Presentation by the Gaidar Institute’s Publishing House of Franco Moretti’s book Distant Reading

The presentation started with opening remarks from the translators who introduced the basic areas of Franco Moretti's research and his method. They talked about distant reading, its limits and possibilities, as well as the problem of transferring the term and methodology into the Russian research context.

Speakers touched upon other methodological perspectives presented in Moretti's book – the evolutionary approach to changes in the literary form, the world-systems analysis which helps to track the twists of export and circulation of formal innovation in the world, and the researcher's ambition and hybrid methodology in general, which make a variety of experts from different research traditions discuss his book.

Speakers:
• The translators of the book:
Oleg Sobchuk (Institute for Cultural Research and Fine Arts, University of Tartu)
Artem Shelya (College of Foreign Languages and Cultures, University of Tartu)
Alexey Vdovin (HSE School of Philology)
• Valery Anashvili, Gaidar Institute Press Editor-in-chief
• Galin Tikhanov (Department of Comparative Literature and Culture, Queen Mary University of London)
• Boris Orekhov (HSE School of Linguistics)
• Andrey Volodin (Lomonosov Moscow State University Faculty of History)