Special Issue: PARTICIPATORY MEDIA AND PUBLIC MEMORY
Deadline: April 2nd, 2012;

Language: English/German

TRANSIT, a multidisciplinary online journal dedicated to the critical inquiry of travel, migration, and multiculturalism in the German-speaking world, will devote its forthcoming issue to “Participatory Media and Public Memory.” For this special issue, we are soliciting submissions that consider the nexus of media and memory from a variety of historical and theoretical angles, as well as from interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives. The following questions will animate our issue:

Date and venue: 20th-22nd September, 2012, Aarhus, Denmark

Deadline for applications: 15th April, 2012

For the inaugural seminar of Mnemonics: Network for Memory Studies, a newly established international collaborative initiative for graduate education in memory studies, we invite paper proposals from graduate students on the relations between the aesthetics and ethics of memory.

Aesthetics and ethics often intersect in relation to the representation of collective memories, especially those of disturbing events or experiences. While decorum is naturally called for in addressing a traumatic past, it can also be argued, from an ethical standpoint, that traumatic memories must be represented in a compelling and unforgettable manner. Representational strategies thus have to find a balance between being ineffectual and irrelevant and being potentially offensive and provoking.

German-Czech-Polish Summer School „Memory Cultures in Central Europe.
Poland and Czech Republic – Prague / Szczecin 2012
Date and venue: Szczecin and Prague, 9th-23th September, 2012

Deadline for applications: 15th May 2012

Even two decades after the demise of the socialist regimes in East Central Europe, debates about the past are still provoking irritation and political conflict in international relations between Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic as well as within these countries. A major reason for this situation may be seen in the formation and constant change of memory cultures. They are negotiated by actors and actor groups in specific local, national and transnational contexts, and they comprise discussions, controversies and conflicts over the interpretation of individual events or sites of memory as well as of whole regimes or epochs. In an era of steadily accelerating communication all these levels have become increasingly entangled, since conflicts that are sparked by local sites of memory quickly reach national or international levels – and vice versa.

Deadline for applications: 30th April, 2012

Date and venue: 24th-26th October, 2012; University of Helsinki, Finland

The link between competition and good society has seldom been extensively discussed on any international academic forum. Since the 1980s there has been vivid political discussion of and rivalry among the varieties of capitalist models. The ongoing Western economic crisis with political decision-makers’ discord, a growing sense of social insecurity and global demonstrations all point out how cutting-edge this topic is. Hence, we aim to discuss competition and competitiveness not primarily in the economic context but, more importantly, in reflection to societal life. We are interested in what kind of preconditions competition creates for welfare, social justice, equality and culture, in addition to how competition affects changes on the level of mentality and ideas – subjects that have been greatly neglected.

Date and venue: 22nd-23rd June, Durham University

Deadline for proposals: 31st March 2012

The German diaspora can be found in most Eastern and Central European states as well as in some of the successor states of the former Soviet Union. Ethnic German minorities have lived – and albeit in much reduced numbers still live – in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and, of course, Russia. During the Cold War – when the iron curtain ensured that only a relatively small number of these ethnic Germans were allowed to leave – West Germany’s relationship with these communities focused on facilitating the migration of as many as possible to their alleged ‘homeland’. Until the changes to Germany’s citizenship laws in the 1980s and 1990s, three million ethnic Germans migrated from Eastern and Central Europe and the (former) Soviet Union. This mass exodus casts severe doubt over the continued existence and long-term survival of these communities.

Deadline:30th March 2012

Date and venue: 18th-19th May 2012, Department of Political Science, University of Bucharest; Bucharest, Romania

Languages: English, French

 Organizers: Babes-Bolyai University, European Studies Department, Ambassade  de France en Roumanie. Service de Coopération et d’Action Culturelle, Bucharest; Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, Bucharest, Délégation  Wallonie- Bruxelles International, Bucharest; The Policy Center for Roma and Minorities, Bucharest; Europe Direct CENTRAS, Bucharest, and Political Science Students Association University of Bucharest.

The process of continuous definition and institutionalisation of the concept of nation is an important dimension of political and social realities throughout the world. The phenomenon of nation-building permeates multiple areas of politics and everyday life, acquiring diverse forms. Laboratories for numerous nation-building projects across time, post-communist societies can be said to offer a privileged position for observing this protean nature of nationalism.

Far from losing its significance, nationalism in Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, the Caucasus and Central Asia adjusted itself to changing circumstances, political regimes and social orders. Arguably incommensurable, the nation-building strategies and manifestations of nationalism specific to the communist and post-communist periods respectively are strongly connected through a burgeoning “nation-talk”, i.e. the permanent usage of nation and ethnicity as key categories of social and political practices.

Deadline: April 1st, 2012.

The forthcoming issue of History of Communism in Europe will focus on the topic of Communism, Nationalism and State Building in Post-War Europe. The emergence of communism as praxis after the Second World War overlapped with the need of certain nations to reinforce their claim for statehood. This gave rise to a series of historical phenomena that reshaped post-war Europe. In this context, any research on these transformations must address a series of questions: What is the role of national ideology in postwar state formation? How do various ideologies (e.g. communism and nationalism) interact in the complex processes presupposed by state building? Is there a pattern of state formation in communist Europe in comparison with Western Europe or elsewhere? If so, which were the short and long term consequences of it within a post-conflict landscape? Which narratives of identity were employed as post-1945 Europe took shape? Which were the incumbent tensions as a Soviet bloc of socialist nations came about?

International seminar organized by “Identity Narratives and Social Memory” project team
Deadline for submission: 31.03.2012
Date and venue: 29-30.06.2012,The University of Minho, Braga, Portugal

Identity narratives and social memories are very complex themes that require interdisciplinary and multi-method approaches. Although the interest about these issues has considerably grown in the past decades, they are still studied in very fragmented paths.
By bringing together researchers working on these themes from a wide spectrum of disciplines and in light of postcolonial perspectives, this international seminar intends to foster interdisciplinary collaboration and explore sustainable networking. Hence, we welcome scholars from a wide range of disciplines such as Anthropology, Communication Sciences, Computer Sciences, Cultural Studies, Education, Geography, History, Linguistic, Literature, Political Science, Psychology and Sociology.

Central Eastern Europe and the CIS between post-socialist path-dependence, Europeanization and globalization

organizers: National Research University – Higher School of Economics & Research Centre for East European Studies, University of Bremen

place: Moscow (Russia)

date: 29 July – 05 August 2012

Language: English

Deadline for applications: 31.03.2012

The Summer School wants to look at the development of those countries, which until the end of the 1980s were part of the socialist world. Even after more than 20 years since the end of socialism many scholars still see a dominance of post-socialist path-dependences in the political, economic and societal developments of these countries. At the same time the Central Eastern European states, which have joined the EU, have undergone a strong process of Europeanization and it can be argued that the EU in various ways has also had an impact on developments in the post-Soviet countries, most of which are united in the CIS. In addition all countries are subjected to a multitude of pressures resulting from the ongoing process of globalization, ranging from financial crises to cultural exchanges.

Journal Announcement and Call for Submissions

Monsters and the Monstrous
Volume 2, Number 1, Special Issue on Monstrous Memory

The Editors welcome contributions to the journal in the form of articles, reviews, reports, art and/or visual pieces and other forms of submission based around the idea of Monstrosity and Memory.
Memories of the past, whether individual, societal or national constantly invade our everyday lives. Sometimes as the remembrance of monstrous past events that can, and should, never die or be forgotten but also as disruptive and destructive presences that upset, intrude and invade our equilibrium and sense of self.