2018
Studying East and Southeast Europe as Area Studies: Paradigms - Themes - Methods for the 21st Century
The Fifth Annual Conference of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies took place in Munich on October 25-27, 2018. It was dedicated to theoretical and methodological changes over time and premises over time and dealt with the latest methods for studying East and Southeast Europe as Area Studies.
Six years ago, in late 2012, the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies was launched. Our priority has been to create a vibrant, interdisciplinary environment for successful doctoral projects and cutting-edge research on Eastern and Southeastern Europe, exploring the particularities of the countries, societies and cultures of this region. One of our basic premises has been a trans-regional perspective: East and Southeast Europe cannot be understood isolated but only in their interrelations with other world regions.
Numerous excellent dissertation and postdoctoral projects have been completed – proving the success of our program. But the world in 2018 is different from that in 2012. How do well-established theoretical and methodological premises still fit within today’s challenges? In which geographical contexts must we consider our research topics? And what consequences do transnational communication practices have on the production, acceptance and application of knowledge? It is time to draw a substantive interim review and to discuss paradigms, themes and methods of studying East and Southeast Europe as Area Studies for the 21st century.
You can find the Book of Abstracts here and the program of the Annual Conference here.
See also the Conference Report of H-Soz-Kult.
Program
Thursday, October 25
17:00 – 18:30 Opening Keynote
Diane P. Koenker (London): Encounters with Others: Tourism and the Internationalization of Soviet Cuisine
(video podcast in our YouTube channel)
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18:30-19:45 Spaces of Entanglement and Perception in Eurasia
- Yuguang Zhou (Munich): The Portrayal of Yugoslavia in Chinese National and Local Newspapers 1975–1980
- Marina Klyshko (Munich): The Revival of Eurasianism: Figurations of the Russian Space in Ideological and Literary Discourses
- Helena Holzberger (Munich): Photographs of Soviet Asia: Colonial Images or Socialist Achievement?
Chair: Hans van Ess (Munich)
Commentator: Julia Obertreis (Erlangen)
Friday, October 26
9:15 – 10:30 Transcontinental Projects and their Premises
- Jasper Trautsch (Regensburg): Who belongs to “the West”? Contesting the Meaning of a Key Concept in International Relations
- Max Trecker (Berlin): Circle of Debt: How the Crisis of the Global South in the 1980s Affected the Socialist East
- Kai Willms (Munich): An Old Stereotype in a New Environment? The Impact of Polish Émigré Scholars on American Sovietology after 1945
Chair: Ulf Brunnbauer (Regensburg)
Commentator: Volker Depkat (Regensburg)
10:30 – 11:45 Travelling Genres and Transnational Imaginations in the Arts / Wandernde Genres und transnationale Imaginationen der Kunst
- Nina Weller (Berlin): Kitsch und Affekt. Reaktualisierung verdrängter Erinnerung in ukrainischen Romanen und Filmen der 2000er
- Anna Baumgartner (Munich): Wandernde Kosaken und polnischer Orientalismus. Ein transnationaler Blick auf den Maler Józef Brandt in München (1862–1915)
- Patricia Pfeifer (Zurich): Uncertain Territories. Zwischenbildliche Bewegung und Verschiebung nach 1989
Chair: Burcu Dogramaci (Munich)
Commentator: Peter Zusi (London)
13:15 - 14:30 Language Practices in a Dynamic World
- Petar Kehayov (Regensburg): Indigenous Language Death: Beyond the Drama
- Bajro Murić (Regensburg): Igrati bosansko kolo: Language Management (Cycle) in Bosnian Families in Stuttgart, Germany
- Dóra Vuk (Regensburg): Subject-Verb Agreement in the Croatian Heritage Language in Austria and Hungary
Chair: Björn Hansen (Regensburg)
Commentator: Daniel Weiss (Zurich)
14:45 - 16:00 Performativity and Cultural Adaptation / Performativität und kulturelle Aneignung
- Henriette Reisner (Munich): Zwischen Propaganda und Poesie. Der frühe sowjetische Animationsfilm im Spiegel politischer und ästhetischer Debatten
- Katalin Cseh-Varga (Vienna): On the Second Public Sphere. Process-Based Art in Hungary of the Seventies
Chair: Małgorzata Sugiera (Kraków)
Commentator: Ada Raev (Bamberg)
16:00 - 17:15 Production and Circulation of Knowledge in a Transnational World
- Jan Arend (Tübingen): East-to-West Knowledge Transfer Stories. The Example of Soil Science
- Melanie Arndt (Regensburg): Knowledge and Ignorance on the Move: The Power of Disaster (Non-)Knowledge
- Ruslan Mitrofanov (Munich): Legislative Initiatives Regarding the Foreign Mentally Ill of the Russian Empire: A Transnational Perspective
Chair: Martin Schulze Wessel (Munich)
Commentator: Kärin Nickelsen (Munich)
17:30 - 18:45 Keynote
Frank Hadler (Leipzig): How to Study Eastern Europe as a Global Area
(video podcast in our YouTube channel)
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Saturday, October 27
9:15 - 10:30 Area Studies from an Everyday Perspective
- Eva-Maria Walther (Regensburg): Anthropological Approaches to Engaged Subjects. Studying Actors in Slovak Refugee Care Services
- Andrey Vozyanov (Regensburg): Infrastructures in Trouble: Public Transit, Crisis, and Citizens at the Peripheries of Europe
- Drivalda Delia (Regensburg): Tracing Silenced Participation of Women in Nation and State-building Processes in Kosovo
Chair: Ger Duijzings (Regensburg)
Commentator: Marek Mikuš (Halle/Saale)
10:30-11:45 Areas Studies from a Social Sciences Perspective
- Adele Del Sordi (Munich): The Relation between External and Internal Authoritarian Legitimation: The Religious Foreign Policy of Morocco and Kazakhstan
- Karina Shyrokykh (Stockholm): Question Even More: A Comparative Analysis of the Activity of Russian State-Sponsored News Media on Twitter
- Fabian Burkhardt (Moscow): On Presidents and Presidencies: Single-Country Studies and Comparative Authoritarianism, the Case of Russia
Chair: Alexander Libman (Munich)
Commentator: Vladimir Gel’man (St. Petersburg)
12:00 - 13:30 Concluding Discussion
Caroline von Gall (Cologne), Ulf Brunnbauer (Regensburg), Riccardo Nicolosi (Munich), Alexander Libman (Munich), Ada Raev (Bamberg)