Comparative urban geography of post-socialist cities

EUGEO (the umbrella organisation of the European geographical societies) has its 4th Congress in Rome, 5-7 September 2013. Submission of abstracts of no more than 250 words is possible from today. There is a session entitled "Comparative urban geography of post-socialist cities". Session code: S07. You find further details here: http://www.eugeo2013.com/call-for-papers
I know that this is perhaps too close to the Tbilisi CAT-ference (11-13 September), nevertheless, I hope some of you or your colleagues will be able to attend. Please circulate this information among your colleagues, especially the younger ones, because there will be some funds available for early carreer researchers.

РАЗВИТИЕ СОВРЕМЕННОГО ГОРОДА С УЧЕТОМ КУЛЬТУРНОГО НАСЛЕДИЯ

13-й Фестиваль «Архитектура и дизайн»

Научно-практическая конференция

«РАЗВИТИЕ СОВРЕМЕННОГО ГОРОДА С УЧЕТОМ КУЛЬТУРНОГО НАСЛЕДИЯ»

Организаторы: НСАУ, RCCHD (EU Eastern Partnership Culture Programme), «Архитектура и престиж», НАУ, «Премьер Экспо»

20 февраля, 10:00–13:30

Международный выставочный центр

Киев, Броварской пр., 15

Павильон №2, зал №8

Модератор – Елена Олейник, вице-президент НСАУ

10:00–10:30 Регистрация участников

10:30-10:45 Вадим Жежерин, президент Киевской организации Национального союза архитекторов Украины, вице-президент НСАУ Вступительное слово, торжественное открытие конференции

10:45-11:00 Елена Олейник, вице-президент НСАУ «Проблемы формирования национальной политики Украины в отношении культурного наследия»

11:00-11:15 Юрий Маслов, директор благотворительной организации «Фонд «Святая София» «Основные положения стратегии сохранения недвижимого культурного наследия Киева»

11:15–11:30 Лилия Гнатюк, доцент Национального авиационного университета «Роль религиозных общин в управлении объектами культурного наследия»

11:30–11:45 Сидорова О.И., доцент НАУ «Типология киевских фасадов»

11:45-12:00 Савчук Г.М., заведующий отделом Управления охраны культурного наследия Киева «Проблемы сохранения и паспортизации недвижимых объектов культурного наследия Киева»

12:00-12:15 Влада Осьмак, Национальный университет «Киево-Могилянская академия» «Проблемы реконструкции Андреевского спуска в Киеве»

12:15-12:30 Нато Цинцабадзе, вице-президент Международного комитета по охране исторических памятников (ICOMOS) в Грузии. «Методы сохранения сложившейся исторической среды города на примере района Бетлеми в Тбилиси»

12:30-12:45 Анна Звиряка, и.о. директора НИИ памятникоохранных исследований «Сохранение исторической среды исторических населенных пунктов Украины»

12.45-13.00 Ольга Пламеницкая, доцент НАОМА «Фортификационное наследие как основной фактор интегральности градостроительной среды Старого города Каменца-Подольского»

13:00-13:15 Дмитрий Антонюк, профессор НАОМА «Творческий путь Н.Б. Чмутиной»

13:15-13:30 Презентация изданий НИИ памятникоохранных исследований, книги «Наталия Борисовна Чмутина: жизненный и творческий путь архитектора»

Public Spaces: new visualities, practices of production and social (re)orderings

Public Spaces: new visualities, practices of production and social (re)orderings

at the 5^th International Urban Geographies of Post-Communist States Conference, 2013, September 11^th-13^th in Tbilisi

The quality of urban space in everyday life, its perception and symbolic meaning depends on the architectural design, its visual appearance, „... which condense and conduct the currents of social time.“ (Holston 1998:37.)

20 years passed since the so called post-soviet, -socialist changes have started, and many of those countries suffered a radical capitalist deregulation, which affected the cities in a manner comparable to those processes in the “west”: (re)privatization of (communal) space, (public) goods etc. as a consequence of a neoliberal globalization. At the first gaze the processes seem very similar, the cities are getting restructured and upgraded, they are getting revamped with steel and glass, and symbolically refurnished. So a redesigning of cities environment followed this restructuring process in New York, London, Berlin, Riga, Astana, Tbilisi, Yerevan, Baku etc. Nevertheless the ways in which those processes in “east” and “west” have been conceptualized in the Urban Studies can be distinguished in two different ways. In the concepts about the changes in “western” cities aesthetic practices and the symbolic economy are focused as main modus operandi. This is opening up new urban spaces of sensual experience, converting cities into industries of entertainment through practices of cultural production, as described by Sharon Zukin (1995), or by terms like mediterranization (Kaschuba 2011), event-city (Bittner 2001) or theming (Beeck 2001). Whereas, strategies of place-making in post-socialist cities are conceptualized within the frameworks of nationalization and production of new memory landscapes (Buchli 2007, Bekus and Medeuova 2011, Manning and Shatirishvili 2009), western cities are perceived as lived spaces.

The question is, whether the processes of re-organizing public spaces are as different as they are being considered to be and whether these processes are pushed by different actors. How do aesthetic and nationalizing practices differ from each other? What are the variables in theoretical groundings of these concepts? What makes these spaces in their qualities as representational, as lived and as perceived spaces (Lefebvre) different? How can we cross the theoretical boundaries in the discussion of urban developments in P.S. cities?

The panel will be opened with an input on contemporary concepts of re-structuring western cities. The participants are asked to prepare (short) inputs for the discussion focused on concrete empirical cases by sketching diverse practices of restructuring P.S. spaces, readings or uses. The ideal way is to enrich the input with visual material (poster or photos) which can be used for a gallery of spatial practices. Here we see a potential for fostering a wider discussion within the CATference.

Contacts:  Madlen Pilz, M.A., madlen.pilz@staff.hu-berlin.de and Dr. Melanie Krebs krebsmel@hu-berlin.de

Humboldt University of Berlin, Institute of European Ethnology, Project “Identity Politics in the South Caucasus. National Representation, Post-socialist Society and Urban Public Space”.

2013 Cultural Policy Research Award

Who will be the 10th Cultural Policy Research Award Winner? 
2013 Call for applications now open! 

The European Cultural Foundation (ECF), the Riksbankens Jubileumsfondand the leading European Network on Cultural management and cultural policy education, ENCATC, have launched today the call for applications for the 2013 Cultural Policy Research Award (CPRA). The winner of the CPRA 2013, worth 10.000 Euro, will be publicly announced in November in Brussels during the Award Ceremony and 10th CPRA Anniversary Celebration.
Candidates (who must hold at least a M.A. degree in social sciences, art & humanities, or public policy research, have European citizenship and must be no older than 35 years old) must submit their applications for the 2013 CPRA by Friday, 31 May 2013 through the online application form on the CPR Award website. Before applying, they are strongly advised to consult the application guidelines. 

The Cultural Policy Research Award was initiated in 2003 by the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) and the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and since 2008, is developed in partnership with and managed by ENCATC. The CPRA annual competition encourages the next generation of cultural policy researchers to undertake comparative and cross-cultural applied research that can inform policymaking and benefit practitioners active in the field. The Award is devoted to innovative research projects which contribute to new knowledge in the field. It brings visibility and recognition to young researchers and affiliates them with a community. 

The prestigious international jury includes: Lluís Bonet – President (University of Barcelona, Spain), Eleonora Belfiore (University of Warwick, UK), Jacques Bonniel (Université Lyon II, France), Timo Cantell (City of Helsinki Urban Facts, Finland), Sanjin Dragojevic (University of Zagreb, Croatia), Mikhail Gnedovsky (Cultural Policy Institute, Russia), Therese Kaufmann (eipcp, Austria). 

Six finalists, selected amongst all applicants, will be invited to the 7th Young Cultural Policy Researchers Forum, alongside the 21st ENCATC Annual Conference in November in Brussels, where they will present their research proposals to the CPRA Jury, Forum participants and ENCATC members and major stakeholders.

For further information and to access the online application system, visit the CPRA website: http://www.encatc.org/pages/index.php?id=19and for additional queries, contact Elizabeth Darley, Research and Communications Officer at ENCATC (e.darley@encatc.org)

SOVIET SCI-FI • NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE

Sponsored by the Program in Russian and Eurasian Studies and
the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

• SLAVIC FILM SERIES  •  SPRING 2013 •

• SOVIET SCI-FI •

•  NOSTALGIA FOR THE FUTURE•

EVERY WEDNESDAY @ 7pm

EAST PYNE 010

(PRINCETON)

ORGANIZED BY

THE GRADUATE STUDENTS IN THE SLAVIC DEPARTMENT

  

February 13th

 Iakov Protazanov's Aelita

(1924)

"ANTA... ODELI... UTA -- What do they mean? You will find out on 30 September at the Ars Cinema." This was how Pravda advertised the premier of Iakov Protozanov's Aelita in 1924. One of the highest budgeted pictures of its time, the film tells an interplanetary love story against the political backdrop of the NEP-era Soviet Union and a concurrent proletarian uprising... on Mars! Famous for its elaborate costumes and set pieces, designed by the Constructivist artist Aleksandra Ekster, the film has been visually compared to such German expressionist classics as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and is loosely based upon Aleksei Tolstoi's 1922 novel of the same name.

ALL FILMS ARE SUBTITLED IN ENGLISH

UPCOMING FILMS:

February 20th - Amphibian Man (1962, dir. Vladimir Chebotaryov and Gennadii Kazanskii)

FORTHCOMING FILMS:

February 13 – Iakov Protazanov, Aelita, (1924)

February 20 – Vladimir Chebotaryov and Gennadii Kazanskii, Amphibian Man, (1962)

February 27 – Aleksandr Gintsburg, The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin, (1965)

March 6 – Andrei Tarkovskii, Solaris, (1973)

March 13 – Leonid Gaidai, Ivan Vasilievich Changes Professions, (1973)

March 27 – Andrei Tarkovskii, Stalker (Part I), (1979)

April 3 – Andrei Tarkovskii, Stalker (Part II), (1979)

April 10 – Evgenii Iufit, short films, (1984 – 89)

April 17 – Vladimir Bortko, Heart of a Dog, (1988)

April 24 – Aleksandr Sokurov, Days of Eclipse, (1988)

May 1 – Aleksei Fedorchenko, First on the Moon (2005)

For more information contact: dhock@princeton.edu

TELEVISION IN EUROPE BEYOND THE IRON CURTAIN: National and Transnational Perspectives Since the 1950s

Call for Papers

TELEVISION IN EUROPE BEYOND THE IRON CURTAIN:

National and Transnational Perspectives Since the 1950s

International interdisciplinary conference

at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

December 5-7, 2013

The rise of television as a mass medium in the 1950s and 1960s took place in many European countries, East and West, at approximately the same time. The changes television brought were not only technological, but also societal, affecting most people’s daily lives. These changes included a rearrangement of living rooms placing the television set in the center and a corresponding readjustment and re-evaluation of public and private spheres. The parallels within Europe and across the Iron Curtain regarding the rapid spread of television towers and TV sets, program development, and other related aspects are at least as striking as the more familiar political and ideological differences.

Enthusiasm and anxieties in the face of the new mass medium could be found in both Western democratic and Eastern state socialist countries. Across the boundaries of the Iron Curtain, television was regarded as a symbol of modernity and popular welfare by those in power. Communists viewed the new medium as an opportunity to bring “culture” to every home and to demonstrate technical progress in the competition with the West, while party functionaries–much like politicians in the West–still had to learn how to present themselves on TV. Censorship was undoubtedly stronger and more encompassing in state socialist countries. Nonetheless, the examples of the “télékratie” in France or the many instances of censorship in the Federal Republic of Germany, especially in the 1960s, suggest that bipolar models that contrast the dictatorial East with the democratic West are no longer adequate. Moreover, the propaganda, technical rivalry, and (attempted) mutual media overtures to enemy populations in the context of the Cold War point to common features of a shared media culture.[1] We need, therefore, to develop concepts that highlight the complex interdependence between East and West, their cooperation but also as their competition, mutual adoptions, imitations, and alienations.[2]  

Taking as a starting point not only a history of the mass media, but also the history of social communication structures including various kinds of actors, platforms, and communication channels, we look for evidence of how public spheres have changed. This approach allows us to broaden our perspective to include social and political changes in which media were central. We, therefore, insist that sociological models of public spheres can and should be applied both to East and West European societies. These models shed light on a society’s inner communicative functioning and allow us to understand the place of mass media within broader societal processes of communication.[3]

In many countries, television shaped post-war national cultures in various ways, such as, for example, promoting the knowledge and use of national standard languages.[4] One the one hand, much historiography describes television as being a surprisingly “national” mass medium.[5] On the other hand, the post-war decades saw the emergence of transnational spheres of interaction such as the creation of “Eurovision” (1954) and its Eastern counterpart “Intervision” (1960), the exchange of programs within and between the two “blocs”[6], or the live broadcast of events like the celebration of Yuri Gagarin’s return from space on Red Square not just in the USSR, GDR or CSSR but also in countries like Sweden or the Netherlands.[7] While there are a number of national television histories and a vast amount of literature on television from various disciplines, transnational historical surveys are few and do not always reflect the current state of research.[8] New publications on historical or contemporary European television history only rarely include state socialist societies in their field of vision.[9]

The conference aims to combine both national and transnational perspectives and will present papers from the fields of history, media and communication studies, and other disciplines. It departs from the observation that television is a very useful lens for understanding the post-war decades in Europe. Studying the history of television in a comparative way will help to paint a more nuanced picture of national societies and to reconsider as well as to overcome the East-West divide. It contributes to the reconstruction of a “divided” and “shared” European post-war history (geteilte Geschichte).[10]

The period under consideration does not end with the collapse of the state socialist regimes. Many of the trends in the 1990s and 2000s such as, for example, the re-establishment of state hegemony in television channels in Russia, are directly linked to earlier developments. Contributions to the post-1991 decades are welcome as long as they imply an historical perspective.

The following sets of questions can be addressed:

·         Which forms of transnational exchange of programs, know-how, ideas or personnel can be identified, and how did they affect national societies and transnational relations? How can these processes change our views on the East-West divide?

·         How did governments in East and West legitimize, institutionalize and carry out censorship, and where can we situate European societies between the extreme descriptions as “totalitarian”, “controlled” on the one hand and “liberal”, “democratic”, and “pluralistic” on the other?

·         Were the 1960s a period of politicization in both East and West, in the contexts of liberalization, students’ movements, and the emergence of new platforms of communication?[11] Can we establish a common chronology of the politicizing and de-politicizing effects of TV?

·         How can we describe the complex interdependence between Eastern and Western television? Which vocabulary, which theoretical perspectives–beyond a schematic binary–are appropriate and productive? What kind of ‘grand récit’ do we need to understand the rise of television culture in Europe?  

·         And last but not least: How did post-war television reflect on its role as a (trans-)national medium? How did the diverse national television programs comment on the apparently obvious fact that “wireless is equally available on either side of the frontier” (Arnheim 1936)?[12]   

The conference will take place at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in the city of Erlangen (Franconia, state of Bavaria, Germany) on December 5-7, 2013. It will be accompanied by a little cultural program in the cities of Erlangen and Nuremberg. Participants from all across Europe as well as from outside Europe are very welcome. Conference languages will be German and English.

Abstracts for papers should be no longer than 600 words and should clearly point out the topic and theses of the paper to be presented including a few references to sources and research literature. Applications should be sent as an attached file (Word, PDF, Open Document) via e-mail to: uni-erlangen.de> by March 15, 2013.

The conference organizers:

Prof. Dr. Julia Obertreis
Lehrstuhl für Neuere und Neueste Geschichte mit dem Schwerpunkt der Geschichte Osteuropas
Department Geschichte
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg
Bismarckstr. 12
91054 Erlangen
julia.obertreis@gesch.phil.uni-erlangen.de


Dr. Sven Grampp

Institut für Theater- und Medienwissenschaft

Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Bismarckstr. 1

91054 Erlangen

Sven.Grampp@gmx.de


Dr. Kirsten Bönker
Universität Bielefeld
Fak. f. Geschichtswissenschaft, Philosophie und Theologie, Abt. Geschichte
Postfach 10 01 31
33501 Bielefeld
kirsten.boenker@uni-bielefeld.de

---

[1] Cf. James Schwoch, Global TV. New Media and the Cold War, 1946-69 (Urbana, Ill. 2009); Thomas Lindenberger (ed.), Massenmedien im Kalten Krieg: Akteure, Bilder, Resonanzen (Köln et al. 2006).

[2] As an example for such a concept see: Jay D. Bolter/ Richard Grusin, Remediation. Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass. 1999).

[3] Jörg Requate, Medien und Öffentlichkeit als Gegenstände historischer Analyse, in: Geschichte und Gesellschaft 25 (1999), pp. 5–33; Ute Frevert, Politische Kommunikation und ihre Medien, in: Ute Frevert/ Wolfgang Braungart (eds.), Sprachen des Politischen. Medien und Medialität in der Geschichte (Göttingen 2004), pp. 7–19. Various contributions in: Gábor Tamás Rittersporn/ Malte Rolf/ Jan C. Behrends (eds.), Sphären von Öffentlichkeit in Gesellschaften sowjetischen Typs. Zwischen partei-staatlicher Selbstinszenierung und kirchlichen Gegenwelten = Public Spheres in Soviet-Type Societies: Between the Great Show of the Party-State and Religious Counter-Cultures (Frankfurt a.M. 2003).

[4] For example in regard to Poland: Patryk Pleskot, Wielki mały ekran. Telewizja a codzienność Polaków w latach sześćdziesiątych (Warsaw 2007), pp. 148–149.

[5] On the “first wave” of international television (from the 1940s to the second half of the 1970s): Peter Goodwin, Television under the Tories. Broadcasting policy 1979-1997 (London 1998), pp. 3–4.

[6] The Centre for Contemporary History (Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung – ZZF) in Potsdam, Germany, has several current research projects on transnational aspects of television beyond the Iron Curtain. See the institution’s website: http://www.zzf-pdm.de.

[7] Cf. Lars Lundgren, Live from Moscow: The Celebration of Yuri Gagarin and Transnational Television in Europe, in: VIEW. Journal of European Television History and Culture (2012) 1/2, pp. 45–55.

[8] Exceptions include: Michele Hilmes, Network Nations: A Transnational History of British and American Broadcasting (New York et al. 2012); Michele Hilmes/ Jason Jacobs (eds.), The Television History Book (London 2008); Fernsehhistoriographie: Geschichte(n) des Fernsehens, theme issue of Montage/AV 14 (2005) 1.

[9] Cf. e.g. Jonathan Bignell/ Andreas Fickers (eds.), A European Television History (Oxford 2008); Jean K. Chalaby, Transnational Television in Europe. Reconfiguring Global Communications Networks (London/ New York 2009). A very recent exception is Anikó Imre/ Timothy Havens/ Katalin Lustyik (eds.), Popular Television in Eastern Europe During and Since Socialism (London/ New York 2012).

[10] Shalini Randeira, Geteilte Geschichte und verwobene Moderne, in: Jörn Rüsen (ed.), Zukunftsentwürfe. Ideen für eine Kultur der Veränderung (Frankfurt a.M. 1999), pp. 87–96.

[11] Cf. on West Germany: Christina von Hodenberg, Konsens und Krise. Eine Geschichte der westdeutschen Medienöffentlichkeit 1946-1973 (Göttingen 2006); Meike Vogel, Unruhe im Fernsehen. Protestbewegung und öffentlich-rechtliche Berichterstattung in den 1960er Jahren (Göttingen 2010); on Czechoslovakia: Paulina Bren, The Greengrocer and his TV: The Culture of Communism After the 1968 Prague Spring (Ithaca, NY 2010).

[12] Concerning Radio and Television: Rudolf Arnheim, Radio. The Art of Sound (London 1936), p. 233.

Steven E. Harris. Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin. Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The John Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Steven E. Harris. Communism on Tomorrow Street: Mass Housing and Everyday Life after Stalin. Woodrow Wilson Center Press and The John Hopkins University Press, 2013.

Steven E. Harris is an associate professor of history at the University of Mary Washington.

http://communismontomorrowstreet.umwblogs.org

This fascinating and deeply researched book examines how, beginning under Khrushchev in 1953, a generation of Soviet citizens moved from the overcrowded communal dwellings of the Stalin era to modern single-family apartments, later dubbed khrushchevka. Arguing that moving to a separate apartment allowed ordinary urban dwellers to experience Khrushchev's thaw, Steven E. Harris fundamentally shifts interpretation of the thaw, conventionally understood as an elite phenomenon.

Harris focuses on the many participants eager to benefit from and influence the new way of life embodied by the khrushchevka, its furniture, and its associated consumer goods. He examines activities of national and local politicians, planners, enterprise managers, workers, furniture designers and architects, elite organizations (centrally involved in creating cooperative housing), and ordinary urban dwellers. Communism on Tomorrow Street also demonstrates the relationship of Soviet mass housing and urban planning to international efforts at resolving the "housing question" that had been studied since the nineteenth century and led to housing developments in Western Europe, the United States, and Latin America as well as the USSR.


Tables and Figures xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction: Moving to the Separate Apartment 1

Part I. Making the Separate Apartment
1 The Soviet Path to Minimum Living Space and the Single-Family Apartment 27
2 Khrushchevka: The Soviet Answer to the Housing Question 71

Part II. Distributing Housing, Reordering Society
3 The Waiting List 111
4 Class and Mass Housing 154

Part III. Living and Consuming the Communist Way of Life
5 The Mass Housing Community 191
6 New Furniture 228
7 The Politics of Complaint 267

Conclusion: Soviet Citizens’ Answer to the Housing Question 300
Notes 309
Bibliography 353
Index 377

"Harris is the first historian to explore fully the role of Khrushchev era mass housing as a catalytic component of what party ideologues and Soviet citizens called the 'communist way of life.'... A pathbreaking study of the ways Soviet citizens claimed positions of agency in late-socialist society, Communism on Tomorrow Street meticulously assembles responses collected from visitor books at exhibitions, public meetings, and housing department petitions to create a fine-grained account of what was know as the 'the housing question,' and how it was politicized—often in ways that differed sharply from the methods and message preferred by Khrushchev's regime."—Greg Castillo, University of California, Berkeley

"Harris does many things superbly in Communism on Tomorrow Street. His chief aim is to write a social history of Khrushchev's mass housing campaign. He argues that movement to single-family apartments was the way most Soviet citizens experienced the thaw after Stalin. Harris thus challenges long-held assumptions about the centrality of the intelligentsia and high culture in the thaw. Moreover, he shows that the mass-housing campaign had many of the trappings of earlier, Stalinist campaigns, except in one crucial regard: it was non-violent. The result is a major contribution—written in elegant, accessible prose—to the emerging historiography of the post-Stalin period."—Stephen Bittner, Sonoma State University

Socialist Realism in Eastern and Central European Literatures: Origins, Institutions, Discourses

Socialist Realism in Eastern and Central European Literatures: Origins, Institutions, Discourses
An International Conference at the University of Sheffield (15-16 March 2013)

http://socialist-realism-in-eceu.blogspot.hu/

CONFERENCE AIMS

The unification of Eastern Bloc cultures was intertwined with major shifts in institutional structures and the corresponding introduction of socialist realism in each state. This conference will comparatively examine processes related to the institutionalization of the production and consumption of literature, cultural policies and aesthetic discourses in post-WWII East and Central Europe.

Today, when nearly all major cultural and political projects have an international character, it is all the more vital to examine past attempts at the creation of a unified cultural and political sphere. The expansion of socialist rule into Eastern and Central Europe after the Second World War was not exclusively a political enterprise; to no less of an extent it was an exercise in transforming the national consciousness of the societies involved in the spirit of (forced) internationalism. In so far as literature is at the core of a nation’s identity, it is important to examine steps taken towards a unification of literary production and consumption following the introduction of socialist rule in East and Central European countries, a process that took nearly four decades.

At the same time, it is crucial to remember that only in a comparative context can researchers do justice to the complexity of the matter. Concentrating on a particular national context cannot give one a full idea of the cultural and political mechanics involved in the construction of the new totalitarian reality. For this reason the project will examine processes related to the institutionalization of the production and consumption of literature, specifically cultural policies and aesthetic discourse. Participants of the conference will investigate how similar events and procedures, because they were initiated and implemented by Soviet authorities, were adapted to specific cultural contexts, and how, in turn, the centralized cultural policy responded to the particularities of each country.

Contributors will introduce primary archival documents– openly published and secret reports of writers’ congresses; transcripts of meetings between writers, readers and party officials; materials of international literary and cultural events; and theoretical analyses and practical instructions related to the implementation of a unified socialist method of writing across Eastern Europe. By comparing and contrasting similar events and processes in different cultural and political contexts, we aim to paint a more comprehensive picture of the formation of socialist ideology in Eastern and Central Europe, the foundations of the Cold War and, last but not least, the building blocks of the recent cultural memory that is part and parcel of European cultural heritage today.


CONFERENCE PROGRAM


15 March, Friday

9.30 – 9.45             Introductory remarks Evgeny DOBRENKO

9.45 – 11.30             SESSION 1. Chair Tamás SCHEIBNER

9.45 – 10.20     Hans GÜNTHER (University of Bielefeld, Germany)
The Export of Soviet Culture: Socialist Realism in Post-War Eastern Europe. An Introduction

10.20 – 10.40   Natalia SKRADOL (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev / Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)
How the West Read the East: Western Responses to Socialist Realism

10.40 – 11.00   Alexander KIOSSEV (Sofia University, Bulgaria)
Post-Socialist Realism: The Poetics of Autobiographies and Memoirs, 1990–2012

11.00 – 11.30    Discussion
Coffee break
12.00 – 13.30          SESSION 2. Chair Evgeny DOBRENKO

12.00 – 12.20    René BÍLIK (Trnava University / Institute of Slovak Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia)
On the Issue of Folkishness in Socialist Realist Prose

12.20 – 12.40    Dalia SATKAUSKYTE (Vilnius University, Lithuania)
Deconstructing Socialist Realism by Its Own Means

12.40 – 13.00    Pavel JANÁČEK (Institute for Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic)
How Popular Was Socialist Realism?

13.00 – 13.30    Discussion
Lunch break
15.00 – 17.00          SESSION 3. Chair Petr A. BÍLEK

15.00 – 15.20    Angelo MITCHIEVICI (Ovidius University, Constanţa, Romania)
Socialist Realism and Criticism of Decadence: Totalitarian Biopolitics

15.20 – 15.40    Imre József BALÁZS (Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania)
From Avant-Garde to Socialist Realism: Transforming the Literary Discourse in Hungarian and Romanian Literature

15.40 – 16.00   Tamás SCHEIBNER (Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest, Hungary)
Introducing Socialist Realism into Hungarian Literary Studies

16.00 – 16.30   Discussion

Dinner (18.00)


16 March, Saturday

9.30 – 11.30             SESSION 4. Chair David NORRIS

9.30 – 9.50      Petr A. BÍLEK (Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic)
Materialized Ideologies: The Converting of Abstract Entities into Empirical Objects in Czech Fiction, Film, and Propaganda Posters of the 1950s

9.50 – 10.10     Loreta MAČIANSKAITÉ (Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences, Vilnius)
The History of the One Lithuanian Film Script: The Inversion of Socialist Realism

10.10 – 10.30   Vít SCHMARC (Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic)
Ideological Interpellations in the Official Culture of Czech Socialist Realism

10.30 – 10.50   Wojciech TOMASIK (Kazimierz Wielki University, Bydgoszcz, Poland)
                                 Made in Poland, Or Is Socialist Realism a Genuine Article?

10.50 – 11.30    Discussion

Coffee break

12.00 – 14.00 SESSION 5. Chair Wojciech TOMASIK

12.00 – 12.20    Plamen DOINOV (New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria)
The Sovietization of the Bulgarian Literature and the 'Bulgarization' of Socialist Realism

12.20 – 12.40    David NORRIS (University of Nottingham, UK)
The Yugoslav Variant of Socialist Realism

12.40 – 13.00   Valentyna KHARKHUN (Shevchenko Institute of Literature, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine)
Artistic Versions of World War II in Ukrainian Socialist Realist Literature (1941–1943)

13.00 – 13.20   Petr ŠÁMAL (Institute of Czech Literature, Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic)
The Historicism of Czech Stalinism

13.20 – 14.00   Discussion and final remarks

Международная научная конференция студентов, аспирантов и молодых ученых «Ломоносов»

С 8 по 12 апреля 2013 года в рамках Международного молодежного научного форума «Ломоносов» в Московском государственном университете имени М.В.Ломоносова пройдет юбилейная XX Международная научная конференция студентов, аспирантов и молодых ученых «Ломоносов» ( http://lomonosov-msu.ru/rus/event/1600/ ).

1. Официальный сайт конференции — http://lomonosov-msu.ru/. На сайте представлена общая информация о конференции, тематика и структура каждой секции, правила оформления тезисов докладов по секциям конференции, система электронной регистрации и подачи тезисов - http://lomonosov-msu.ru/rus/lom_13_struct.html
2. Работа конференции пройдет по 33 секциям.
3. Рабочими языками конференции являются русский и английский.
4. Все желающие принять участие в конференции представляют в организационный комитет тезисы докладов для отбора к участию. Тезисы должны быть представлены до 25 февраля 2013 года (включительно) ТОЛЬКО с помощью системы электронной регистрации на сайте http://lomonosov-msu.ru/. Заявки, поступившие по почте или по электронной почте (e-mail), не рассматриваются и не регистрируются.
5. Для участников конференции будет издан DVD-диск с тезисами докладов конференции (с ISBN). Все материалы конференции будут размещены на сайте конференции.
6. По итогам конференции оргкомитет по представлению экспертных советов секций награждает авторов лучших докладов почетными дипломами конференции, в соответствии с установленными критериями выдвигает победителей секций для награждения премией поддержки талантливой молодежи России.
7. По результатам работы секций по представлению экспертных советов лучшие доклады будут рекомендованы к публикации в реферируемых научных изданиях Московского университета.

В 2013 в рамках Международного молодежного научного форума «Ломоносов» пройдут дополнительные мероприятия, посвященные вопросам интеграции научной и инновационной деятельности в учебный процесс, конкурс научных проектов молодых ученых и многое другое. Информация об этих мероприятиях появится на порталеhttp://lomonosov-msu.ru в ближайшее время.

Call for the Jane Addams Award for the best article in urban and community sociology

The Jane Addams Award (formerly the Park Article Award) goes to the author(s) of the best scholarly article in community and urban sociology published in the past two years. Nominations are now being sought for articles that appeared in 2011 or 2012. Nominations should include standard bibliographic informationabout the work and a brief comment on its merits. Self nominations are welcome. 

Please send article nominations electronically to the committee members by March 1, 2013:
Andrew Deener, University of Connecticut, andrew.deener@uconn.edu
Van Tran, University of Pennsylvania, vantran@wharton.upenn.edu
Liza Weinstein, Northeastern University,
L.Weinstein@neu.ed