CFP: Beyond Cold War Linearities: Entangled Histories and Interactive
Ideas
International Conference
Beyond Cold War Linearities:
Entangled Histories and Interactive Ideas
4-6 December 2009
OSA Archivum, Arany Janos utca 32, 1051, Budapest
The anniversary of 1989 regime change brought about a wide range of
discussions about Communist legacies and Cold War impact on the
transitions in the Eastern European countries. In this respect, one can
detect a tendency of approaching Communism by underlying the
institutions which influenced its demise, or of analyzing transitions as
a socio-political struggle for European (re)integration. In either way,
the destinies of the ex-Communist countries are subjected to linear
narratives, converging towards the vision of a teleological
(self-)liberation. The interest in the past's influence paradoxically
cohabitates with a series of epistemological local reticences regarding
applied research on recent history. This can be correlated with a
general scarcity concerning meta-reflections on Cold War studies
paradigms and - implicitly - with an empirical inaccessibility of the
archival documents related to Cold War propaganda. One intriguing case
is in this sense that of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty, the
importance of which is still emotionally evoked and scientifically
underexplored because of the persistence of traumatic views about the
past and because of unavailability of the sources.
We invite therefore proposals related to social sciences and humanities
to evaluate the current state of area studies, Cold War history and
media theories in order to enhance not just a meta-critical view about
Cold War and Communism, but also to spur national historiographies to
analytically appropriate their past forged by international policies and
still made obscure by a plethora of undigested documents. In order to
enhance the formation of truly critical and inter-cultural frameworks on
teaching and conducting research on recent history, we also invite
contributions with courses aiming at providing systematic introduction
to the study of totalitarian societies by combining post-totalitarian
theoretical frameworks with local narratives pertaining to social and
oral history. By bringing together the history of ideas, psychohistory,
symbolic interactionism, social history and media anthropology, the
conference seeks in this way to concretely aggregate an
interdisciplinary framework for the study of a period characterized by
complex intellectual mobility, the intricate interplay of fantasies
about the "Other", different societal accommodations, generational
changes and conceptual imbrications between East-European traditions and
Western cultural and political models.
The conference is organized by OSA Archivum in cooperation with CEU
History (Karl Hall and Ioana Toma) and IRES (Irina Papkov) Departments,
CEU CRC and International Alternative Culture Center (Olga Zaslavskaya).
The conference will be held in 4-6 December 2009 in Budapest and is
designed to prepare an edited volume. Paper givers will be asked to
present first drafts of their book chapters for precirculation among
participants and for intensive discussion at the conference. Limited
fellowship funds might be available for non-EU participants. Please
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Interested scholars should submit:
(1) title and one-page abstract of their paper;
(2) CV and list of publications;
(3) institutional affiliation or place of residence.
Please submit materials by 15 October to
Olga Zaslavskaya
OSA Archivum, Budapest
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