-----Original Message-----
From: On all aspects of Russia and the FSU
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bram Mertens
Sent: Monday, June 20, 2011 3:50 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: CFP: Nation States between memories of World War II and
contemporary European politics

CONFERENCE/ CALL FOR PAPERS

Nation States between memories of World War II and contemporary European
politics

Papers are invited for an international and interdisciplinary symposium
entitled ‘Nation States between memories of World War II and contemporary
European politics’, to be held in June 2012 in Nottingham . The organisers
would particularly welcome proposals on Russia, the Baltic States, Eastern
Europe and the Balkan States.

At the most recent European elections the UK Independence Party’s campaign
centered on the iconic image of Winston Churchill, through whom UKIP – which
eventually emerged as the second strongest British party contesting these
elections – sought to articulate its staunch anti-EU politics. Not
surprisingly, such discursive/ visual strategies were criticized – by, for
example, a Conservative Party politician on the BBC’s Question Time (21 May
2009) – for being inaccurate, thoroughly de-contextualized and historically
distorting. In Georgia meanwhile, near what some consider the European
continent’s most easterly boundaries, a popular musician and leading figure
in the opposition movement has drawn deeply disconcerting comparisons
between his country’s World War II history and its present state (Deutsche
Welle TV, 4 June 2009). And in Belgium, at the heart of Europe, the chairman
of the FDF, Olivier Maingain, compared the policies of the Flemish regional
government to ‘practices worthy of the German occupation’ (La Libre
Belgique, 31 March 2010), whereas Filip Dewinter of Vlaams Belang accused
the francophone parties of seeking Lebensraum in Flanders (VRT TV, 3 June
2010). 

These are but three of innumerable instances – some of them highly
controversial and much-discussed, others part of mundane everyday discourse
– of the past being invoked to make sense of current contexts and,
crucially, to articulate a political position. More narrowly, it is
particularly the history of World War II, and within it memories of
invasion, occupation, oppression and genocide, that are commonly used – or
misused – as points of alleged comparison with or analogy for present
circumstances. Amongst the latter, questions of EU politics and European
integration, the ‘fate’ of nation states in times of economic globalization
and the current financial crises, the much-debated European constitution
and, more recently, the Lisbon reform treaty are objects of particularly
widespread concern and debate across Europe. 

We now invite abstracts for papers examining these issues in any European
context, both within and beyond the EU’s current borders. More precisely, we
invite contributions that examine the contemporary instrumentalization of
memories of World War II for rhetorical purposes of comparison in the
context of national or transnational power struggles. Each paper is thus
expected to contain three key components:
1.      an empirical focus on a particular European context;
2.      an analysis of publicly circulating and/ or contested
interpretations of World War II history;
3.      an examination of how such historical narratives are articulated and
mobilized for particular ideological purposes in the context of contemporary
national/ European politics.
We intend to build on Lebow et al.’s The Politics of Memory in Postwar
Europe (2006, Duke University Press), Heer et al.’s The Discursive
Construction of History (2008, Palgrave Macmillan), Jan-Werner Müller’s
seminal edited collection on Memory & Power in Post-War Europe (2002,
Cambridge University Press), and on Pakier and Stråth’s recent collection A
European Memory? (2010, Berghahn): firstly, by extending the geographical
reach of our analyses through a wider range of empirical case studies; and,
secondly, through an analytical focus on the current salience of historical
narratives commonly used to interpret, predict and respond to some of the
social, political and economic challenges widely perceived to define the
here and now.   

We anticipate that contributions will examine such contemporary ‘politics of
memory’ across a wide range of potentially relevant data: from political
controversies to everyday language; from relevant media discourse to
representations of World War II in art, film, novels, biographies etc; from
school textbooks to readers’ letters to newspaper editors; from party
political manifestos to public rituals of commemoration; from life histories
to current debates about the relative absence of – and need for – a
pan-European public sphere. 

Moreover, there is a host of potentially relevant conceptual issues and
theoretical questions we invite contributors to relate their analyses to,
including any of the following: How are memories of the Holocaust invoked in
contemporary discussions surrounding European integration? More broadly,
how, where, by whom and for what purposes are memories and narratives of
World War II selected and articulated today? How and where are such
narratives of the past contested? What is the relative relevance of national
and European politics, of globalization and the current economic crisis to
any such invocations of – and interpretative struggles over – the past? Can
competing historical narratives be meaningfully described – in Gramscian
terminology – as ‘hegemonic’ and ‘counter-hegemonic’ respectively, and, if
so, in relation to which ‘scale’ of contemporary politics (i.e. local,
regional, national, European, global)? Which wider theoretical debates (e.g.
regarding ‘social memory’; theories of nationalism; discourse analytical
approaches to studying language in social context; conceptualizations of
civil society etc.) advance our understanding of such contemporary
interpretative contests over World War II history? How do such ideological
struggles over memory connect with contemporary debates about migration,
multiculturalism, integration and identity politics? As academics, what are
our intellectual and ethical responsibilities in responding to historical
inaccuracies, distortions, omissions or mis-uses?

The conference will take place at the University of Nottingham from 27-29
June 2012. A key note address will be given by Dr Henning Grunwald
(Vanderbilt University).

The deadline for abstracts of original, previously unpublished work to be
sent to [log in to unmask]
and [log in to unmask] is 1 August 2011. Abstracts should be
between 500 and 600 words in length and provide an outline of the context
the discussion will examine, of the kinds of materials the paper sets out to
analyze, and of the conceptual questions to be addressed. We hope to publish
an edited collection of select conference contributions with Transaction
Publishers. The time frame for this edited collection will be extremely
tight, so potential contributors will need near-finished papers by the time
of the conference and will have to submit final drafts for consideration by
the editors within two weeks of the conference. Submissions will also need
to be formatted fully in line with Transaction guidelines, which will be
circulated after the deadline for abstracts.