Remembering Literature in Everyday Life (ReLEL or PoKUS in Croatian) is an Installation Research Project financed by the Croatian Science Foundation. It is being implemented at the Department of Comparative Literature within the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Zagreb University. It started on March 1, 2021, and its projected duration is five years.
As with any other Croatian Science Foundation's Installation Research Project, ReLEL was started with the general goal of supporting "the development of autonomous research careers of young scientists in its crucial stage, when they are capable of establishing a new research group that would deal with internationally competitive and/or nationally relevant scientific topics" (from the project call UIP-2020-02). The project will therefore involve three researchers who are in relatively early stages of their respective academic careers (an assistant professor, a postdoc and a PhD student).
The specific goal of the project is to comprehensively identify and interpret facts about the memory of literature in everyday life, with a focus on non-professional readers in Croatia. The methodological starting point of the research is a large number of semi-structured interviews with numerous participants (about a thousand respondents from various parts of Croatia). Based on that archive, the various aspects of readers' experiences and the textual transformations present in their memories are to be analyzed according to the interests and competencies of the research group members.
The analyses shall be conducted in three directions which are complementary to the secondary project goals. The first direction will lead to determining which elements of literary texts are remembered best and most often, and conversely those which are forgotten most completely and most often. The second direction will lead to identifying and describing the presence of literary texts in Croatian citizens' everyday lives, and potentially their application in a non-professional context. The third direction will lead to studying specific instances of collective memory of literature on selected samples.
The largest direct scientific contribution of the project will be to empirically validate knowledge about everyday readers of literature, which is still mostly lacking in literary studies at the moment. The importance of that knowledge might be appropriately expressed by paraphrasing Tzvetan Todorov, who in 1980 wrote that nothing is known less than the everyday reading experience, which in turn lies at the root of everything we can know about literature. ReLEL will therefore utilizes the voices of Croatian readers - literally and metaphorically - to try and create a more definite outline of the 99% of the total numbers people who read literature.
Zahvale
U našoj potrazi za ispitanicima i prostorom za intervjuiranje izuzetno su nam pomogle razne organizacije u svim dijelovima države. Ovim im putem izražavamo zahvalu na nesebičnoj i značajnoj pomoći:
Zagreb
Knjižnice Grada Zagreba
Književni klub Booksa (Udruga Kulturtreger)
Udruga plesnih umjetnika Hrvatske
Hrvatsko čitateljsko društvo
Velika Gorica
Knjižnica Velika Gorica
Društvo hrvatskih književnih prevodilaca
Split
Gradska knjižnica Marka Marulića
Kreativni hub Prostor (Culture Hub Croatia)
Sveučilišna knjižnica u Splitu
Kino klub Split
queerANarchive
Rijeka
Gradska knjižnica Rijeka
Filozofski Fakultet u Rijeci
Book Caffe „Dnevni boravak”
SOS Rijeka
Ruta, Obrt za usluge
Zadar
Gradska knjižnica Zadar
Sveučilišna knjižnica, Zadar
Odjel za informacijske znanosti, Sveučilište u Zadru
Autonomni kulturni centar Nigdjezemska
Osijek
Gradska i sveučilišna knjižnica Osijek
Umjetnička organizacija Teatar to go
Filozofski fakultet Osijek
Kick, Journal of the English Students’ Association „Glotta”
Akademija za umjetnost i kulturu u Osijeku
DKolektiv – organizacija za društveni razvoj
Udruga PLANTaža
Udruga Hrvatski autorski strip
Varaždin
Gradska knjižnica i čitaonica „Metel Ožegović” Varaždin
Udruga Katapult
Čakovec
Knjižnica „Nikola Zrinski” Čakovec
Centar za mlade – CeZaM Čakovec
Kreativno edukativni centar Murai
Prelog
Knjižnica i čitaonica Grada Preloga
Pula
Sveučilišna knjižnica u Puli
Klub & Knjižara – Giardini 2
Društveni centar Rojc
Radio Rojc
Studentski zbor – Sveučilište Jurja Dobrile u Puli
Kino Katarina
Udruga Metamedij
Hrvatsko udruženje interdisciplinarnih umjetnika
Gospić
Samostalna narodna knjižnica Gospić
Otočac
Narodna knjižnica Otočac
Book cafe Paradiso
Šibenik
Gradska knjižnica „Juraj Šižgorić” Šibenik
Hrvatsko novinarsko društvo – Ogranak u Šibensko-kninskoj županiji
Veleučilište u Šibeniku
Radio Šibenik
Vinkovci
Gradska knjižnica i čitaonica Vinkovci
Vukovar
Gradska knjižnica Vukovar
Dubrovnik
Dubrovačke knjižnice
Slavonski Brod
Gradska knjižnica Slavonski Brod
Karlovac
Gradska knjižnica „Ivan Goran Kovačić” Karlovac
English 
Croatian