Caucasus Conference Final Call for Papers, St Andrews April 2010

Tue Feb 16 09:45:18 UTC 2010

Dear Colleagues,

Please see below a FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS for the upcoming Centre for
Russian, Soviet, Central and East European Studies Conference, 'The
Caucasus: Imagining Freedom, Negotiating Dominion', to be held at the
University of St Andrews, Scotland on April 16-17, 2010. This final CFP is
being posted because generous funding from the British Academy will allow
organisers to offer a number of bursaries for UK postgraduates presenting
papers, as well as travel bursaries to international participants at both
postgraduate and tenured level. 
The conference organisers would be grateful to receive proposals of 300-400
words for individual papers or panels no later than Monday 1 March 2010 to:
cew12 at st-andrews.ac.uk.
We would be grateful if this message could be circulated to any interested
colleagues or postgraduate students.
With best wishes,
Claire Whitehead
Director of CRSCEES

FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE CAUCASUS 
UNIVERSITY OF ST ANDREWS: 16-17TH APRIL 2010

The Caucasus: Imagining Freedom, Negotiating Dominion

With the generous support of the British Academy and CREES.

The Centre for Russian, Soviet and Central and Eastern European Studies at
the University of St Andrews will dedicate its annual conference to the
history, culture, politics, and regional and international security of the
Caucasus.     

The Caucasus Mountains mark the transition point between Europe and Asia,
and it is this geographical position that has largely defined the history of
the region. As a meeting place between East and West, it retains many of the
signs of cross-cultural influence, as well as the scars of past conflicts.
Due to its intermediary location, scholarly discussion of the area has often
been overdetermined by the nations and cultural traditions surrounding it.
The aim of this conference is to look at the Caucasus as it appears in the
cultural imaginations of those nations and empires with which its historical
life has been inextricably intertwined, and to compare such views with the
self-understanding and experience of the diverse national traditions of
which it is comprised. By juxtaposing perceptions of the Caucasus from
without with those from within we hope to arrive at a more nuanced picture
of the region in the cultural and political landscape of the twenty-first
century. We invite paper proposals from young and established scholars in
the humanities and social sciences in the following strands: 

	Caucasian self-identity
	The Caucasus as a place of foreign imagining (particularly in Russia and
the Near and Middle East)
	Geopolitics and the Soviet legacy
	Imperial history and cultural domination
	Religion and ecumenical developments 
	Language, translation and cultural exchange
	Sustainable development and environmental thought
	Energy and pipeline politics
	Conflicts and peace negotiations 
	The roles of NGOs and intergovernmental organizations
	The August 2008 war and its aftermath
	Prospects for regional integration

We are honoured to have the planned participation of the ambassadors from
the region: 

 His Excellency Vahe Gabrielyan, Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia;
 His Excellency Fakhraddin Gurbanov, Ambassador of the Republic of Azerbaijan;
 His Excellency Giorgi Badridze, Ambassador of Georgia.

Keynote speakers include:

 Professor Paula Garb (Center for Citizen Peacebuilding, University of
California, Irvine);
 Professor B. George Hewitt (School of Oriental and African Studies, London);
 Professor Stephen F. Jones (Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts, USA); 
 Professor Alexey Malashenko (Carnegie Moscow Centre, Russia);
 Professor Donald Rayfield (Queen Mary, University of London);
 Professor John Russell (University of Bradford).

PROPOSALS

Deadline for Submission: 01 March 2010.

(i) Individual proposals
Should be of 300-400 words, and must be in English. Please also supply a
short bio-bibliographical statement. Papers should last no more than 20
mintues. Individual proposals should be submitted electronically to Dr
Claire Whitehead at cew12 at st-andrews.ac.uk.

 (ii) Panel proposals
We particularly welcome proposals for interdisciplinary panels covering two
or more strands, or more than one Caucasian country. One proposal (in
English) of 400-500 words, and including each paper title, should be
submitted electronically to Dr Claire Whitehead at cew12 at st-andrews.ac.uk.
Please also supply a short bio-bibliographical statement for each proposed
speaker and individual paper abstracts as above. 

REGISTRATION (including refreshments and Saturday conference lunch):  £40
graduate students; £50 academics.

Thanks to the generous support of the British Academy, we are now able to
provide travel bursaries to UK postgraduates who wish to present a paper at
the conference. There are also a limited number of travel and accommodation
subsidies available to international and UK participants. If you would like
to be considered for a subsidy, please indicate this in your e-mail to the
centre.

Publication of conference papers. The Centre intends to publish a fully
refereed collection of contributions from the conference. Selected authors
will be asked to expand their conference papers into article-length pieces
for consideration for this publication.  

Conference Committee: 
Rick Fawn; Emily Finer; Oliver Smith; Claire Whitehead (director of centre)

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