Call for Papers: Young Researchers Conference: Writing the Past/Righting Memory

Wed Aug 13 15:51:12 UTC 2014

Dear Colleagues--

Please see the call for papers below. Several of these panels focus on
literature.

--Ben Sutcliffe, Miami University

*Call for Papers*

*Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies*

*Miami University, Oxford, Ohio*

*Young Researchers Conference: Writing the Past/Righting Memory*

*Cuma, Italy*

*May 31-June 3, 2015 *

This conference will focus on the region of Russia, Eastern Europe and/or
Eurasia and will include discussion on memory and history, remembering and
forgetting, commemoration, institutionalization and marketing of memory in
the context of various social and political processes such as migration and
lustration, and comprise genres from memoirs to laws to investigative
journalism to textbooks, film, and novels.  The conference will feature two
keynote speakers, Grigorii Chkhartishvili and Alexander Etkind, and will be
organized by panels suggested and put together by the Havighurst Center
Faculty. When submitting an abstract *please specify which panel you would
like to be a part of* and then submit your resume and abstract to the
appropriate e-mail address indicated below.

Proposals are requested from young scholars who have already completed
their dissertation research (ABD) or have defended their dissertation *within
the last three years*. This will be an intensive 3-day working conference
(May 31-June 3, 2015), during which each of the selected papers will be
critiqued by the other participants, including all invited presenters,
keynote speakers, and a team of discussants made up of Miami University
faculty. Papers will be circulated in advance, and participants are
expected to be prepared to discuss other participants’ papers. The language
of the conference will be English.

The conference will be held in Cuma (ancient Cumae), Italy, which is
located on the Bay of Naples, one hour drive from Naples, and hour and a
half from Capri. The train ride from Rome’s Termini train station is about
1-1/2 hours.  The Havighurst Center will provide all meals and 3 nights
(shared room) at the Villa Vergiliana in Cuma. Participants will be
responsible for all travel to and from the Villa.

To be considered for the conference, submit an abstract to the appropriate
panel organizer by* October 1, 2014*. Please type "*2015 Young Researchers
Conference*" as the subject of the email. Selected papers will be announced
by December 1, 2014.* If selected*, participants must submit completed
papers for circulation to other conference participants by April 15, 2015.

*Proposed Panels*

*New Histories for New Times**.*  The collapse of communist systems in
Central and Eastern Europe has led to the production of new historical
narratives for the new nation-states of the region.  In Russia, the
histories that have emerged have ranged from the tendentious (the
controversial textbook by A. V. Filippov that described Stalin as an
efficient manager who had to resort to extreme measures to preserve the
state) to the more genuine (Boris Akunin's *History of the Russian State*,
which aimed to be more "impartial and objective" in its approaches).  How
have writers, scholars, and professional historians captured the past in
their works since 1991?  How have new histories attempted to narrate the
more recent, and more controversial, pasts?  What forms have these
histories taken (textbooks, web sites, graphic novels, etc.)?  These are
some of the questions this panel will tackle.  When applying for this
panel, please submit your resume and abstract (no more than 300 words) to
Stephen Norris at: *norriss1 at miamioh.edu <norriss1 at miamioh.edu>*.

*The Condition We Call Exile*. The title of this panel, borrowed from
Joseph Brodsky’s essay, will focus on the writings of Russian emigration in
the 20th century. Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote: “Isn’t it necessary once
and for all to refuse any longing for the fatherland, any fatherland,
except that one, which is with me, in me, which clings like the silver of
sea sand to the skin of the soles, lives in the eyes, in the blood,
providing depth and horizon to the background of every hope?”  The panel
will address narratives of exile and nostalgia, both in prose and poetry.
Papers will address but not be limited to the following questions: how does
the narrative of exile change from one wave of Russian emigration to the
next? Is the conventional perception of nostalgia applicable to the Russian
treatment of exile? How do the changes in political landscape affect exilic
narratives? When applying for this panel, please submit your resume and
abstract (no more than 300 words) to Zara M. Torlone at: *torlonzm at miamioh.edu
<torlonzm at miamioh.edu>*.

*Victims and Aggressors: Russia and its Neighbors in Contemporary
Literature.*

Since 1991 literature has responded to and exacerbated the vexed
relationship between post-Soviet identity and the messianic role Russian
culture ascribes to the written word. Edith Clowes argues that writing
reflects and intensifies debates over the fate of the world’s largest
country, a fate manifest in geographical terms (loss of certain
territories, annexation of others) and how these appear in writing. This
panel invites papers related to Russian literature (prose, poetry, drama,
memoirs, online writing, etc.) after the Soviet Union, as well as papers
dealing with literatures of the former USSR. Papers focusing on how Eastern
European literature envisions Russia are also welcome. When applying for
this panel, please submit your resume and abstract (no more than 300 words)
to Ben Sutcliffe at: *sutclibm at miamioh.edu <sutclibm at miamioh.edu>*.

*Remembering Communism**. *In the 1990s and 2000s a new generation of
authors with a particular background began to emerge: those who were born
during the later stages of communism but began to write only after its
collapse. This panel takes a closer look at the works of these writers.
Around what topics, experiences and protagonists do such works revolve? How
are the authors’ explorations of issues related to childhood and
adolescence related to the effort understand how “the old system” worked?
In what ways are experiences of power and reflections on the tangled
relationship between politics and art feature in the mnemonic narratives
they offer? When applying for this panel, please submit your resume and
abstract (no more than 300 words) to Venelin Ganev at: *g**anevvi at miamioh.edu
<anevvi at miamioh.edu>*.

* Affective Histories.* This panel invites papers, which focus on
interconnections between emotions, memory, or history. Various studies have
shown that emotions are not substances to be discovered in our blood, they
are not simply properties of persons, but social practices organized by
stories we both enact and tell (Rosaldo 1984). Emotions are cognitive
constructions, interpretations, embodied thoughts, thoughts seeped with the
apprehension that ‘I am involved’ (Rosaldo 1984:143). What kind of emotions
inhabit people’s memories? How do these memories express political
belonging and citizenship? How do they project moral imperatives, desires,
and visions of the future? How memories are embedded in material lives and
experience? How do memories become a source for historical narratives or a
form of resistance? What is the place of suffering in memory and history?
This panel will explore themes which include remembering and commemoration;
personal litanies and memory, suffering and nostalgia; and affective
management of history by the state among others. When applying for this
panel, please submit your resume and abstract (no more than 300 words) to
Neringa Klumbytė at: *klumbyn at miamioh.edu <klumbyn at miamioh.edu>*.

*Holy Russia’s Unpredictable Past*. In the past century, the Russian
Orthodox Church went from being the dominant religious institution of the
Russian Empire, to an chaotic attempt at a “free church in a free state”
after the February Revolution, to being the subject of intense persecution
for more than two decades after the Bolshevik Revolution, to being subject
to strict state control in the late Soviet period. Since the collapse of
the Soviet Union, there was perhaps again an attempt to create a “free
church in a free state” during the Yeltsin years to once again something
like the dominant religious institution in Putin’s Russia. How is the
twentieth century remembered by the Russian Orthodox Church today? The
Church has promoted the memory of those persecuted by the Soviets through
its canonization of new martyrs and establishment of memorial sites to
victims of the terror. Yet as official discourse under Putin about the
Soviet period becomes more sanitized and positive, and the Church has grown
increasingly close to the state, has the Church’s discourse about Soviet
persecutions changed? Are there other ways in which the Church’s views of
the Imperial, “democratic,” or Soviet past shifted in the past two decades?
What are the differences in the discourse between the higher levels of the
Moscow Patriarchate and those of other levels of the Church, be they
scholarly or popular? When applying for this panel, please submit your resume
and abstract (no more than 300 words) to Scott Kenworthy at:
*kenwors at miamioh.edu
<kenwors at miamioh.edu>*.

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