Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.

C. S. Lewis

The Doctoral School in Sociology within the University of Bucharest invites doctoral students and recently awarded PhDs to submit contributions to a peer contest about the situatedness and possibilities of dialogue of forms of knowledge in social and human sciences, literature, and those emerging from daily experience.

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Join the competition by submitting personal comments of 2-4 pages (around 2000 words) on literature pieces written by your favourite authors;

Participants: doctoral students and recent PhD graduates in social sciences (awarded between September 2009 – February 2012);

Deadline for the submission of papers: 17 February 2012 ;

Awards cover the registration fee to any international professional association of the winner’s choice, supporting a fee of up to 40 EUR. Winners can either choose from this list or select a different association. Any other suggestions for completing the list are welcome;

Prizes: 10 awards will be allotted to doctoral students and another 10 to recent PhDs.

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Very often social sciences affirm their explanatory efficacy through drawing a border that separates them from common sense and other forms of knowledge, like fiction. On the other hand, daily life as it is experienced, familiar but not thoroughly comprehended represents a resource that is tacitly employed in social research. Literature also affords understanding and inspiration, in research as well as in other daily matters. Is there a competition between knowing and loosening up? How can we enter these forms of knowledge in a dialogue?

You are invited to send short fragments of fiction written by your favourite authors (of up to 40 pages, scanned or in any other electronic format) together with personal comments of 2-4 pages on the varieties of knowledge produced by these literary pieces in relation to scientific knowledge in social and human sciences and to our daily knowledge.

• What authors and scientific pieces does your fragment relate to? What are the concepts and theories that account for the same theme of human and social life?
• What kind of knowledge do we find in fiction as compared to scientific knowledge and the knowledge emerging in our personal lives?
• As sociologists, how can we live and develop different kinds of knowledge — scientific, fictional, commonsensical — in our personal and professional lives? When and how can we integrate them, when and how is their separation or even their contrast desirable?

Please send your contributions to punct.ochit@sas.unibuc.ro until 17 February 2012.