CFP for conference "From Samizdat to Tamizdat" (Vienna, September 2006)

Fri Apr 14 23:06:25 UTC 2006

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE CONFERENCE

"From Samizdat to Tamizdat: Dissident Media out of Central Eastern Europe
after 1945"

Organiser: Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung (Potsdam), Stanford
University (Stanford), Central European University (Budapest), Institut für
die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna)

Date/Place: September 12-15, 2006 Institut für die Wissenschaften vom
Menschen (www.iwm.at)

Deadline for Abstracts: May 15, 2006

Drawing from the disciplines of history, literature, political science,
anthropology, sociology, and media studies, this conference takes as a
starting point the movement of printed material between Eastern and Western
Europe (as well as across the Atlantic) during the Cold War. One of the
underlying arguments of this project is that cross-border communication in
the late Cold War in its various forms made a major contribution to the
rapprochement between Eastern and Western societies through the iron curtain
by re-creating a common market of the mind in Europe. Cultural initiatives
crossing ideologically divided societies and aiming at the promotion of
non-official culture/literature in communist countries helped to counteract
the ever increasing division between the intellectual communities in East
and West.

An analysis of the unofficial literary exchanges between East and West will
initiate a discussion of transnational communication after 1945 that has not
yet been fully explored. Beyond taking a closer look at the cultural
transfer between East and West, we are seeking primarily contributions that
focus on the impact of censorship on media and the ensuing emergence of
dissident/underground media. The project will deliberately expand the
definition of samizdat and tamizdat and use it as a marker of cultural
transfer for the analysis of a broad variety of cultural projects that cross
ideological, political or cultural borders. In order to establish a link to
todays media, we propose to compare underground circulation of uncensored
texts during the Cold War with evolving forms of journalism after 1989,
looking at new media and new forms of underground or unofficial
communication today.

Questions to address:

        What forces texts/media or culture into the unofficial sphere or
across national borders?
        How do censorship, political or economic hardship cause media to
operate underground or across borders?
        How do we perceive media differently when they are produced under
these conditions?
        What mediating agents (individuals, informal networks and/or
institutions) made the transmission of texts and media across borders possible?
        What is the legacy of this form of transnational communication?
        Could strategies adopted by mediators of samizdat/tamizdat be
useful today?
        Are samizdat and tamizdat produced in any form today (print,
broadcast, or new media)?

The organizers invite especially doctoral candidates and post-doctoral
scholars to submit original research papers that discuss any aspect of
underground and cross-border initiatives, including but not limited to the
following themes:

o Samizdat/Tamizdat: new Theoretical Approaches
o Underground and exilic media throughout time: comparative views

o Samizdat/Tamizdat and Censorship
o Samizdat/Tamizdat as (cultural/political/literary) Dissidence
o Samizdat/Tamizdat as Political and Societal Protest
o Samizdat/Tamizdat through the Eyes of the Officials

o Samizdat/Tamizdat in its Material Existence: an aesthetic approach
o Samizdat/Tamizdat: a Gender Perspective
o Samizdat/Tamizdat as Alternative Culture
o Samizdat/Tamizdat as Belles-lettres
 o Samizdat/Tamizdat and other Dissident Media: Broadcast, Music, Arts
o Samizdat/Tamizdat and Transnational Discourses

o Samizdat/Tamizdat and Publishing during the Cultural Cold War
o Samizdat/Tamizdat as a Cross-Border Social Network
o Samizdat/Tamizdat and (Literary) Exile
o Samizdat/Tamizdat as a Social Practice beyond borders
o Samizdat/Tamizdat and its Public/Private Spheres

o New forms of Samizdat/Tamizdat: underground and cross-border (new) media
after 1989

Inspired by the concept of Histoire croisée we strongly encourage
cross-cultural, cross-national and multi-disciplinary approaches. The
conference will bring together junior scholars and senior commentators with
keynote speakers from dissident publishing backgrounds to present a manifold
perspective on the topic.

Travel and accommodation costs will be covered through a grant by the German
Volkswagen Foundation. Selected papers will be considered for a publication
to appear in the following year.

Please send 1-2 page abstracts and full contact details (email, Telephone,
Postal Address) to 

==> samizdat.tamizdat at gmail.com 

before May 15, 2006.

Papers of 5000-7000 words must be submitted by August 15, as they will be
pre-circulated among the participants. Presentations of these papers should
not exceed 20 minutes in length, and must be in English. Please see
www.samizdatportal.org , the online platform of the newly founded
International Samizdat Research Association [ISRA] or contact one of the
organizers below for more information.

Dr. Jessie Labov
Dept. of Comparative Literature
Stanford University
Pigott Hall, Building 260
Tel.: 001-650 723 0605
jlabov at stanford.edu

Friederike Kind
Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung
Am Neuen Markt 1
14467 Potsdam
Tel.: 0049-331-2899129
kind at zzf-pdm.de

Camelia Craciun
Department of History,
Central European University
Nador Utca 11
1051 Budapest
camicr at yahoo.com

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