Deadline for Submissions: February 28, 2017

“Privacy” is a well-researched yet highly disputed concept in Western scholarship. While most privacy research comes from and concentrates on Western liberal societies, great potential of privacy studies beyond this traditional framework still remains largely unexplored. The framework of Western liberal societies may therefore be seen not only as a “comfort zone” of privacy studies, but also as a barrier that often limits the potential of the research. This conference aims at elucidating the problems and the perspectives of privacy studies beyond the traditional liberal framework by bringing together scholars and PhD students who work on the concept of “privacy” in the context of Late Socialist Eastern and East-Central Europe.
A common challenge to privacy researchers of non-Western societies, especially if they come from such a society, is to refute the erroneous misconception of the absence of “privacy” in non-liberal societies, and to embrace the constructions of “privacy” that these local societies offer. This conference endeavors to create a dialogue between scholars and PhD students from all fields of humanities and social and political sciences to discuss the challenges of transgressing the borders of liberal frameworks, the strategies to cope with these challenges, and the perspectives for privacy research that such transgressions offer.

The use of this concept in the context of Late Socialist Eastern and East-Central Europe leads to a range of questions that challenge liberal dichotomies and pave the way for alternative visions of “privacy”. These questions are particularly resonant now, in the centennial year of the October Revolution, when its consequences are debated anew. While the liberal concept of “privacy” usually fails in the framework of authoritarian regimes of post-war Europe, the region offers a diversity of other impulses similar to the liberal idea of “privacy”. In the post-war years, Socialist Eastern and East-Central Europe witnessed the expansion of the material as well as immaterial private sphere, which did not only come as a result of the changed world order and subsequent transformations of Socialist societies, but can also be seen as a process that was meticulously planned, carried out, and controlled by the authorities of respective countries in an attempt to stabilize their regimes in the process of de-Stalinization. However, we should also consider whether the private sphere, so benevolently tolerated by Socialist states, continuously developed into an enfant terrible that nurtured not only stability, but also the disruptive forces of dissidence and civil rights movements, which ultimately undermined the Socialist bloc from within. These stabilizing and simultaneously disruptive currents of “privacy” within non-liberal societies are of particular interest, as they elucidate the multifaceted nature of this concept.

Participants are therefore asked to revisit and question the concept of “privacy” in liberal contexts as well as within the frameworks of Late Socialist Eastern and East-Central Europe by renegotiating the underlying categories within a certain society. The conference will specifically examine ways of addressing the concepts of “privacy” and “publicity” in said contexts by debating the applicable frameworks and by challenging existing approaches. It will further explore the potential of “reverse applicability” by discussing how privacy research in liberal contexts can benefit from other frameworks of privacy—the transfer that is of particular interest now, in the “post-privacy age”, when Snowden’s revelations elucidated the approximations of Western liberal states to the authoritarian models of the past and the present. In the light of such developments, the examination of Late Socialist authoritarian societies becomes advantageous for our understanding of contemporary privacy paradigms. Continue reading “CFP: “Privacy Outside Its ‘Comfort Zone’: Late Socialist Eastern and East-Central Europe between the Private and the Public” (U. of Passau)”

Deadline for Proposals: April 01, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS
Accelerated development? Socio-political landslides, cultural ruptures and literary history in Eastern Europe (Ghent University, Ghent, September 29 – October 1, 2017)

In 1964 the Bulgarian-Belarusian-Russian scholar Georgii Gachev coined the term ‘uskorennoe razvitie’ or ‘accelerated development’ in his 1964 monograph Accelerated Development of Literature: On the Basis of the Bulgarian Literature of the First Half of the 19th Century.  The term describes what happened to Bulgarian literature during Ottoman rule. Being a ‘young’ and ‘peripheral’ literature, having started to develop only recently at the time, Bulgarian literature ‘had to’ go through the whole evolution of European literature at a high pace in order to catch up with the latter. One of the side effects of this accelerated development was that characteristics of different style periods could even co-occur. Gachev’s thought-provoking idea has never really received a lot of attention, except in Bulgarian studies, where the concept was elaborated, criticized and / or gave way to new theories (Petar Dinekov, Nikolai Genchev, Roumen Daskalov, Alexander Kiossev …), but mostly with regard to the development of Bulgarian culture and society.

Today Gachev’s theory seems outdated, not in the least for its centralist assumptions – i.e. taking for granted that central cultures take the lead and peripheral cultures follow suit – that form the very basis of the Eurocentric theory. Nonetheless, the potential of the very kernel of the concept is obvious – both for dealing with the literary histories of other ‘young’ and/or ‘peripheral’ literatures in different time periods and for challenging the different notions that form the basis of Gachev’s theory – ‘peripheral’, ‘young’, ‘Western’, ‘dominant’, ‘oppression’, ‘conservatism’. ‘Accelerated development’ may be a suitable term to describe how Western literary critics in the 19th century thought about the quickly evolving, ‘peripheral’ Russian literature of the time. ‘Accelerated development’ may also be applied to the evolution of (certain) Modernist movements in the ‘peripheral’ Eastern Europe. And what to say about the apparent fast-forward evolution of the East-European literatures after the collapse of Communism, quickly adapting Postmodernism, Magical Realism, and other literary trends that other, ‘central’ literatures had been going through earlier? Continue reading “CFP: Accelerated development? Socio-political landslides, cultural ruptures and literary history in Eastern Europe (Ghent U.)”

Deadline for Abstract & C.V.: January 20, 2017

2017 Midwest Slavic Conference
The Ohio State University
April 7-9, 2017

The Midwest Slavic Association and The Ohio State University (OSU) Center for Slavic and East European Studies (CSEES) are pleased to announce the 2017 Midwest Slavic Conference to be held at OSU April 7-9, 2017. Conference organizers invite proposals for panels or individual papers addressing all disciplines related to Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Southeastern Europe. The conference will open with a keynote address by Anne Garrels about her latest book, Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia on Friday, April 7th, followed by two days of panels.

Please send a one-paragraph abstract and a brief C.V. in a single PDF format tocsees@osu.edu by January 20th. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to participate. Limited funding is available for undergraduate and graduate student lodging with preference given to out-of-state participants.

DEADLINES
Abstract and C.V. Deadline: January 20
Notification of Acceptance: February 24
Panels  Announced, Scheduling Conflicts, and Housing Requests Due: March 10
Final Papers to Committee:  March 29
Presenter Registration Deadline: March 31                                        
Continue reading “CFP: 2017 Midwest Slavic Conference (Ohio State University)”

Deadline for Submissions: March 01, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS
for Studies in Slavic Cultures XIV
Late Socialism: Second-World Modernity in Global Circulation

This volume of Studies in Slavic Cultures invites contributions that explore the culture of Late Socialism from a transnational perspective. Taken to be the period from the death of Stalin to the beginning of Perestroika (mid-1950s to the mid-1980s), Late Socialism is not merely a transitionary phase between a totalitarian regime and the liberalizations of impending collapse. Rather, it is a period with rich potential to explore the particularity and comparability of second-world modernity in a cross-cultural framework.

This period is marked by increasing international contacts and cross-cultural transfers not only with the Western world, but also with the cultures and subcultures of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Scholarship on Russo-Soviet culture often oscillates between two overreaching claims. On the one hand, some Slavists interpret Russo-Soviet culture, history, and politics as sui generis, invoking a long tradition of an exceptionalist Russia, as “neither East nor West.” On the other hand, a competing tendency has insisted upon a comparitivist Russia, one in which Russia belongs to the same temporal-spatial modernity as Europe, yet inevitably therefore “backward” on a shared scale of cultural development.

Taking insight from Michael David-Fox’s Crossing Borders, which convincingly deconstructs this binary opposition in favor of an alternative lens “marked by webs of meaning, multicausal explanations, and pluralistic rather than exclusionary interpretive frameworks,” we invite articles that examine the particularities of Late Socialist culture, putting them into diverse geopolitical and cross-cultural constellations. Continue reading “CFP: Late Socialism: Second-World Modernity in Global Circulation (Studies in Slavonic Cultures)”

Deadline for Submissions: January 30, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS

Graduate Student Conference in Slavic Studies
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
A Century of Revolution: Culture, Politics, and People
April 7-8, 2017

We are now inviting participants to submit abstracts for the 7th annual conference of the Slavic Graduate Students’ Association (SGSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. The conference will take place April 7-8, 2017, in Urbana, IL. Prof. Jessica Greenberg from the Anthropology Dept. of UIUC will deliver a keynote lecture. Participation is open to graduate students in all related fields, including: literature, film, linguistics, history, anthropology, cultural studies, philosophy, visual arts, musicology and area studies. We are especially interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the study of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian cultures.

In anticipation of the anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution, the theme of this year’s conference is A Century of Revolution: Culture, Politics, and People. Revolution, considered both politically but also interpreted more broadly as radical change to the status-quo, has played a recurring role throughout Eastern Europe, Russia, and Eurasia, shaping these regions’ history, culture, art, and politics. We want to examine these experiences and trace their developing narratives.

Relevant topics might include, but are not limited to:

– Revolutionary aesthetics, e.g. Futurism, the avant-garde, sots-art, conceptualism
– The Solidarity movement, Prague Spring, and Hungarian Revolution of 1956
– LGBTQIA rights movements, problems of gender, and the crisis of masculinity
– Marxism before and after 1989, democracy in practice, and the rightward turn
– Alternative medias and genres (science fiction, pornography, comics, etc.)

If you would like to participate,  please submit an abstract (up to 200 words) and the title of your paper to slavic.uiuc@gmail.com. Please include your name, email address, institutional affiliation, year, major area of study, and any audiovisual equipment requests at the top of the page. The deadline for submitting abstracts is January 30, 2017. Participants will be notified by March 1. Applicants are welcome to submit abstracts on any and all topics related to the Slavic, East European, and Eurasian regions.

Dedicated to the memory of our friend and colleague Scott K. Maltby

Deadline for Submissions: January 31, 2017

55th Annual Meeting of the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies (SCSS)
APRIL 6-8, 2017
Westin Alexandria Hotel in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia
Hosted by George Mason University’s program in Russian and Eurasian Studies

Papers from all humanities and social science disciplines as well as all Slavic, East European, and Eurasian regions are welcome

Papers on the special theme of the centenary of the Russian Revolution of 1917 are especially welcome.

Panel and paper proposals accepted until January 15, 2017. Whole panel proposals (chair, three papers, discussant) are preferred, but proposals for individual papers will also be accepted. Email your proposals to Emily Baran at emily.baran@mtsu.edu

For local arrangements or conference information other than the program, please contact Steven Barnes at scssalexandria@gmail.com

Deadline for Submissions: January 10, 2017

CALL FOR PAPERS
Princeton Conjunction – 2017
An Annual Interdisciplinary Conference
May 11- May 13, 2017

WAR FRENZY
Exploring the Violence of Propaganda

In July 1942, in the middle of the Nazi advancement in the Soviet Union, Ilya Ehrenburg, one of the most cosmopolitan Soviet writers, addressed Soviet soldiers through the Soviet military newspaper Krasnaia Zvezda (Red Star). In the preceding decades, Ehrenburg became famous for his whimsical dispatches from Paris and Berlin. This time, his address was unambiguously titled “Kill them!”, appealing:

We know everything. We remember everything. We understand it now: Germans are not people… Enough of talking. Enough of outrage. Now, it’s time to kill. …Stop counting days. Stop counting miles. Count only the Germans you’ve killed… Do not fail to hit. Do not miss the target. Kill!

A classic example of war propaganda, the address framed war affectively. Deploying words and images as rhetorical weapon, Ehrenburg constituted a collectivity, channeling its anger and anxiety, providing it with a clearly defined aim, and suggesting an action to take. Descriptive and prescriptive at the same time, the address interpellated its audience, transforming readers into avengers.

Propaganda has always been a crucial part of war. Mobilizing through polarization, distortion and simplification, it helped to produce an effect of ideological cohesion and social solidarity, which, in turn, often resulted in disastrous military conflicts: be it the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the Iraq war of the last decade, or the current wars in Ukraine and Syria (to name just a few). The program committee of this conference invites historically, ethnographically and theoretically grounded contributions that explore the role of propaganda in unleashing and framing military conflicts of the last century.
Continue reading “CFP: War Frenzy: Exploring the Violence of Propaganda (Princeton U.)”