Funding: Title VIII Short-Term Grant and George F. Kennan Fellowship Competitions

The Kennan Institute is pleased to announce its competitions for both the Title VIII Short-Term Grant and the George F. Kennan Fellowship.

Detailed information about each grant is below, and more information about all other opportunities can be found here: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/kennan-institute-fellowships-and-internships.

TITLE VIII SHORT-TERM GRANTS | DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

This grant is for those scholars whose research in the social sciences or humanities focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and the countries of Eurasia, and who demonstrate a particular need to utilize the library, archival, and other specialized resources of the Washington, D.C. area. Policy-relevant research is preferred. Applicants are required to hold an MA degree or higher, or demonstrate commensurate professional achievement. Applicants must be U.S. citizens. More information on that grant can be found here: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/opportunity/kennan-institute-title-viii-supported-short-term-grant.

GEORGE F. KENNAN FELLOWSHIP | DEADLINE: SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Fellows will be based a the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. for three-month residencies focused on diverse, policy-oriented sectors such as media, business, local government, law, civil society, and academia to examine important political, social, economic, cultural, and historical issues in Russia, Ukraine, and the region. The fellowship aims to build bridges between traditional academia and the policy world, as well as to maintain and increase collaboration among researchers from Russia, Ukraine, the U.S., and around the globe. The fellowships are funded by a grant from Carnegie Corporation of New York. There are no citizenship requirements for this grant.

Applicants may apply individually or as a team. If applying as a team of two applicants, the applicants must be citizens of at least two different countries. More information can be found here: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/opportunity/george-f-kennan-fellowship.

Please send questions about either grant to Victoria Pardini (Victoria.pardini@wilsoncenter.org)

CFA: Postdoc in Refugee, Migration or Transcultural Studies, University of Missouri

Deadline: September 30, 2022

The School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (SLLC) is excited to announce the availability of two-year postdoctoral research positions at the University of Missouri beginning in fall 2023. The Preparing Future Faculty – Faculty Diversity (PFFFD) Postdoctoral Program is designed to promote faculty diversity by developing scholars for tenure-track faculty positions. Given the high rate of conversion of these postdocs into tenure-track positions, together with the sustained financial and professional support provided by the program, we hope that you will apply, if eligible, or share the Call for Applications (https://gradschool.missouri.edu/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/PFFFD-2023-Call-for-Applications.pdf) with current doctoral students.

 

The SLLC seeks scholars with research specializations in Refugee, Migration, or Transcultural Studies to join a vibrant community of faculty members building an interdisciplinary program at the University of Missouri. Preference will be given to research with a Maghreb, Chinese, or Russian/Post-Soviet emphasis, but we encourage interested scholars in other related fields to apply.

 

Please contact Dr. Kristin Kopp with any questions regarding this opportunity: koppkr@missouri.edu.

CFA: two PhD studentships at ZZF Potsdam

Deadline: September 19, 2022

The Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History (ZZF) Potsdam, Department I (Communism and Society), seeks to employ two Doctoral Students (f/m/d) for the ERC-funded project "Perestroika from Below: Participation, Subjectivities, and Emotional Communities across ‘the End of History’, 1980-2000," under the supervision of PD (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) Dr. Juliane Fürst. The employment period is previewed as November 1, 2022 – October 31 , 2026; the starting date can be negotiated. The positions are part-time (65%). The salary is paid according to the collective bargaining agreement for public employees in Germany (TV-L 13).

The project “Perestroika from Below" intends to research and write a new history of a well-known, yet under-researched, moment in Soviet history, countering the dominant perception of perestroika as primarily reforms from above. It wants to redirect the scholarly gaze towards the large number of Soviet citizens who participated in and sponsored the ambitious attempt to redefine Soviet life, history and future in the 1980s and 90s. With the help of oral history interviews and other ego-documents as well as archival and published sources, the project aims to reconstruct individuals’ path into their perestroika experience and follow their trajectories into the 1990s. For more information please visit https://zzf-potsdam.de/en/forschung/projekte/perestroika-below.

Description and Tasks

The successful applicants will be an integral part of the five-year project “Perestroika from Below’, contributing to and benefitting from being part of a strong team of international researchers and a wide network of scholars worldwide. The project language is English. Applicants are expected to have knowledge of one of the languages of the post-Soviet space. Proposals dealing with non- Russian themes are actively encouraged. We are looking for dissertation ideas that take a wider and innovative perspective on Perestroika, which does not necessarily have to be political or economic. We are deeply committed to a view both from below and from the periphery. We are open to any kind of methodological approach but encourage oral history as a tool, especially since the project is also designed to interrogate authorial subjectivities. The doctoral students commit to contribute to the project through active participation in workshop and conferences, dissemination of their work through academic and non-academic channels and small organisational support.

Requirements

Applicants must have a Masters’ degree in history or cultural studies or in a related field. Fluent English language skills (min. C1 level) and competency in one or more of the languages of the post-Soviet space are prerequisite.

The ZZF is a research institute for German and European contemporary history in the 20th century and a member of the Leibniz Association. The ZZF offers an exciting research environment and a motivated and cooperative working atmosphere as well as flexible working hours. We attach great importance to optimal scientific advancement and support our staff in their personal and academic development. 

The ZZF is an equal opportunities employer and particularly welcomes applications from women and minorities. These will, in cases of equal merit, receive preferential consideration. This also applies to severely disabled applicants.

Please send the usual documentation (CV, motivational letter, academic certificates) as well as a project proposal (not more than 2000 words) using the reference number WM 06-2022 by September 19, 2022 only via email as ONE PDF to: bewerbung@zzf-potsdam.de. Interviews will be held shortly thereafter.

For further questions concerning tasks, requirements and the dissertation please contact PD Dr. Juliane Fürst: fuerst@zzf-potsdam.de. During the application process, we store and process the data you send us. You can object to the processing of your data by ZZF at any time via bewerbung@zzf-potsdam.de. In our data protection information under https://zzf-potsdam.de/de/datenschutzhinweise you will be comprehensively informed about the collection, processing and use of your personal data. There you will also find the link to a PGP public key if you would like to send your application digitally encrypted.

Job: Assistant Professor of Eurasian History and Russian Imperial Relations, Bucknell

Deadline: September 12, 2022

The Department of History at Bucknell is pleased to announce a job opening in Eurasian History and/or Russian Imperial Relations, to begin August 2023. PhD in History required by start date. Please contact Jennifer Thomson, search chair, with any questions: jct021@bucknell.edu.

The Department of History at Bucknell University invites applications for a full-time, tenure-track position in Eurasia with a focus on Russian imperial relations, at the level of assistant professor, to begin in August 2023. Research approach and geographical area are open, with particular interest taken in candidates focusing on gender and/or sexuality. The successful candidate will teach introductory courses on the Russian Empire and/or the Soviet Union or post-Soviet Russia, and upper-level courses in the candidate’s areas of expertise. Such electives could include the Mongols, the Khanates, the Silk Road, Russian colonial/imperial expansion, Muslim women in the Communist/post-Communist world, extractivist politics in Central Asia and Eastern Europe, independence and decolonization movements, and non-European Russian Indigenous movements and minoritized peoples. Ph.D. in History required at time of employment.

Interested candidates should submit a letter of application; a curriculum vitae; a sample of scholarship; and three letters of recommendation. Review of applications will begin on September 12, 2022 and continue until the position is filled. Applications will only be accepted through Bucknell's career site (careers.bucknell.edu).

Bucknell University, an Equal Opportunity Employer, believes that students learn best in a diverse, inclusive community and is therefore committed to academic excellence through diversity in its faculty, staff, and students. We seek candidates who are committed to Bucknell’s efforts to create a climate that fosters the growth and development of a diverse student body, and we welcome applications from members of groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education.

--

Jennifer Thomson

Associate Professor of History

NEH Chair in the Humanities, 2021-2024

Bucknell University

Coleman 67

she/her/hers

(570) 577-1613

CFP: The Hungarian Historical Review

Deadline: September 30, 2022

The Hungarian Historical Review (https://www.jstor.org/journal/hunghistrevi) invites submissions for its first issue in 2023, the theme of which will be

Modernity Bottom-Up: How Popular Perceptions and Practices Changed the Ideas of Modernity

The deadline for the submission of abstracts: September 30, 2022.

The deadline for the accepted papers: November 30, 2022.

While the study of bottom-up perspectives has significantly enriched our understanding of several fields of research, such as the history of nationalism and religion, the history of the idea of modernity is still dominated by a focus on the contributions of elites, which are implicitly entirely adequate for a nuanced grasp of this ensemble of cultural practices, norms, and attitudes, however admittedly complex it may be. This is all the more puzzling given that modernity has profoundly reshaped entire societies since its emergence in the eighteenth century. Modernization understood as “a body of experience involving a radically new kind of understanding of both time and space” (Berman 1988: 15) is a phenomenon from which, clearly, no one is exempt. Furthermore, the same propaganda that aimed to awaken a sense of national consciousness also spread an unconditional faith in progress, human and technoscientific. It is thus safe to assume that historians can investigate popular ideas about and reactions to change and can reexamine the agency of those who were often considered passive subjects of the various efforts and interventions which came with campaigns to “modernize.”

The Hungarian Historical Review invites research papers that examine how popular behaviors and practices challenged the mainstream, usually optimistic discourses crafted by the modernizing elites about progress and growth from the Enlightenment to the present day.

The geographical focus of the issue is Central and Eastern Europe. However, we do not confine ourselves to the strict geographical borders of the region, especially in the case of comparative papers.

We welcome proposals from scholars at all stages of their careers pursuing work on any of the aspects of the questions raised above.

This special issue particularly welcomes papers discussing the following fields:

• overlapping histories of nation building and modernization, seen from below
• methodological approaches, documents, and narrative sources that make possible to discern popular perceptions of modernity
• critical perceptions of urban modernity
• rural populations and modernization
• anxiety about, reservations concerning, or resistance to modernization as incentive of popular discontents
• strikes and workers’ movements reinterpreted alongside attitudes towards modernity
• modern experiences that cut across boundaries of ethnicity, class, religion, or gender
• popular perceptions of ecological degradation linked to modernization
• challenges put by modernity to popular religiosity and other faith-based understandings of the world

Please send an abstract of no more than 500 words and a short biographical note with a selected list of the author’s three most important publications (we do not accept full CVs) no later than September 30, 2022.

Proposals should be submitted to the special editor of the issue by email:

Eszik.Veronika@abtk.hu

The editors will ask the authors of selected papers to submit their final articles (max. 10,000 words) no later than November 30, 2022.

The articles will be published after a double-blind peer-review process. We provide proofreading for contributors who are not native speakers of English.

All articles must conform to our submission guidelines.

The Hungarian Historical Review is a peer-reviewed international quarterly of the social sciences and humanities, the geographical focus of which is Hungary and East-Central Europe. For additional information, including submission guidelines, please visit the journal’s website: www.hunghist.org

CFP: AACAPS Conference

Deadline: September 30, 2022

Dear ASEEES colleagues,

We would like to extend our cordial invitation to submit your paper and panel proposals to our bi-annual conference of Australasian Association for Communist and Post-communist Studies (AACAPS) that will take place in Sydney on 2-3 February 2023. 

UNSW will be the host of the conference.

 

The theme of the conference is 'War, Peace, and the Post-Pandemic World: Eurasian Perspectives', which reflects the key developments happening in our region of interest and more broadly, globally. 

As always, we welcome researchers and their presentations in all fields with the topics directly or indirectly related to the region/countries of our interest.

 

The conference will be in hybrid format, although we aim to have a significant in-person presence at the conference, so we can again enjoy invaluable conversations beyond the presentations and Q&A time slots. 

 

Both panel and individual paper submissions are welcome. 

 

Please send the following details to aacapsconference@gmail.com:

1) name(s), 2) current institutional affiliation(s), 3) title/position(s), 4) postal address and emails, 5) title of panel or paper, 6) panel description and/or abstract of paper (200 words or less). 

 

Deadline for all proposals is 30 September 2022.

 

Best wishes,

 

Dr. Alexandr Akimov

President

AACAPS

Nominations: Early Slavic Studies Article Prize

Deadline: September 25, 2022

Dear Colleagues,

The Early Slavic Studies Association (ESSA) announces its prize for best article in the field of Early Slavic Studies for 2022. Articles published between September 1, 2020 and August 31, 2022 will be eligible for the award. The prize committee is also willing to consider a special award for best translation of primary source material in the field, to be awarded at the committee’s discretion.

All nominated works must be in English. The committee will accept both nominations and self-nominations. Authors must be members of ESSA in good standing. Please contact our secretary, Ashley Morse here to confirm your eligibility. All nominations should be sent to the chair of the prize committee, Maria Grazia Bartolini (maria.bartolini@unimi.it) by Sunday, September 25, 2022.

With best wishes,

Maria Grazia Bartolini 
Professoressa Associata di Filologia slava
Università degli Studi di Milano 
Dipartimento di Lingue, Letterature, Culture e Mediazioni
Piazza S. Alessandro 1 
20123 Milano

CFP: Transnational Approaches to Modern Europe Workshop

Deadline: September 6, 2022

The Transnational Approaches to Modern Europe Workshop (TAMEW) is pleased to announce its call for papers for autumn 2022. The workshop brings together an interdisciplinary group of University of Chicago PhD students, faculty, and outside scholars to discuss the methodology and practice of transnational and comparative research in the field of European history.

We invite proposals from graduate students and early-career scholars from the University and other institutions to present and discuss papers at the workshop for the upcoming autumn quarter. If you are interested in presenting later in the year, please also let us know and indicate your preference for winter or spring quarter.

Papers are made available to workshop members a week before each workshop. A typical session involves a brief introduction of the paper, comments from a designated respondent, and open discussion. Descriptions of past papers can be found on the workshop’s website. 

During the 2022-23 year, TAMEW will meet in person on alternate Wednesdays at 4:30 p.m. in the Social Science Research Building following the vaccination and masking guidelines laid out by the University. While we plan to be in-person for the majority of sessions, we are open to having some virtual sessions. If you have a strong preference for virtual or in-person sessions, please let us know. 

Proposals should include:

• Name, position, and department

• Provisional title and type of project (dissertation proposal, chapter, article draft, etc.)

• Short abstract or description of the work (up to 150 words)

• The quarter in which you would like to present

• Suggested respondent to introduce the paper

Please submit your proposals by email to the workshop co-coordinators Laura Cremer (cremer@uchicago.edu) and Julia Mead (juliamead@uchicago.edu) by September 6, 2022. The schedule for TAMEW Autumn Quarter will be announced by the end of September.

CFP: "Intercomprehension-based L2 learning and teaching," University of Gdańsk

Deadline: September 15, 2022

We are pleased to announce the international conference "Intercomprehension-based L2 learning and teaching" (University of Gdańsk (Poland) / online, 2-3 December 2022).

The conference focusses on the acquisition and teaching of second/foreign languages by speakers of genealogically and/or typologically close languages (L1 or L2). It is articulated into three non-parallel sessions, each devoted to a different perspective on the phenomenon of interest:
 
1. Second Language Acquisition perspectives
2. Language Teaching perspectives
3. Learning and teaching of L2 Polish
 
Sessions 1 and 2 welcome papers on any language family. Session 3 focusses exclusively on L2 Polish as an exemplar case study of L2 acquisition by speakers of closely related languages (East Slavic).

Invited speakers:
Elisabetta Bonvino, Università di Roma 3
Christof Heinz, Universität Leipzig
Katarzyna Bednarska, Uniwersytet Łódzki

A detailed call for papers and the abstract submission instructions can be found on the conference website: https://sites.google.com/unibg.it/icl2/english

A selection of the conference proceedings will be published as a special issue in an international peer-reviewed journal.

The initiative is generously supported by the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA).

Best regards,
Jacopo Saturno, Università di Bergamo (jacopo.saturno@unibg.it)
Przemysław Gębal, Politechnika Śląska / Uniwersytet Warszawski

CFP: The Russian Review

Deadline: September 1, 2022

Rupture: When Things Fall Apart

 

We were warned, repeatedly. But on February 24, 2022, the vast majority of Ukrainians, Russians, and the rest of the world was stunned. Not only by the Russian invasion of Ukraine but also by how rapidly the order of things can radically change and crumble. In response, we are devoting a special issue of The Russian Review to the theme of Rupture: When Things Fall Apart. By “rupture” we imagine a sudden rift in historical time but also a spatial dis- and relocation that manifests in the fragmentation of regions and world areas as political units and subjects of knowledge. The peoples of Russia, Eastern Europe, and Eurasia have had recurrent experiences with socio-political and historical rupture, and our field has done extensive work on previous ruptures, most notably 1917 and 1991, years of rupture that “shook” and reconfigured the world.

 

These ruptures are often accompanied by violence and brutality, with the physical destruction of lives and the very ground of former life. But they are also accompanied by a vertiginous sense of free fall and disorientation, with a sense of being launched on a journey with no signposts and no destination that raises the most fundamental questions. One of the most jarring aspects of rupture is how quickly everyday life adapts –  even under hellish conditions – and settles into a new normal. Even so, nothing can be taken for granted and everything needs to be reexamined.

 

The Russian Review invites scholars in our field to draw on their expertise to reflect on the experience of rupture in history, literature, the arts and media, society, politics, social and individual psychologies in order to illuminate the loss and trauma, the uncertainty and the possibility that rupture entails at the moment/site of rupture and beyond.  

 

The essays should bring past or ongoing research to bear on reflections about the present rupture to expand and interpret contemporary debates. Hoping to transcend the limitations of the news cycle, we are seeking research and knowledge-based thought pieces that probe the deeper historical, artistic, epistemological, experiential, and existential facets of rupture, as well as the fundamental debates and changes underway in the field of Russian Studies.

 

To be considered for the special issue, please send an abstract of approximately 500 words outlining your approach, sources, and argument or perspective to rusrev@ku.edu by September 1, 2022. Authors of selected abstracts will be notified soon after and will be expected to submit a complete essay manuscript (max. 5,000 words, including endnotes) by December 15, 2022. The cluster will then go through a dual review process by the editorial collegium and an external blind review.

Job: Program coordinator position with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Russian Flagship Program

Deadline: September 30, 2021


Working with the Russian Flagship's leadership team, and with local and national partners, coordinate the Russian Flagship Program, a U.S. Department of Defense-funded program to provide undergraduate students the opportunity to reach a professional level of competence (a Superior level proficiency) in Russian by graduation. Work both independently and with a team to promote an inclusive program for a diverse population of students.

Find more information at https://jobs.hr.wisc.edu/en-us/job/510376/russian-flagship-program-coordinator

Academic program management (60%):
-Oversee daily management of the Russian Flagship Program to maintain compliance with terms of federal award and to meet local needs.
-Assist with the management of the Russian Flagship tutoring program.
-Oversee student records management.
-Assist with Russian Flagship student advising.
-Assist with developing and implementing co-curricular activities.
-Assist with the development of grant proposals and write grant reports.
-Assist with managing program budget and with preparing budget reports.
-Manage scholarship awards.
-Participate and represent the program at the national Language Flagship annual meeting and on Language Flagship or other committees, working collaboratively throughout the year with federal funders and partner programs on program administration.
-Other administrative tasks, as needed.
Communications, recruitment and outreach (40%):
-Develop and implement strategies for national, regional and campus recruitment efforts to recruit and retain a diverse student population.
-Design, develop and implement strategies to publicize the program at national, regional, state and campus levels, and to communicate with all program stakeholders, faculty, staff, tutors and students.
-Develop and implement strategies to create, author and disseminate vibrant print, web and social media.
-Recruit and supervise Russian Flagship student ambassadors.
-Represent the program at conferences, resource fairs, and other venues for prospective student recruitment.
-Develop and sustain partnerships with other campus units and with national partners to further the program's academic goals and collaborate on student recruitment and retention.
-Coordinate admissions and serve on admissions committee.
-Develop and implement strategies for K-12 student outreach.

CONTACT:

Dianna Murphy
diannamurphy@wisc.edu
608-262-1473
Relay Access (WTRS): 7-1-1 (out-of-state: TTY: 800.947.3529, STS: 800.833.7637) and above Phone number (See RELAY_SERVICE for further information. )

Job: Post Doctoral Fellow in Slavic Cultural Studies/Slavic Linguistics (University of Alberta)

 

Deadline: September 1, 2021

Post Doctoral Fellow in Slavic Cultural Studies/Slavic Linguistics

Faculty of Arts - Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies

Competition No.  -    A110845532 Closing Date  -    Sep 01, 2021

A Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Slavic Cultural Studies and/or Slavic Linguistics will be offered by the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, in collaboration with the Kule Folklore Centre, at the Faculty of Arts, University of Alberta. The fellowship is for up to one year, depending on the candidate’s project and qualifications. Although all applications in fields associated with the Slavic cultural studies and Slavic linguistics will be considered, research proposals in the areas of identities, ideologies, diaspora, multilingualism, language policies and politics, as well as foreign language education will be given preference.

The successful candidate will be working on the proposed project in collaboration with a scholar in related fields of expertise from the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies (80%). The Post-Doctoral Fellow will also contribute to projects being carried out at the Ukrainian Kule Folklore Centre (20%). The Post-Doctoral Fellow will be expected to contribute to research life and culture in the department, engaging with both academic and broader communities. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will be given an opportunity to contribute to teaching in the department, depending on qualifications.

Salary is $38,000 (CND) plus benefits as outlined in the Pay & Benefits section of the postdoctoral website. In addition to the salary, economy airfare to and from Edmonton will be provided and an additional $2,000 (CND) is available for research-related expenses. 

This competition is open to Canadian citizens, permanent residents of Canada, and foreign nationals.

Qualifications:

• Applicants must have received a PhD (or Candidate of Sciences degree from a post-Soviet country) within the past four years at the time of application. Applicants who are scheduled to receive their degree by the end of September 2021 are also eligible to apply, if they submit confirmatory documents.

• The successful applicant will be expected to take up the postdoctoral appointment at the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies from November 1, 2021, but no later than January 31, 2022.

• Knowledge of English is required.

• Knowledge of at least one Slavic language taught in the department (Russian, Polish, Ukrainian) is also required.

• Cover Letter

• CV

• a statement of research interests and experience (maximum one page, 12 pt font, double spaced) 

• a research plan/statement of the proposed postdoctoral programme of work (maximum two pages, 12 pt font, double spaced)

Apply online by submitting:

Applicants are also expected to contact two referees and arrange to have them submit their letters of reference via e-mail to alla.nedashkivska@ualberta.ca by the application deadline. Please enter “A110845532 REFERENCE” in the subject line.

To assist the University in complying with mandatory reporting requirements of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (R203(3)(e), please include the first digit of your Canadian Social Insurance Number at the bottom of your cover letter. If you do not have a Canadian Social Insurance Number, please indicate this in your cover letter.

How to Apply

Apply Online

Note: Online applications are accepted until midnight Mountain Standard Time of the closing date.

All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadians and permanent residents will be given priority. If suitable Canadian citizens or permanent residents cannot be found, other individuals will be considered. The University of Alberta is committed to an equitable, diverse, and inclusive workforce. We welcome applications from all qualified persons. We encourage women; First Nations, Métis and Inuit persons; members of visible minority groups; persons with disabilities; persons of any sexual orientation or gender identity and expression; and all those who may contribute to the further diversification of ideas and the University to apply.

CFP: The Red Globe. Writing the World in Eastern European Travel Literature

Deadline: September 30, 2021

The Red Globe. Writing the World in Eastern European Travel Literature of the Cold War
------
International Conference

1–3 Jun 2022, Leibniz-Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin (ZfL)

Organisers: Susanne Frank (EXC 2020/HU Berlin), Clemens Günther (FU Berlin), Matthias Schwartz (ZfL Berlin)

The conference will be held in cooperation with the projects “(Post-)Soviet Literary Cosmopolis” and “Writing Berlin” of the Cluster of Excellence Temporal Communities.

Keynote speakers:

    Eleonory Gilburd (University of Chicago)
    James Mark (University of Exeter)
------

After years of isolation and division during the late Stalinist period, the so-called ‘Thaw’ in the cultural politics of socialist Eastern Europe in the second half of the 1950s enabled a broadening of horizons. This made it possible to address previously hidden facts about the recent past, the appropriation of aesthetic forms and the reception of contemporary art, cinema and literature from the West. Above all, however, it meant the physical opening up of borders. Not only were foreign journalists, cultural and sports delegations, festival visitors and travel groups allowed to visit the world behind the Iron Curtain, but, vice versa, a host of reporters, writers and artists set out to travel to capitalist foreign countries—especially countries engaged in the struggle for independence from their colonisers. Travel literature became one of the most popular genres of those years. Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund crossed the entire Global South with their Czechoslovak Tatra cars, Daniil Granin explored capitalist countries such as Japan and Australia, and Ryszard Kapuściński became the most important reporter of the anti-colonial liberation struggle.

These texts not only meant confronting the readership at home with previously unknown and foreign worlds but also paved the way for the emergence of a new global consciousness, which was to be clearly distinguished from the ‘imperial gaze’ of the capitalist West. ‘Writing the world’ on the one hand meant striving to find a socialist understanding of a ‘Red Globe’ to match the competing narrative of globalisation as Americanisation, which emerged victorious in the end. On the other hand, travel writers quickly moved on from the initial “dumbfounded gaze” (Ilya Kukulin) to develop a language of their own with which to represent and classify the ‘blue planet’ as a whole. This new language was an essential part of the search for a new, post-Stalinist subjectivity.

While the online conference “Inherit the World: Strategies of ‘translatio’ in the Soviet Literary Cosmopolis,” held from May 27–29, 2021 and the conference “(Post)-Soviet Cosmopolis: The Soviet Project of World Literature and its Legacies,” held from December 8–10, 2021, will ask how the Soviet understanding of a multinational and world literature as an imperial legacy lives on to this day, the conference on the “Red Globe” will build on this and focus on a specific genre of this world literature, namely travelogues. The planned conference will explore how travel texts of the post-war period developed through encounters with other cultures and ways of life—a socialist perspective on a global scale on collective belonging and imaginary communities in the context of the East-West conflict. Special attention will be paid to focal points of the Cold War conflict, particularly Berlin. In these years, the image of West Berlin as the “window to the free world” and the staging of East Berlin as a global metropolis of peace and friendship competed with each other and made the former German capital one of the key sites for renegotiating globality.

At the same time, writing travel texts always meant comparing one’s own point of view with the everyday reality of a world divided by conflicts and wars. The tensions between international solidarity, ‘capitalist interventions’ and regional interests, global networks and local economies, industrial modernisation and ecological destruction found their way into the travel literature of those years in diverse ways, and also contributed to the development of a cosmopolitan consciousness. The aim of the conference is to reconstruct this phenomenon, largely forgotten due to the economic and political failure of this “alternative globalization” (James Mark, Artemy M. Kalinovsky and Steffi Marung).


The following general and specific questions concerning various forms of travel texts (diaries, adventure reports, chronicles, reportages, novels, sketches, memories, etc.) shall be addressed:

    How do representations of the foreign relate to colonial stereotypes, such as imperial orientalism? Were there alternative constructions of the autochthon beyond these ‘occidental’ stereotypes?
    What alternative anti- or postcolonial perspectives were adopted, especially with regard to the Global South? To what extent were these positions specifically socialist? How did they respond to the emerging left protest movements in the West and their understanding of international solidarity?
    What moments and images, atmospheres and experiences, situations and contexts were depicted in the travelogues? How was the socialist self related to other civilisations and cultural models in these texts? How was cultural difference produced and represented?
    How were other worlds narrated in travel texts? What generic economies can be identified in a global perspective? What models of world literature have been reproduced and reinterpreted here?
    How did the travel texts of the Cold War relate to earlier traditions of travel literature in their respective contexts?
    How did travelogues question the validity and significance of their own categories of perception, classification and representation? Did a poetics of self-questioning (e.g. through metafictional devices) exist in socialist travel literature? Were there socialist predecessors of later critiques of “Writing Culture”?
    Which techniques of observation did the travellers develop in order to grasp the wealth of foreign impressions? How did they use photography and media to enhance their accounts? How did they generate credibility before their audience? What were the main organising principles of the travelogues (e.g. travel as a process of disillusionment, travelling as a process of personal or collective learning)?
    How did the newly developed notions of the world vary in the different countries of Eastern Europe? What reasons can be found for the aesthetic and ideological divergence and convergence of representations of the Other?


Specific topics:

    Capitalism Beyond Borders: How was the capitalist territory reinvented in socialist travel literature? In what way did these depictions differ from the Soviet literary predecessors of the 1920s and Stalinism?
    Writing Berlin: How were highly symbolic places of the Cold War, such as the former capital of Germany, narrated in socialist travel texts? What alternative interpretations and stories were presented here?
    Literary Communities: How did Eastern European travel writers deal with the activities of their colleagues from non-socialist countries? What canonised pretexts and literary images were referenced in the travelogues? Was there a dialogue with competing contemporary interpretations and discourses?
    Planet Earth: How did travel literature deal with ecological issues? Were there ideas of global ecological interdependence and, if so, how were they conveyed artistically? To what extent were they meant to contribute to the creation of a global consciousness?
    Global Citizenship: What ideas of ‘global citizenship’ have been developed in travel literature? What were the guiding values of the socialist global citizen and how did they relate to competing narratives in the West?
    Allegorical Dimensions: To what extent did travel literature serve as an allegorical mirror for domestic situations? Did official or unofficial alliances develop between authors in the Soviet and Western imperial context?


Please submit your abstract (up to 300 words), a short CV and your contact details to Clemens Günther (clemens.guenther@fu-berlin.de) and/or Matthias Schwartz (schwartz@zfl-berlin.org) by 30 Sep 2021.

CFP: Foreign Communities in Early Modern Muscovite Cities (c. 1500-1725) (Vienna, Austria)

Deadline to Apply: September 16, 2019

13–14 December 2019
Institute of East European History
University of Vienna, Austria

Between the late 15th century and the death of Peter I the State of Muscovy emerged from a rather homogenous Russian-speaking and Christian Orthodox medieval principality to a multi-ethnic and multi-religious empire. A major factor in this development was the conquest of the neighbouring Tatar Khanates and the colonization of Siberia, resulting in the integration of their non-Christian populations into the Russian state. Whereas at the periphery the ethnic balance of the empire was changed by annexing foreign ethnic groups, in its core the ethnic composition was modified by growing numbers of immigrants crossing the western borders of Muscovy to settle inside or near Russian cities. Their presence was accompanied by adaptations in the legal, fiscal, and economic system, as well as in the everyday life of the native citizens. While the immigration to Early Modern Russia of Western experts, mercenaries and artists has been the subject of a vast number of case studies, these have seldom examined another central issue in European-Russian relations ― the role of immigrants in changing the mutual perception of the respective other.

The upcoming workshop "Foreign Communities in Early Modern Muscovite Cites" will therefore focus on matters regarding integration, interaction and perception. Aiming at a comparative analysis, the main points to be considered will be the view of foreign communities from within and without, as well as their place between other minorities in Muscovite Russia. The conference will deal with questions such as:

• What were the legal, economic and political circumstances that supported or hindered the integration of non-Orthodox subjects into the Muscovite society?
• How did local authorities and the native population handle the settlement of non-Orthodox inhabitants into existing Muscovite cities?
• To what extent did the legal and living conditions of non-Orthodox Christians differ from that of other minorities?
• What kinds of communication and interaction were developed, supported or restricted by authorities and other local agents?
• How did everyday life, cooperation and conflict influence local perspectives of the other, and how did these perspectives compare to the general discourse of European-Russian relations in the Early Modern era?

The workshop is being organized by the Institute of East European History at the University of Vienna, and will take place Friday and Saturday, 13 to 14 December 2019. It will consist of three panels, each with a keynote speaker as well as two or three twenty-minute papers followed by discussion. The working language of the conference will be English. The University of Vienna will defray all costs for accommodation for two days in Vienna and offers a limited number of travel grants.

Paper proposals (approx. 350 words in English, Russian or German) for a contribution on case studies in all fields touched upon here can be submitted to: Simon Dreher (simon.dreher@univie.ac.at) by 16 September 2019. All paper proposals should be in the form of a single electronic document (.doc, .docx, .odt or .pdf).

CFP: 22nd Biennial Conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and Folklore

Deadline to Apply: September 1, 2019

The 22nd biennial conference on Balkan and South Slavic Linguistics, Literature and folklore will be held at Arizona State University in Tempe, AZ on Thursday April 2- Saturday April 4 2020.  

The conference organizers are now accepting proposals for papers that treat some aspect of Balkan and/or South Slavic linguistics, literature, folklore, or culture. 

Abstracts should be submitted as an email attachment in PDF format to the conference email address  bssc2020@asu.edu 

Abstracts should be up to 250 words, including examples and bibliography, 12-point font, at least 1" margins, and should not contain name(s) or affiliations(s) of the author(s).  Abstracts should also include a title, and up to five keywords.

The paper title, author name(s), affiliation(s), and contact information should be given in the body of the email.

Please send submissions by September 1 2019.  Notification of selection, and invitation letters if needed, will be sent by October 1.

More information about travel arrangements, hotels, and area attractions (Grand Canyon, Sedona, Tombstone, etc) will be sent out later in the year. Tempe is part of greater Phoenix, and is approximately 15 minutes drive from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. 

The conference is hosted by the Melikian Center at ASU, in collaboration with the Department of Russian and Slavic Studies at the University of Arizona. Additional support is provided by ASU's  School of International Letters and Cultures, the Mary Choncoff Fund, and the Stephen and Sandra Batalden Fund. 

Questions about the conference may be directed to the ASU and U of A conference organizers, Keith Brown and Grace Fielder, either directly or via the conference email address 

Job: Assistant Professor, Russian/Eastern European History - History, University at Buffalo

Deadline to Apply: September 15, 2019
Please apply online through the UB employment page: https://www.ubjobs.buffalo.edu/postings/20066


Position Summary

The History Department at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York, invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship beginning in August 2020 in Russian/Eastern European history since 1800. All topics are welcome. The candidate is expected to contribute to the department's teaching from introductory surveys and undergraduate lectures to undergraduate and graduate seminars. Standard duties for academic-year (10-month) faculty include teaching two courses per semester, advising and mentoring students, maintaining a strong research program, and providing service to the Department and University. The candidate must have received a PhD by the start of the appointment.

For more information about the Department of History, visit http://arts-sciences.buffalo.edu/history.html.

University at Buffalo is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer and, in keeping with our commitment, welcomes all to apply including veterans and individuals with disabilities.

Minimum Qualifications

PhD in History conferred by the time of appointment.

Type
Full-Time

Special Instructions to Applicants

All application materials should be submitted via UB Jobs by September 15, 2019. Application materials submitted directly to the posting contact will not be acknowledged and cannot be considered.

Applicants will be required to provide a writing sample (chapter or article length).

Additional Information

Pursuant to Executive Order 161, no State entity, as defined by the Executive Order, is permitted to ask, or mandate, in any form, that an applicant for employment provide his or her current compensation, or any prior compensation history, until such time as the applicant is extended a conditional offer of employment with compensation. If such information has been requested from you before such time, please contact the Governor's Office of Employee Relations at (518) 474-6988 or via email at info@goer.ny.gov.