Call for proposals for a panel on post-socialist cultures
I would like to solicit proposals for a panel on post-socialist cultures for a congress of International Council for East European Studies that will take place on 26-31 July 2010 in Stockholm.
Below is a tentative description of the panel idea.
With Gorbachev reforms and the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago the trajectories of the countries belonging to the Socialist Block and several Soviet Union republics have changed irreversibly. While the 1990s were characterised by radical and often traumatic economic and political reforms, the noughts was the time of accommodation, stability and relative prosperity, not to mention the integration into European Union and globalization. We plan to organise a panel that focuses not on the political institutions or economic structures of post-socialist world, but on the less tangible structures of human consciousness, culture, belief and memory. We would like to understand how individual fortunes and collective identities were affected by this period of change, whether the cultural forms of the previous era (the Soviet
times) can still be detected in East European societies, and which particular social groups are more prone to it. We would like to, in particular, explore the role of religion as a powerful source of identity and meaning. We feel it is important too that the panel addresses the issues of national minorities and gender. Papers that apply methods of biographical research, social and cultural anthropology and cultural sociology are especially welcome.
If you are interested, please, send (off list) a description of your proposed paper (100-150 words) and a short CV to Irina Paert irina@paert.com by 20th February.
Irina Paert, PhD
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies Estonian Institute of Humanities Tallinn University
