Call for Papers: Vocabularies of Identity

[Margarita Nafpaktitis]

Please address questions and abstracts to Brian Porter, whose contact
information follows the call for papers.


CALL FOR PAPERS


VOCABULARIES OF IDENTITY IN RUSSIA AND EASTERN EUROPE

THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, APRIL 3-4, 1998


 This conference will be based on the conviction that we can only understand
the dramatic reconfiguration of personal, political, cultural and social
identities in the post-communist world if we consider the nature of “identity”
itself, both in its current and historical forms.  Categories of gender,
class, and nationality have always been fluid in Eastern Europe and the former
Soviet Union, and this has become even more evident in recent years, as new
ways to contain and organize such identities are developed and imposed.
Today, as in past moments of systemic and social transformation, we can trace
the relocation of individuals within new (or reconstituted) sets of social
relations, and observe the accompanying reconceptualization of the self.
Language stands at the very center of this process, as people delineate,
describe, and in a sense create their world by speaking about it, and by
drawing lines around what can and cannot be said.  As they do so, they create
the “vocabularies of identity” that we propose to explore in this conference.
 The conference will consist of pre-read papers, so as to facilitate
discussion and debate.  Proposals for either entire panels or individual
papers are welcome.  Presentations may deal with any time period and any
country within the scope of the AAASS.  Scholars from history, political
science, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, literature—virtually any
discipline—are encouraged to send proposals.  Please include a one-page
summary of the paper topic(s), along with an abbreviated, 1-2 page c.v. for
each participant.  Deadline for the receipt of paper proposals is December 15,
1997.

Send paper or panel proposals to the following address:

 Brian Porter
 Department of History
 The University of Michigan
 1029 Tisch Hall
 Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1003

E-mail applications will also be accepted.  Please send them to
baporter at umich.edu.