The Department of Modern Literature focuses on Lithuanian literature of the 19th and the early 20th centuries and on the relations between Lithuanian and Latvian literature. Its researchers examine the origins and development of the modernization of Lithuanian literature in terms of socio-cultural transformations, highlight the main processes of the modernization of Lithuanian culture and literature and its manifestations, reveal the multidimensional contexts of these processes, show the transformation of cultural identity and values, and investigate the cultural and social conditions for the emergence of the modern character in literature.

 

Currently, the department is implementing a long-term research program “Transformations of 20th- and 21st-Century Lithuanian Literature: Canon, Poetics and Contexts” (headed by Dr. Solveiga Daugirdaitė, 2022-2026). The program “Research in Literary Baltic Studies” (headed by Dr. Laura Laurušaitė, 2021-2025), which includes comparative research on Lithuanian and Latvian literatures, has been ongoing too.

 

The department has eleven researchers, four Ph.D. students and a postdoc intern.