TÜHI Research Seminar

In spring 2026, TÜHI launches a new research seminar series dedicated to presenting the research of our new postdoctoral fellows. The seminars feature researchers whose projects are funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) and the Estonian Research Council (ETAg).

The seminar series offers an opportunity to engage with a wide range of timely and diverse research topics, including education and language teaching, translation and cultural studies, urban studies, and intermediality. The seminars are open to all interested participants.

All seminars take place once a month on Tuesdays, from 16:00 to 17:30.

The third TÜHI Research Seminar of the spring semester will take place on Tuesday, 12 May, 16:00–17:30, in room A-447.

Intermedial Hemingway: Across the Text and into the Screen

Speaker: Ruslana Dovhanchyna
Moderator: Diana Popa

Abstract:
Can Hemingway’s famously spare, cinematic prose be translated into film – or does something essential get lost in the process? This seminar draws on the research project Hemingway’s War Narratives in Film Adaptations to explore how his writing, shaped by modernist engagements with painting, photography, and early cinema (Lewis, 2020), moves across media. Often described as ‘camera-eye’ narration (Trodd, 2007), Hemingway’s style raises important questions about what happens when a literary form already influenced by visual media is adapted into film. Through a brief discussion of three classic Hollywood adaptations – A Farewell to Arms (1932), The Killers (1946), and The Old Man and the Sea (1958) – screened as part of this research at Tallinn University – the seminar sets the stage for a closer examination of Paula Ortiz’s 2022 adaptation of Across the River and into the Trees. Frequently described as the most ‘Hemingwayesque’ (Tallerico, 2024) film adaptation to date, Ortiz’s version invites a closer look at what that label really means. By unpacking the intermedial strategies at work, the seminar considers how cinema can recreate – or reinvent – the distinctive tone, rhythm, and emotional undercurrents of Hemingway’s prose for contemporary audiences.

See the full programme here