CFP: 14th International Postgraduate Conference: Transnationalism(S): Contexts, Patterns and Connections in Central and Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union

Thinking beyond "the national" is here to stay. Though recent events in Central and Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet space have brought the continued relevance of borders into stark relief, we are more than ever in need of a toolkit that makes sense of processes, events and patterns occurring and recurring beyond the nation-state. At the same time, when dealing with the already-ambiguous and contested limits of "Central Europe", "Eastern Europe", "the Balkans", or "the Caucasus", thinking transnationally may also transform previous notions of "region". As such, the overarching aim of our conference is to debate both the concrete and the theoretical issues that stem from de-centring and re-contextualising both the nation-state, and other sub-ordinate and super-ordinate levels of analysis.

We look forward to submissions that are cross-cultural, cross-national, and multi-disciplinary: historical, cultural, political, economic, social, linguistic and beyond. We are particularly interested in papers addressing the conference theme but also welcome other research dealing with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, South-East Europe and the former Soviet Union, as well as papers exploring the relationships between these regions and actors outside them. Topics can include but are not limited to the following areas:
> research methodologies and (inter)disciplinary challenges in a transnational context;
> networks of knowledge, ideologies and in uence: regional versus transnational;
> migration: global issues, transnational patterns, national responses;
> making sense of " flows": what gets transferred - ideas, objects, people, and how going beyond/across borders transforms their interrelationships;
> institutions and economies: inter-, supra- or trans-national?
> recontextualising "nationalism" in light of the transnational turn;
> cosmopolitanism and the transnational: ideals and practices of global citizenship;
> aesthetics of transnationalism: visual culture and cultural critique;
> the politics and linguistics of CEE languages: national entanglements, regional and local perspectives.
The conference invites applications from postgraduate students and early career researchers from the Social Sciences and Humanities. Please send a 250-word abstract and an academic CV to
postgraduateconference2016@gmail.com by 9 December 2015.
The language of the conference is English. We invite submissions of papers of no more than 20 minutes in length. Please contact us should you wish to propose a fully-formed three-speaker panel, attaching the relevant documents for all participants. Successful applicants will be noticed by 18 December 2015. Some travel expenses may be covered for non-UK applicants, but please seek alternate sources of funding beforehand.
For more information on research at SSEES please visit: www.ucl.ac.uk/ssees/research.

Research Fellowships: Empires of Memory: The Cultural Politics of Historicity in Former Habsburg and Ottoman Cities

The Max-Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen 

Postdoctoral and Doctoral Research Fellowships

A new Research Group at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, under the direction of Dr. Jeremy F. Walton, seeks to appoint postdoctoral and doctoral research fellows with outstanding academic records. We welcome applicants from a variety of fields in the social sciences and humanities, including Anthropology, History, Sociology, Geography, Urban Studies, Art History, Architectural History, and Comparative Literature, to work on a collaborative, five-year research project titled “Empires of Memory: The Cultural Politics of Historicity in Former Habsburg and Ottoman Cities.” The overarching objective of our project is to examine the forms, textures, and effects of imperial memories in relation to contemporary urban culture and politics in six cities: Vienna, Istanbul, Budapest, Sarajevo, Trieste, and Thessaloniki. Fellows will be expected to pursue their own individual projects in light of the following set of broad research questions: In what forums, genres, and media—narrative, visual, architectural, scholarly, etc.—are memories of Habsburg and Ottoman pasts articulated and elaborated? How do imperial memories, both positive and negative, inform and underwrite contemporary projects of urban preservation and transformation? In what ways and contexts do the imperial pasts of cities link up with national and EU-wide political debates and projects? What frictions do narratives of imperial pasts provoke in contemporary political life? Finally, how do memories of empire inform the politics of nationalism and the nation-state in these various cities? We especially encourage applications from scholars with linguistic expertise pertinent to one or more of our six sites. Awards will be made on the basis of scholarly excellence and research promise.

The Institute operates in English and is located in the scenic university town of Göttingen. All research fellows in residence are expected to devote the majority of their time to their individual research projects, take leadership in organizing international conferences and other academic events, publish their work in leading academic venues, and participate fully in the intellectual life of the Institute. 

Postdoctoral fellows will be appointed for an initial period of two years, while doctoral fellows will be appointed for an initial period of three years. Compensation will be based on the German public service scale TVöD, level E 13 (50% for PhDs). The envisaged starting date is 1 May 2016.

The deadline for applications is 31 December 2015. Applications should include a cover letter, CV, writing sample, a brief research statement (approximately 1000 words), and the names and contact details of two academic referees. Applicants should also send a record of university diplomas and transcripts. Interviews for positions will occur via Skype in January 2016. 

The Max Planck Society wishes to increase the participation of women wherever they are underrepresented; therefore, applications from women are particularly welcome.

Following its commitment to an equal opportunities employment policy, the Max Planck Society also especially encourages persons with disabilities to submit applications.

Please submit your application electronically to jeremyfwalton@gmail.co

 

 

DO IT YOURSELF! Subversive Practices and Informal Knowledge

Annual Conference of the Leibniz Graduate School

“History, Knowledge, Media in East Central Europe”

  Marburg, 18-20 November 2015

 

http://www.herder-institut.de/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf/Aktuelles/tagungen/Selbermachen/Flyer_Jahrestagung_LGSch2015.pdf 

 

 

CfP: The Authenticity of Collections – an international and interdisciplinary symposium on authenticity, recording, and digitization of collections

Leibniz Graduate School - Herder Institute for Historical Research on Eastern Europe 

Marburg, Germany

March 7-11,  2016

As a result of the “material turn” of the last decade, collections in and of themselves have become objects of research. The materiality of collected objects, questions regarding their authenticity, selection and recording are subjects of transdiciplinary and conceptual debates. In order to investigate these complexes, connections, and interdependencies, scholars have combined methodological and theoretical approaches from various disciplines such as history, art history, archeology, and museology. In a world going ever more digital, immaterial ideas, images, and practices of preservation, necessitate a rethinking and reconceptualization of existing orders.

Combining theoretical approaches with everyday practices of collecting and in collections, this symposium will provide a forum for discussion for graduate and post-graduate students. The host institute of the symposium, the Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe in Marburg, is not only a place for research, but belongs to the few German institutions, where theoretical knowledge on Eastern Europe interacts directly with objects from the region (e.g. books, manuscripts, journals, images).

Therefore, the symposium pursues two goals: on the one hand, it offers a theoretical approach into areas such as Material Cultural Studies and Cultural Heritage Studies; on the other hand, it seeks to illustrate the practices of capturing, recording, and digitizing objects. To that end, participants have the opportunity to conduct concrete projects in the institute’s three collections, the image, map, and document collection. The symposium aspires to provide an unusual insight into the work in, on, and with collections that differs markedly from the experience of “users” and visitors. Thus, following a two-day introduction, the Herder Institute offers 12 researchers the unique possibility to realize their own projects with the support of the experts working in our collections. Passive knowledge of German and listening comprehension are required.

Please submit your letter of motivation and a short CV as well as contact details by December 15, 2015 to: gantnere@herder-institut.de

POLIN Research Fellowships for Doctoral and Postdoctoral Candidate

POLIN Museum’s Global Educational Outreach Program, supported by the William K. Bowes Jr Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture, is offering up to six doctoral and post-doctoral fellowships for from three to five consecutive months in residence at POLIN Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute (ŻIH). The fellowship stipend is $2,000 per month.

Our goal is to support the scholarship on the Jewish history and culture in the territories of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and its successor states and new cohort of scholars expert in this field. Fellows will be draw on POLIN Museum’s Core Exhibition, Resource Center, library, and collection and on its expert staff. They will also have access to the archive, library, and collection of the Jewish Historical Institute. They will also be able to take advantage of libraries, archives, and academic institutions research centers in Warsaw, Poland’s vibrant capital city, Cracow, and elsewhere in Poland.

Fellows will be provided with a working space. POLIN Museum will offer assistance in finding housing in Warsaw.

Fellows will have the opportunity to:

• present their work-in-progress in a monthly seminar and receive feedback from their colleagues
• participate in the full programme of lectures, workshops, and conferences at POLIN Museum and the Jewish Historical Institute
• conduct research in archives and libraries in Warsaw and of Poland
• consult with an assigned mentor from POLIN Museum, the Jewish Historical Institute, or other academic institutions in Warsaw or Poland.

Requirements

Candidate for fellowships may apply for a period of between three and five months and must have at least a passive knowledge of Polish and a working knowledge of English. Applicants from any discipline related to the history and culture of Polish Jews may apply. Applicants from doctoral programmes from the United States and Canada should be ABD. Those from Europe, Israel and other countries should be within two years of completing their PhD. Post-doctoral candidates must have completed a PhD within the past five years.

The Application Process

Applicants should submit their curriculum vitae (no longer than four pages), a detailed statement of current research, including work plans during the fellowship (up to 2000 words), and one writing sample (no more than 25 pages). Applications should be submitted in English and PDF format to GEOP@polin.pl.

Two letters of recommendation should be submitted directly by the recommenders in English by e-mail to GEOP@polin.pl. Members of the Selection Committee (see below) may not write letters of recommendation. Only two letters will be considered.

• Application deadline: November, 30, 2015
• Deadline for letters of recommendation: December 13, 2015.
• Decisions will be announced by March 2016.
• Fellowships may start as early as September 2016, and should be completed no later than August 2017.
• For more information, please email: GEOP@polin.pl 

CFP:Pariah sciences. Episteme, Power and Legitimization of Knowledge, from Animal Electricity to Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions.

Dear Colleagues,

We are putting together a multi-panel symposium on what we call “Pariah Science,” which will analyse the processes of legitimization-illegitimization of science in the modernity. Please find the abstract of the session below. If you are interested in participating, please send a short abstract and a cv to Jan Surman (jan.surman@herder-institut.de <mailto:jan.surman@herder-institute.de>) before 20. November 2015. (for more info on the ESHS conference visit their homepage at http://www.7eshs2016.cz/)

Best regards,

Friedrich Cain / Jan Surman / Zsuzsanna Török

*Pariah sciences. Episteme, Power and Legitimization of Knowledge, from Animal Electricity to Low-Energy Nuclear Reactions. Symposium at the 7th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science*

*Venue*: Prague, Czech Republic

*Date*: 22–24 September, 2016

*Organizers*: Friedrich Cain (Konstanz), Jan Surman (Marburg), Zsuzsanna Török (Konstanz)

If history should be the history of winners, much is lost in the process of writing it. Our session aims at looking consciously at precise moments at which modern disciplines, research programs or scholars cross the threshold of legitimacy, one way or another. We intend to analyze via microstudies how science is made legitimate/illegitimate, who are the actors behind this process and which strategies have led to achieving the quality of crossing this strong discursive boundary. Cold fusion, 19^th century natural law, astrology, Lyssenkoism, Soviet sociology, are known examples of how knowledge once regarded legitimate turned into “pariah science”(Goodstein 1994), the two latter fields also going the other way round. But the ways their stories are told differ greatly, ranging from references to obstacles presented to them by political power to failure to bring reliable results. We feel, however, that the canvas is more complex, and can be unwoven best through case studies, which will include cultural, religious, political and epistemic factors.


Regarding the political framework, our panel addresses not only absolutist, despotic, totalitarian and semi-totalitarian regimes, which, as recent studies have accentuated, allowed lot of individual freedom and thus manipulation, but also constitutional monarchies and liberal democracies where science has been a field closely interwoven with politics. Moreover, recent works in anthropology (Proctor/Schiebinger 2008) have focused on a field that spans between politics and scholarship on the one hand, and provable and not provable information on the other. In this highly politicized arena, notions of ambiguity become central to discourses transgressing science and politics.Indeed, the field of exclusion and delegitimization is a particularly tangled one: governments and (un-)enlightened despots used religious claims to legitimize the banning of politically unwanted knowledge, while the Church (re-)connected with politicians and political activists to achieve its epistemic aims (e.g. Roman Catholic Church in the anti-modernist struggle). Scholars often played a key role in these struggles helping to sustain their research programs by cutting off their competitors with the help of non-academic actors. Visualizing the strings and actors pulling them, will give, as we believe, a detailed and dynamic view of science as an endeavor involving manifold actors, not only those confined to academia. We are interested in case studies from around the globe addressing one or more of the issues listed below. We are particularly keen on contributions problematizing the politics-scholarship dichotomy:

-Who were the actors and institutions behind the processes of legitimization and delegitimization of knowledge? What were their aims and interests? What were their strategies?

-What were the strategies of defending knowledge under attack? What were the arenas of negotiation?

-What happened to delegitimized knowledge (and scholars)? Was it conveniently hidden into basement, or spatially, medially and discursively removed? Could delegitimized scholars pursue their interest, remain in academia with different affiliations or were they persecuted?

-We are also interested in contested cases, where the battle for legitimation has not been decided, e.g. in the case of alternative healing methods in postwar medicine, such as Homeopathy.

Studientag: Science that Came in from the Cold: Epistemology, Rationality and Cold War Scientific Cultu

Date/Venue: 22. January 2016, Forschungszentrum für historische Geisteswissenschaften, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, IG Farbenhaus, Room 1.414

Organizers: Fabian Link, Jan Surman

Discussants: Michael D. Gordin (Princeton), Peter Haslinger (Marburg/Gießen), Philipp Sarasin (Zürich)

Deadline for applications: 20. November 2015

Organized by:

Herder-Institute for Historical Research on Eastern Europe – Institute of Leibniz Association, Marburg

Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture, Gießen

Working Group History of Science at the Goethe-University in Frankfurt am Main.

In recent years, research on Cold War scientific culture has produced manifold perspectives on the production of knowledge and its dissemination against the backdrop of an antagonistic world order and a nuclear arms race. Most notable is the idea of a particular “Cold War rationality,” which informed intellectuals´ and researchers´ inquiries from the 1950s to the 1970s. In our Studientag we want to discuss how this Cold War scientific culture has affected the basic epistemic categories of the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. Based upon concrete research projects from all branches and fields of science and the humanities we want to look at how the particular atmosphere of the Cold War led scholars to reevaluate the epistemic assumptions, which both consciously and unconsciously placed a value on “good” versus “bad” science. In light of increased ideologization in the post-World War II period, science was said to serve either “democracy” or “communism” and therefore we also inquire how political and epistemic categories intermingled in the production of new norms that both science and scientists followed.

We invite scholars from all disciplines interested in historical dimensions of scientific knowledge 1945-1989 to send us short proposals addressing the issues mentioned. 

We want to combine in our Studientag project presentations, discussions of pre-circulated papers and literature discussions, with doctoral students and young postdocs comprising the target audience. In case of any questions please write to Jan Surman (jan.surman@herder-institut.de) or Fabian Link (f.link@em.uni-frankfurt.de).

Lecture: Michael Gordin: The Russians are Writing! The Cold War Crisis of Scientific Language.

Datum/Date: 21. Januar 2015, 18:00-20:00

Veranstaltungsort/Venua: Liebig Museum, Liebigstraße 12, Gießen

Veranstalter / Organizers: The International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture in cooperation with Herder-Institute for Historical Research on Eastern Europe – Institute of Leibniz Association, Marburg

In the history of scientific languages - that is, those languages in which the vast majority of scientific communication is expressed – the early Cold War constituted a major transitional moment. The century-long reign of three dominant languages (English, French, and German) was destabilized by geopolitical transformations in the wake of both World Wars. Consequently, the second most dominant scientific language, with a percentage of global publication equal to German and French combined, was Russian, a language the Western European and North American scientific community had persistently marginalized.

This talk explores the efforts of principally American scientists and policy-makers to confront the enormous linguistic challenge of scientific Russian. After two approaches -teaching Russian to scientists and then the early years of Machine Translation (MT) - foundered in the early 1960s, the stopgap measure of cover-to-cover translation journals took over, and remained the main strategy for scientists outside the Communist Bloc (in the Americas, Europe, and South and East Asia) to engage with the tremendous scientific infrastructure of the Soviet Union. The contingent history of these developments, as this talk argues, set the stage for today’s overwhelming dominance of a single vehicular language for scientific communication: English.

Lecture attendees are also invited to arrive earlier the Liebig-Museum in order to enjoy a guided tour two hours before the lecture or to view the permanent exhibitions from one hour prior to the lecture. Discussions with Prof. Gordin can be continued over dinner at the nearby restaurant Justus im Hessischen Hof.

The event is organized in cooperation with The International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture and is accompanied by a Studientag in Frankfurt/ Main on Cold War Science “Science that Came in from the Cold: Epistemology, Rationality and Cold War Scientific Culture”. 

For more information about the latter event please contact Jan Surman (jan.surman@herder-institut.de).