Labnet: Conf. Ann: Imperial Traces - Erfurt 04/08

[labnet at lists.labourhistory.net]

[Cross-posted, with thanks, from H-Soz-u-Kult. AB]

From:    Claudia Kraft <claudia.kraft at uni-erfurt.de>


Conference: Imperial Traces - Erfurt 04/08

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Lehrstuhl für Slawistische Literaturwissenschaft
Professur für Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas
an der Universität Erfurt, Erfurt
17.04.2008-19.04.2008, Universität Erfurt/Max-Weber-Kolleg
Deadline: 17.04.2008

The category of the imperial is by no means obsolete, although it certainly cannot and should not be uncritically applied in scholarly analysis. Its reference is not to some actual empire, but rather to a latently functioning figure of thought (as a residual of a past which may not ever have existed). It is this latency and covertness makes it
so complex, powerful and tenaciously long-lived. 
The power and significance of the imperial is evident. The word "imperskost'" can be heard in many discourses in today's Russia. Historians (e.g. Mark Bassin) investigate how current imperial models can be traced back to models and figures of "Eurasianism".  The city of Kaliningrad is a literally concrete implementation of a Soviet imperial
scheme; official discourses and monument constructions explicitly and implicitly legitimate this to this day. And the physical traces of imperial structuring are omnipresent in cities like Warsaw, Prague and Riga. The goal of our project is to uncover the often hidden and 'covertly operating' non-discursive frameworks of imperial models, frameworks which emerged in the 'second world' (the USSR and its satellite states) and in Yugoslavia in the decades after World War II, but also their historical roots in figures of thought connected to the emergence of Stalinism in the 30s. 
This alternative view of historical and cultural developments in the USSR and its satelites between 1945 and1982 (between the end of WWII and the death of Brežnev), could serve to take a different view of the supposedly radical breaks such as those in 1953-1956 and 1963-1964. In the investigation of imperial traces, the cultural history of postwar Communism and the Cold War are thus made subject to a 'media turn'.

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Thursday, 17th of April 2008
IBB Hotel Erfurt
14: 45 Guided Tour: Erfurt - its Imperial Traces of the Soviet Union

16:30 University of Erfurt, LG 1/247 b
Registration, Formalities, Coffee & Tea

18:00 University of Erfurt, LG 1/Hörsaal 3
Introduction (Holt Meyer, Erfurt)

Section I: Conceptions of the Imperial

Susanne Frank (Konstanz): "The Imperial Conceptualization of Soviet Space"

Tanja Zimmermann (Erfurt): "Tito's "Third Path" - a Neo-Avant-Garde of Marxism"


Friday, 18th of April 2008
Max Weber Kolleg, Am Hügel 1

10:00
Section II: Text and Visual Media

Kevin Anding (Erfurt): "Gagarin's Smile"

Mark Bassin (Birmingham): "Landscape/Nature in Socialist Realist Art"

Davor Beganovic (Konstanz): "The Role of the Hero in Jugoslaw Cinema in the Sixties."

Claudia Kraft (Erfurt): "Languages of Empire - Mieczyslaw Moczar and "The Colours of a Fight"

Irina Sandomirskaja (Stockholm): "Stalin as Onomatopoeia: Nikolai Zabolotskii's Poem "Reading Poetry" and the Soviet Doctrine of Language, 1948-51"


Section III: Audio-Visual Media

Jan C. Behrends (Berlin): Defending the Soviet Garden and Constructing the Empire of Peace: Cinema, Text, and Ritual around 1950"

Anatolij Korcinckij (Moskau): "The Space as an Event: Gagarin and Modern Movies"

Natascha Drubek-Meyer (Prag): "Singing, Dancing and Translating "from the Walachian Mountains to Berlin" (A Czechoslovak Socialist Film Musical of 1952)"

Vitek Schmarc (Prag): "A Visit to Ruda's Flat: The Mythologization of Space in Czechoslovak Socialist Realism"

13:00 Lunch Break

15:00
Section IV a: Organization of Space: Architecture

Nancy Aris (Dresden): "A Hint of Empire: the Moscow Metro in the 1930th - Building a New Identity"

Tatiana Petzer (Berlin): Belgrade - Brioni Isles - Bled. Tito's Villas as Manifestations of Imperial Ease"

Tomas Pospiszyl (Prag): "Late Socialist Architecture in Czechoslovakia"

Alexander Sologubov (Kaliningrad): "Imperial Traces and Gaps in the Space of Kaliningrad"

Andrzej Szczerski (Krakau): "Hotels of the 1970s"


Section IV b: Performance of Space: Ritual

Maja Brkljacic (Zagreb): "Ritual Performances Related to the Body of the Marshall of Yugoslavia, Tito"

Tom Jürgens (Berlin): "Imperial Traces of the "ekskursionnoe delo" in the USSR "

Holt Meyer (Erfurt): "Giving Stalinist Academic Rituals a Space: Big Lermontov is Watching Marr and Me and Humming a Tune"


Section V: The Politics of Institutions and Media

Tomas Glanc (Prag): "The Orthodox Ritualization of the Imperial in Late Stalinism (the 40s)"

Jiri Knapik (Opava): "Czechoslovak Film Institutions"

Jurij Troijckij (Moskau): "Gagarin and Mass Youth Organization"

Pavel Kolar (Potsdam): "Narrating the Imperial in the Marxist Vein: Representations of Empire in Czechoslovak and Austrian Communist Historiography after 1945"


Saturday , 19th of April 2008
Max Weber Kolleg, Am Hügel 1

10:00 Presentations about the Sections II-V

13:00 Lunch break

14:00 Discussion about the next stage of the project:
www.imperialtraces.org
What will come next? - The multi-medial work

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Claudia Kraft

Professur für Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas
Universität Erfurt
0049-361-7374081
0049-361-7374479
claudia.kraft at uni-erfurt.de

Homepage http://www.uni-erfurt.de/ostmitteleuropa 

URL zur Zitation dieses Beitrages
http://geschichte-transnational.clio-online.net/termine/id=9089 

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