Year: 2017

Deadline for Submissions: May 15, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS
MULTICULTURALISM AND LANGUAGE CONTACT:
An International Scholarly Conference organized by
the Max van der Stoel Institute at South East European University &
the Research Center for Areal Linguistics at the Macedonian Academy of Arts & Sciences

Balkan peoples in the course of centuries of living in a multicultural and multilingual
environment have attempted to interpret the world around them in a common fashion while at the same time preserving a variety of distinctive features, such as language and dialect. Significant cultural interactions, especially during the attested period of the Balkan Linguistic League, have brought about the convergence of inherited linguistic structures in the respective Balkan languages combined with varieties of common lexical elements, all conducive to more effective communication among the peoples involved.

At a time when some political actors are seeking to convince various publics that “they have nothing a common” (a phrase deployed stridently during the Yugoslav Wars of Succession), this conference seeks to bring new perspectives to the roles of multiculturalism and language contact as vital factors in mutual understanding and a shared worldview, a topic that is both timely and in need of deeper scholarly engagement. Papers dealing with the peoples and languages of the Balkans (as well as Balkan peoples and languages living beyond the Balkans) are especially welcome, but any paper relevant to the main themes of the conference is eligible to be submitted for consideration (see below). Continue reading “CFP: Multiculturalism and Language Contact (Tetovo, Macedonia)”

Deadline for Applications: May 15, 2017

UC BERKELEY REVOLUTIONARY CENTENARY WORKSHOP
CALL FOR PAPERS

100 Years Later: The Russian Revolution and its Consequences
October 6-7, 2017
www.berkeley1917.wordpress.com

“The Soviet socialist revolution was the great utopian adventure of the modern age,” wrote the late Berkeley professor Martin Malia in the opening to his 1994 book The Soviet Tragedy. Utopian and pragmatic, top-down and bottom-up, tragic and fortunate: historians have affixed many adjectives to the year 1917 to describe it and its impact on Russia, the former Soviet Union, and the wider world. Long before the opening of the Russian archives in the early nineties, scholars have spilled much ink to debate the Revolution’s origins and causes, goals and shortcomings, beginning and end. Nearly all historians agree that the Revolution stands virtually unrivaled in its ambition, influence, and global legacy.

To mark the Revolution’s centenary, the University of California, Berkeley will host a workshop where graduate students in the dissertation writing phase can present and receive feedback on work that relates to the theme of the Russian Revolution and its consequences, broadly defined. How did the ideas, actors, and events that undergirded the Bolshevik program reverberate across the Soviet Union and beyond? In what ways did Soviet socialism serve as a model for non-Soviet governments, revolutionaries, reformers, and other elites to follow, reject, or improve upon? What effect did the collapse have on socialist and non-socialist governments, and what role does memory of the Soviet past play in the former USSR and beyond today? We welcome chronological diversity (from 1917 to the present), regional variation (Russia and the Soviet republics, Eastern Europe, Africa, Latin America, North America and Asia), and thematic range (political, social, economic, environmental, scientific, intellectual, etc.). Our goal is to bring together young scholars from universities across the United States whose work is adding to and changing the way we think, research, and write about the world that 1917 forged.  Continue reading “CFP: Revolutionary Centenary Workshop (UC Berkeley)”