SATURDAY, 26.2.2000
Morning session, 9:00
Introductory words –
Prof. Ivanka Apostolova,
Rector of the New Bulgarian University;
Prof. Wolfgang Iser

I. Readings and Readers
Chair Giuseppe Mazzotta

1. Joseph Hillis Miller, The University of California, Irvine, USA – Reading Proust's ‘Rachel When From the Lord’: Interpretation of the Wholly Other

2. Cleo Protohristova, The University of Plovdiv – Axiologies of Reading in the Post-Gutenberg Situation

3. Bogdan Bogdanov, New Bulgarian University – Reading, Readers and the Virtual Others

4. Mihail Nedelchev,  New Bulgarian University  – The Old-fashioned Reader in the Net

5. Zhivko Ivanov, The University of Plovdiv – Hypertext: Reading by Browsing

6. Julia Stefanova, The University of Sofia – The Empirical Reader in a Virtualized Reality

Disputants
Jenaro Talens
Evgenia Pancheva
Discussion
 

SATURDAY, 26.2. 2000
Afternoon session, 14:00
II. Round Table on Wolfgang Iser's Work
Chair Marcel Cornis-Pope

1. Gabriele Schwab, University of California, Irvine, USA – ‘If only I were not obliged to manifest’: Iser's Aesthetics of Negativity

2. Sanford Budick, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel – Iser's Charting of Philosophical Fiction and Kant's Exercise of His “Talent” for Exemplarity

3. Dimitar Kambourov, The University of Sofia –  When Trapped Iser's Literature Obliterates It's Tail: The Fictive Imaginary and the Real-liart of Language

4. Dobromir Grigorov, The University of Sofia – Norm and Literariness

5. Winfried Fluck, University of Berlin,  Germany – The Search for Distance: Negation and  Negativity in Wolfgang Iser's Literary Theory

6. John Paul Riquelme, University of Boston, USA – The Way of the Chameleon in Iser, Beckett, and Yeats: Figuring Death and the Imaginary in The Fictive and the Imaginary

Disputants
Mihai Spariosu
Alexander Kiossev
Discussion
 

SUNDAY, 27. 2.2000
Morning session, 9:00
III. Literature and the New Media
Chair Sanford Budick

1. Jenaro Talens, University of Madrid, Spain – Reading as Writing

2. Evgenia Pancheva, The University of Sofia – Shakespeare’s Sonnets in the Internet

3. Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza, University of Santjago de Compostela, Spain – Poetry and Hypertext: the Sense of a Limit

4. Boyan Manchev, The University of Sofia – Plato and Internet: Philosophy vs. Literature, Literature vs. the New Media

5. Maurice N. Fadel, New Bulgarian University – Literary Theory and the Mass Media

Disputants
Winfried Fluck
Bogdan Bogdanov
Discussion
 

SUNDAY, 28.02.2000
14:00
A tour around Sofia and a trip to the Rila Monastery
 

MONDAY, 28.02.2000
Morning session, 9:00
IV. Retrospectives, Introspectives, Perspectives
Chair  Stanley Corngold

1. Mihai Spariosu, University of Georgia, Athens, USA – to be determined

2. Nikolay Gochev, The University of Sofia – The Written Word, the Word Culture and the Erudition in the XXI Century

3. Georgi Chobanov, Institute for Higher Teaching Qualification, Varna – Reading Outside the Apocalypse

4. Ventsislav Arnaudov, The University of Sofia – Doubles and Troubles

5. Yordan Eftimov, New Bulgarian University – Trivial Insight and Internet

6. Giuseppe Mazzotta, University of Yale, USA – An Essay on Vulgarity

Disputants
John Paul Riquelme
Julia Stefanova
Discussion
 

MONDAY,  28.2.2000
Afternoon session, 14:00
V. End of the Gutenberg Age: A Postponement
Chair Gabriele Schwab

1. Stanley Corngold, Princeton University, USA – Notes toward a Phenomenology of e-mail: Impersonality, Normativity, Insertability

2. Ognyan Kovachev, The University of Sofia – Gothicizing the Web/Reframing the Sublime

3. Marcel Cornis-Pope,  University of Virginia, USA  – Literary Education in the Age of Hypertextual and Networked Communication

4. Biliana Kourtasheva, New Bulgarian University – Internet: Against the Signature

5. Alexander Kiossev, New Bulgarian University –  Virtual Communities vs Imagined Communities. Festivities. Reading, Chatting

Disputants
Cleo Protohristova
Fernando Cabo Aseguinolaza

General discussion
Joseph Hillis Miller
Wolfgang Iser
 

MONDAY, 28.2.2000
17.30
Professor Wolfgang Iser will be conferred the degree Doctor honoris causa of  the New Bulgarian University.