Guest editors:
Zsuzsanna Varga, University of Glasgow, zsuzsanna.varga@glasgow.ac.uk
Nemanja Radulović, University of Belgrade, nem_radulovic@yahoo.com
Tomasz Ewertowski, Shanghai International Studies University, tewert@shisu.edu.cn
In this special issue of Slavonica (https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/ysla20), we invite scholars to examine the development of Eastern European encounters with India, following the call of ESIND – COST Action CA23144, “Europe’s Representations of India: Texts, Images, and Encounters”. As India and Europe are becoming increasingly important to each other as economic, political, and strategic partners, it is crucial to gain insight into the cultural history of European encounters with India, the ways in which Europeans have understood the subcontinent and its civilisation, and how these understandings have shaped their interactions with Indians in the past and present. Whereas contacts between India and Western European colonial powers have already been the subject of extensive study, there are significant gaps in our knowledge of interactions between Eastern Europe and India. By investigating such connections, the special issue will contribute to current debates on decentring comparative studies, the place of ‘non-colonial’ societies in transimperial history, and cross-cultural exchanges beyond the Western core of the world-system. Such an approach may also necessitate a re-examination of postcolonial theory and the concept of Orientalism as applied to the study of Indian-European exchanges.
We invite contributions that investigate both the cultural history of exchanges between India and Eastern Europe, such as travel between India and Eastern Europe and contacts in politics, culture, and the arts, and representations of India in Eastern European countries. The special issue will bring together perspectives from various disciplines, including literature, cultural studies, and political science. In this way, we intend to provide a broad panorama of Eastern European encounters with India.
Practical information
An abstract of 300–500 words (excluding the bibliography) and a 100-word biographical note should be sent to the Guest Editors no later than 31 October 2026. Selected authors will be invited to prepare full articles, which should be sent to the Guest Editors by 28 February 2027. After receiving feedback from the Guest Editors, authors should submit their revised papers via the Taylor & Francis submission system by 30 April 2027.
