Historical-Culturological “East/West Journal” calls for papers for a special issue (to be edited in 2009)

The last two decades have been marked by fundamental changes on the geopolitical map of the world and Europe, particularly in East-Central Europe, and caused important changes in the reception of the regional states’ past. Global transformations and difficulties of the post-totalitarian regimes’ transition became a challenge for national and other grand-narratives as well as the reason of the searching for new identities in the process of the new communities’ formation.

These unavoidably caused the revival, re-cultivation, seeking for and shaping of the new collective and individual “memories”. How influential is the “worldwide triumph of memory” (Pierre Nora) in the case of East-Central Europe and particularly in Ukraine? What kinds of peculiarities are inherent to the historical memory of totalitarianism and during the period of totalitarianism? Who has the power (or right) to remember and what kind of events? What ways are being chosen to execute this power (or right)? What was the role of and what changes have happened to the private and public politics of memory during and after totalitarianism? All these questions outline the widest scope of problems to be discussed in the planned thematic issue:

- “memory” as an experience, as an analytical category, as a metaphor; the problem of definitions and theoretical re-thinking;
- memory of the key identity-formative events and processes in East-Central Europe, particularly of World War II, national and ethnic interrelations and conflicts, totalitarian and post-totalitarian transformations;
- peculiarities of memory, remembering and forgetting within different groups and communities,
- memory and “counter-memory”: official and non-official, private and public politics of memory, its collective and individual dimensions,
- memory, political struggles and state policy,
- memorial representations in specific cultural forms: monuments, memorial complexes, landscapes, museums, archives, cinema, different genres of oral histories and biographic constructions, etc.

So the “East/West Journal” invites representatives of the widest circle of humanitarian disciplines, whose research interests are related to the phenomenon of historical, collective or social memory, for cooperation in this issue. Preferences are to be given to the papers written on the foundation of interdisciplinarity that are devoted to theoretical and methodological problems as well as to case-studies with a special focus on Ukrainian and post-totalitarian experience, and to the rest of the articles demonstrating new approaches and grounded reflections on the theme.

All papers are to be peer-reviewed after which it will be decided by the editorial board whether to be printed. The thematic as well as the chronological scope of the planned issue may possibly be discussed as required by the contributors. The editorial board will not consciously restrict the thematic variety of the papers to be printed in the hopes of receiving a wide range of controversial discussive thoughts and points of view on the problems proposed.

East/West Journal
Information for contributors

1. Papers are in Ukrainian, English, Polish and Russian.
2. Texts are in Microsoft Word, file format *rtf or *doc; automatic references in the end of the text
3. Brief information about the author(s) (full name, scientific grade, employment – institution and post, research interests, e-mail). This information will be given in the list of contributors at the end of the issue.
4. Deadline is January 31st, 2009

Please send Your papers as well as books and journals for reviewing to:

“East/West”, Kowalsky Ukrainian Research Institute, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, 4 Svobody Square, Kharkiv, 61077 Ukraine

E-mail: siu.kharkiv@gmail.com, rebrova-irina@mail.ru, baudolino@inbox.ru, vsklokin@ukr.net

Phone number: +38 057 705 26 30; +38 096 1555 136

Web-site: http://keui.univer.kharkov.ua

Sincerely,
Editorial board