Call for papers: Ab Imperio 2009: Homo Imperii

[Sergey Glebov]

Dear colleagues,

 

The editors of Ab Imperio would like to solicit contributions to the
remaining two issues of the journal in 2009. The description of the annual
program and of the two issues' thematic foci follow. Information on Ab
Imperio can be found at the journal's website http://abimperio.net 

 

Sergey Glebov

 

CALL FOR PAPERS: Ab Imperio in 2009 : Homo Imperii: The Imperial Situation
of Multiple Temporalities 
and Heterogeneous Space

 

When Marc Bloch coined his famous definition of history as a science about
humans in time,[1] he anticipated by several decades the "anthropological
turn" in historical studies. The humanistic message of Bloch's formulation
is ambivalent: does it suggest that human beings change together with the
circumstances of "total history," or that they remain essentially the same
throughout different epochs and situations? Is it really possible to
"translate" adequately the life experience of a representative of a certain
epoch in terms of a different time period? How do "grand narratives" look
through the prism of an individual's life experience? How does one's life
perception depend on the different aspects of the imperial situation that
may combine uneven social and cultural spaces, and elements of different
epochs, both archaic and modern? Can the methods of biographical writing and
prosopography be regarded as an alternative to grand, depersonalized
historical narratives? Writing biography is inconceivable without taking
into consideration time and space as crucial factors, but how does the
specificity of these features affect human life and its perception?

[1] In the 1950s, this formula ("Science des hommes. dans le temps") was
translated into English in the both old-fashioned and misleading way: "The
science of men. in time", even though in the next sentence Bloch clarified
the meaning of the word: "L'historien ne pense pas seulement 'humain'" -
"think [only] of the human." Cf.: Marc Bloch. Apologie pour l'histoire ou
Metier d'historien. 2e edition. Paris, 1952. Pp. 4-5; Marc Bloch. The
Historian's Craft. New York, 1953. P. 27.

No. 3/2009 "Maison des sciences de l'Homme: Human Sciences in the Empire"

The history of enlightenment in Russia as a project of normalization and
Europeanization . scientific classifications of the population . borrowings
and adaptations of the scientific discourses and practices of
nineteenth-century colonial empires as a condition of admittance into the
club of European colonial powers . psychology, its subjects and its objects
of study . social sciences in imperial context . the sciences of imperial
diversity: anthropology, ethnography, linguistics, etc. . museums and
exhibitions as imperial "Panopticons" . political human sciences in empire .
the humanistic paradigm and the problem of representation of the modern
personality . medicine as a language of studying the individual and society
. the imperial concept of norm and deviation . scientific foundations of
uprising against empire . projects of rational cognition and re-description
of empire and its inhabitants . "caring for souls:" theology on personality
and empire. 

No. 4/2009 "From Homo Imperii to Civitas: Projects of Imagined Imperial
Communities"

Is civic society possible in empire? . Projects of state reform of imperial
population: social engineering from above in empire . great ideologies on
"small men" and their communities . "underground Russia" as an alternative
social network . the corporate structure of imperial society: cooperative,
professional, confessional, et al. self-organization . Utopian projects of
imperial society . political parties and movements and programs of imperial
social reform . the empire of "obshchestvennost'" in Russia and USSR. 

 

 


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