CFP: Studies in Slavic Cultures

[Elise Thorsen]

*Studies in Slavic Cultures* XI
Everyday Life
Deadline: January 15

*Studies in Slavic Cultures*, the graduate student journal of the Department
of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh, is
accepting papers from current graduate students for its
2012 issue. The theme of this issue is “Everyday Life.”  We welcome papers
on this topic, which can include interpretative (semiotic, anthropological,
or sociological) approaches to the practices of everyday life in Slavic
cultures as well as the analyses of representations of everyday life in
different artistic media, such as literature, visual arts, and performance.

In the context of Russia and Eastern Europe, the practices and representations
of everyday life have been highly contested through the processes of
secularization of Slavic cultures.  New secular
customs, often imported as in the case of the Petrine reforms, clashed with
traditional cultural norms, and led to the scrutiny and aestheticization of
everyday life.  The tension between the representation and transformation
of daily reality was central to nineteenth-century critical realism; the
ascetic practices of radical political cells also reflected a desire for
transcendence of everyday life.  The twentieth-century revolutionary
promise of socialist utopia developed the problematization of everyday life
in new directions. Modernists throughout the Slavic world imagined the
transformation of private life, while post-revolutionary societies
attempted to mold the everyday life of the collective.  As a result, in
Russia and Soviet Union, the term “byt”—often considered
untranslatable—became a particularly loaded concept, a protean signifier of
throwback or bourgeois habits and, in the late Soviet period, of
soul-deadening collective practices like queuing.  More recently, the fall
of the Soviet bloc and the transition from socialist to capitalist
societies have dramatically affected everyday experiences in Eastern Europe.

Possible topics on the role of everyday life in Slavic cultures include,
but are not limited to:

-The rituals and mythologies of everyday life
-Everyday life and performance
-Everyday life in the period of transition,
-The transformation of the everyday life in modernism and socialist realism
-Everyday life and revolution
-Everyday life and dystopia and utopia
-Everyday life and nostalgia.

Queries and submissions should be sent to Irina Anisimova, Natalie Ryabchikova,
and Elise Thorsen at
sisc at pitt.edu<https://webmail.pitt.edu/webmail/src/compose.php?send_to=sisc@pitt.edu>.
This call for papers, the style sheet, and previous issues may be found at
the website, http://www.pitt.edu/~slavic/sisc/.

----
Elise Thorsen

PhD Student
University of Pittsburgh
Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures
Cathedral of Learning 1417
ent7 at pitt.edu

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