CFP: Workshop

Utopias, Human Rights, and Gender in Twentieth Century Europe. 

Sponsored by: Institute for Contemporary History, University of Vienna in 
association with the Freud Museum (Vienna) and Cooper Union (New York).
Conveners: Prof. Dr. Atina Grossmann (Cooper Union, New York) and Prof. Dr. 
Carola Sachse (University of Vienna)
Dates: December 13-16, 2007
Place: Freud Museum, Vienna

Deadline for proposals (1 page and brief CV): January 31, 2007.


Twentieth century European history has been marked by catastrophic violence 
and persecution unleashed by movements and regimes promising to create 
racial, political, and social-economic utopias. It has also brought an 
unprecedented recognition and articulation of concepts of human rights, 
formulated in individual or collective (national, ethnic, or cultural) 
terms. Both utopian visions and conceptions of human rights have been 
inflected by, and shaped, definitions of gender. The workshop will focus on 
the tensions and contradictions between models for social utopias and 
concepts of individual human rights, between visions of utopia and gender 
equality, and between individual and collective rights and obligations.  

We welcome contributions dealing with the most prominent social movements, 
political regimes, and economic models in twentieth century Europe. These 
in part overlapping, in part competing, and in part uncompromisingly 
opposed movements, regimes, and models include Fascism, National Socialism, 
Communism, liberalism, Zionism, Americanism Social Democracy, and laissez 
faire capitalism.  
We want to ask very broadly and in reference to each case:
-- How were notions of the self and individual self-determination linked to 
models of social organization?
-- What roles were assigned to men and women; to what degree were these 
roles hierarchical or egalitarian?
-- How were ideas and ideals of collective and individuals rights 
reconciled and negotiated? To what degree were they conceived in terms of 
gender equality or difference? How were these ideas and ideals 
institutionalized and anchored in norms, laws, and discourses?
-- How did “biopower” (to use Foucault’s term) register in the political, 
social, and cultural history of utopian movements and regimes?
-- How did the discourses and practices of “social rationalization” – 
explicit and pervasive across the political spectrum in the first half of 
the twentieth century -- continue to work after the Second World War? How 
were they interrupted or recoded? 
-- What influence can be ascribed to alternative discourses, particularly 
psychoanalysis, in conceptualizing and mediating the relationship of 
individual and collective, as well as of women and men, in these utopian 
regimes and visions? Moreover,  what sort of utopian notions  are embedded 
in psychoanalysis?
-- How did individual women and men reflect on their personal engagement in 
utopian social movements and political regimes in memoirs, correspondence, 
diaries, and other literary or visual documents?
 -- What is the place of gender as an analytic category in the 
historiography of modern utopias as well as in the formulation and 
institutionalization of human rights?    

We invite proposals from historians and scholars in a variety of related 
disciplines, including the social sciences and cultural and legal studies. 
Proposals related to ongoing graduate or post-doctoral projects are 
particularly welcome. 

Please submit a one page proposal and brief CV in either English or German 
to: [log in to unmask] by January 31, 2007. We will notify 
the 12-15 selected participants in February 2007. Papers of no more than 15 
pages must be submitted, in either English or German, by October 31, 2007. 
The workshop in December 2007 will focus on discussion of pre-circulated 
papers and prepared comments by the participants. A follow-up conference is 
planned for Fall 2008, for discussion of revised papers to be included in a 
German-language volume to be published in 2009.
 
Travel costs for the first workshop will be covered. Funding for second 
workshop is pending.

Contact: 
Prof. Atina Grossmann
 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Cooper Union, 
51 Astor Place, New York, NY 10003-7120 
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Prof. Dr. Carola Sachse				 
Institut für Zeitgeschichte 
Universität Wien
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 1 					
A-1090 Wien						
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Sekretariat: 
Irene Maria Leitner
Institut für Zeitgeschichte 
Universität Wien
Spitalgasse 2, Hof 1 
A-1090 Wien
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