The Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies invite applications for an interdisciplinary regional conference on the Holocaust in Southeastern Europe. The conference will be held May 25–26, 2015 in Bucharest.
This two-day conference will bring together scholars from all disciplines working on the Holocaust in the Southeastern tier of Europe to share their research with each other and the public. The conference seeks to stimulate discussion and debate on current research on the Holocaust, and to foster interdisciplinary and transnational cooperation among scholars of the topic in the region. It will highlight new research in such areas as atrocities, mass killing, and mass graves; the radicalization of local politics during Nazi occupation; forced and slave labor; the dynamics of complicity and collaboration; everyday life on the front and under occupation; plunder, robbery, and expropriation; refugees and displaced persons; understudied victims; gender; the cultural politics of representation and commemoration in the aftermath; contemporary Holocaust revisionism and denial, and manifestations of antisemitic and anti-Romani prejudice; and communities and identities forged around the experiences of war and genocide. The organizers particularly encourage proposals that address Romania and Ukraine in comparative perspective, as well as applications that consider the specificities of the Bulgarian and Hungarian cases. Proposals from scholars working on these topics who reside in Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey, and Ukraine are especially welcome.
The deadline for receipt of proposals is November 28, 2014. To propose a paper for this conference, please send (1) a cover letter addressing your specific interests in the study and teaching of the Holocaust in Southeastern Europe; (2) your curriculum vitae; and (3) an abstract of no more than 500 words for your proposed paper in a single Word document to Krista Hegburg, Ph.D., Program Officer, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, at khegburg@ushmm.org.
To apply for a junior scholar travel stipend, please submit (1) a curriculum vitae that indicates your current academic affiliation; (2) a statement of interest of not more than 750 words addressing your specific interest in attending the conference, background in the area of study, and how attendance will benefit the candidate’s research, teaching, or future publications; and (3) a supporting letter from an academic advisor, department chair, or dean that addresses the candidate’s qualifications and research as well as his/her potential as a scholar to Krista Hegburg, Ph.D., Program Officer, Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, at khegburg@ushmm.org.
To be considered for the conference, submit an abstract to the appropriate panel organizer by October 1, 2014. Please type “2015 Young Researchers Conference” as the subject of the email. Selected papers will be announced by December 1, 2014. If selected, participants must submit completed papers for circulation to other conference participants by April 15, 2015.
New Histories for New Times. The collapse of communist systems in Central and Eastern Europe has led to the production of new historical narratives for the new nation-states of the region. In Russia, the histories that have emerged have ranged from the tendentious (the controversial textbook by A. V. Filippov that described Stalin as an efficient manager who had to resort to extreme measures to preserve the state) to the more genuine (Boris Akunin’s History of the Russian State, which aimed to be more “impartial and objective” in its approaches). How have writers, scholars, and professional historians captured the past in their works since 1991? How have new histories attempted to narrate the more recent, and more controversial, pasts? What forms have these histories taken (textbooks, web sites, graphic novels, etc.)? These are some of the questions this panel will tackle. When applying for this panel, please submit your resume and abstract (no more than 300 words) to Stephen Norris at: norriss1@miamioh.edu.
The Condition We Call Exile. The title of this panel, borrowed from Joseph Brodsky’s essay, will focus on the writings of Russian emigration in the 20th century. Vladimir Nabokov famously wrote: “Isn’t it necessary once and for all to refuse any longing for the fatherland, any fatherland, except that one, which is with me, in me, which clings like the silver of sea sand to the skin of the soles, lives in the eyes, in the blood, providing depth and horizon to the background of every hope?” The panel will address narratives of exile and nostalgia, both in prose and poetry. Papers will address but not be limited to the following questions: how does the narrative of exile change from one wave of Russian emigration to the next? Is the conventional perception of nostalgia applicable to the Russian treatment of exile? How do the changes in political landscape affect exilic narratives?When applying for this panel, please submit your resume and abstract (no more than 300 words) to Zara M. Torlone at: torlonzm@miamioh.edu.
Victims and Aggressors: Russia and its Neighbors in Contemporary Literature.
Since 1991 literature has responded to and exacerbated the vexed relationship between post-Soviet identity and the messianic role Russian culture ascribes to the written word. Edith Clowes argues that writing reflects and intensifies debates over the fate of the world’s largest country, a fate manifest in geographical terms (loss of certain territories, annexation of others) and how these appear in writing. This panel invites papers related to Russian literature (prose, poetry, drama, memoirs, online writing, etc.) after the Soviet Union, as well as papers dealing with literatures of the former USSR. Papers focusing on how Eastern European literature envisions Russia are also welcome. When applying for this panel, please submit your resume and abstract (no more than 300 words) to Ben Sutcliffe at: sutclibm@miamioh.edu.
Remembering Communism. In the 1990s and 2000s a new generation of authors with a particular background began to emerge: those who were born during the later stages of communism but began to write only after its collapse. This panel takes a closer look at the works of these writers. Around what topics, experiences and protagonists do such works revolve? How are the authors’ explorations of issues related to childhood and adolescence related to the effort understand how “the old system” worked? In what ways are experiences of power and reflections on the tangled relationship between politics and art feature in the mnemonic narratives they offer? When applying for this panel, please submit your resume and abstract(no more than 300 words) to Venelin Ganev at: ganevvi@miamioh.edu.