (2002), “The Transformation of
Values in Lithuanian Culture” (2004), “Beer in Lithuanian Culture” (2004), “The Guilt as the
Phenomenon of Culture” (2005), “The Swamp in Lithuanian Culture” (2005), “The Sun in Lithuanian
Culture” (2006), “The Child in Lithuanian and World Cultures” (2007), “The Stone in Culture”
(2008), “The Name in Culture” (2009), “The Market in Culture” (2010), “The Tree in Culture” (2011),
“The Phenomenon of Café in Culture“ (2012), “The Smell in Culture” (2013).
The conference The Seasons in Culture welcomes researchers from various fields – representatives of literary science, linguists, folklore and ethno-cultural specialists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, researchers of culture, philosophers, researchers of art, psychologists

and others who are interested in the topic and are eager to discuss various aspects of the target object. The aim of the interdisciplinary conference is the universal investigation and comprehensive consideration of the phenomenon of the seasons in cultural texts.
Classics is traditionally associated with the search of peace, order, consistency, moderation and harmony. Natural-historical “weathering” of social and cultural systems points to the eternal and
“forever returning”, renewable, regularly repetitive cases of human life, spirit and self-awareness; this regular occurrence of events emphasizes the importance of values against the background of new and complex features of human existence facing contemporary cultural challenges.
Therefore, cultural classics gains specific optical features; it creates intersections where the temporality meets eternity, life meets death and history encounters the present day reality. Cultural classics reveals the quality of the spiritual connections as well as wholeness of universal perception and survival. The centuries separating us from the insights of the poem created by Kristijonas
Donelaitis only stimulate the constant and inevitable need for the reassessment of his insights which have become part of the modern humanitarian thought.
Research profiles proposed to the conference participants are primarily dedicated to the phenomenon of Kristijonas Donelaitis.
Topics Suggested for Presentations
The Seasons:
Mythological treatment of the seasons (any season) : philosophical, artistic, literary and other discourses; mythology of spring and another season. Myths and stories about different seasons.
The Seasons in Ethno-culture, Folklore, Folk Memory and Folk Art. Ceremonies and rituals in annual celebrations. Exclusive seasonal work: the tradition and the present; cultural, economic and other discourses. The seasons in Astronomy and Cosmology. Phenological time.
Man and the Seasons: Anthropological, Philosophical and Historical approaches. Time as a philosophical category. Phenomenological time. Replication of natural transformations in cultural artefacts. Gestaltics of natural rhythms in the cultural-historical space-time.
The Seasons in Literature. The seasons in poetry, prose and drama.
Narratives, images, symbols and interpretations.
Vytautas Petras Bložė, Vaidotas Daunys and others as authors of “The Four
Seasons”. “The Voices of Spring” (by Maironis), “Winter Theology” (by Alfonsas Nyka-Niliūnas) and other metaphors referring to seasons as well as other times of the year in the metaphors of literary, artistic and other discourses. Vytautas Mačernis’ sonnets “The Year” and other genre interpretations of the seasons. The seasons and the space (time as extreme experience in space):
Visual Arts, literary and other discourses.
The seasons in Religion. The liturgical year and its perception: religious, historical, artistic, literary and other discourses. Time in the Bible. The seasons and religions of the world.
Seasons in Fine Arts, History of Fine Arts, Visual Arts, Sculpture and Architecture. Winter in the artistic creations by Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis and Pieter Brueghel, and other seasons in
Fine Arts: Art Criticism, Literary and other perceptions. The seasons in landscapes.

The seasons in Music and History of Music . Classical and (post)modernist interpretations. Antonio
Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” and other music on the theme of the seasons; musicological, literary and other perceptions.
The seasons in Cinematography, Photography, Animation, contemporary Audio Visual Arts and literary life. “Spring of the Cinema”, “Spring of Poetry”, “Poetic Autumn in Druskininkai” and other signs of cultural life; a complex interaction between events and the seasons.
The seasons in Linguistics. Time and its division into a day, a week, a month and a year. Concepts of the four seasons and the categories in different languages; similarities and differences of the semantic field.
The seasons in History: historiography, historical narrative and historical memory. The seasons and nations, the seasons and states, the seasons and personal identities. The seasons in heraldry and numismatics. Symbols , style and history. A complex interaction between historical events and the seasons.
The significance of the seasons for humans: Psychological, Pedagogical and Medical approaches.
The seasons as Educational discourse. Tools, programmes, education and knowledge acquisition.
Seasons in Communication, Cultural Memory and Popular Culture. The seasons as an ability to remember things, places, experiences, etc. (seasons as a memory). The seasons in the social media. Websites, blogs and social networks. Seasons in advertising. Images and communication strategies. The seasons in everyday discourse. Social reality and everyday practice. The seasons and fashion.
Kristijonas Donelaitis:
The organics of Protestant ethics in Kristijonas Donelaitis’ epic poem.
Motives of National Cosmology in the poem “The Seasons” by Kristijonas Donelaitis.
The interpretation of moral issues in Kristijonas Donelaitis’ poem from the point of view of Natural
Philosophy.
Kristijonas Donelaitis’ literary works in the comparative context of European, American and Asian literatures.
Kristijonas Donelaitis’ “The Seasons” in the 21 st
century: eco-humanistic, cultural-existential and humanitarian-philosophical challenges.
Reception of Kristijonas Donelaitis in Literary Criticism.
Kristijonas Donelaitis’ tradition in Lithuanian Literature; “The Seasons” and Lithuanian avantgarde poetry (Kazys Binkis, Jonas Mekas ...).

The perception of Kristijonas Donelaitis’ “The Seasons” in Fine Arts (Vytautas Kazimieras
Jonynas, Vytautas Jurkūnas ...).
Staged theatre performances of Kristijonas Donelaitis’ “The Seasons” (Eimuntas Nekrošius,
Rolandas Kazlas ...).
Kristijonas Donelaitis’ “The Seasons” and school education: references in textbooks, interpretations in pupils’ academic writing and other schooling activities.
“The Seasons“ by Kristijonas Donelaitis in a variety of aspects: lexical peculiarities of “The
Seasons", linguistic dialects in “The Seasons”, syntactic features of “The Seasons”, “The Seasons” from the word-building aspect, the specifics of the stress in “The Seasons”, and the idiomatic expressions in “The Seasons”.
“The Seasons” in the linguistic context of Lithuania Minor.
Conference languages : Lithuanian, English and Russian.
Conference registration fee: 70 LTL.
A completed registration form including the abstract (about 800 characters) is to be submitted by April 21 st , 2014.
Contact e-mail address: litk@hu.su.lt
Information on the selected presentations and paper submission guidelines will be sent by the
May 1 st , 2014.
The conference presentation-based articles approved by the body of reviewers will be published in the collection of research works of the series of Acta Humanitarica Universitatis
Saulensis which is indexed in the international databases “Index Copernicus” and “MLA
International Bibliography”.
Contacts:
38 P. Višinskio St.
LT – 76352 Šiauliai, Lithuania, EU
Tel. (+370 41) 59 57 86
E-mail: litk@hu.su.lt

Interdisciplinary Scientific Conference
The Seasons in Culture
May 15-16 th , 2014
CONFERENCE REGISTRATION FORM
You are kindly asked to fill out and submit the Conference Registration Form by April 21 st
2014, by e-mail: litk@hu.su.lt.
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